Helping Consumers Live The Brand

Time was when marketing people relied too heavily on their advertising agencies to produce glitzy copy that can attract the customers to the retail shelves. Today, consumers demand the brand’s promise to be carried out to the last detail by manufacturers and service providers. Enabling customers to live the brand can only happen when the following elements are present and drive the marketing process.

• Provide for a differentiating experience with the brand. Marketers must give consumers a reason to prefer their brand over others. While a unique, compelling advertising copy can tweak the consumer’s attention to try the product, a unique, differentiating experience can encourage the customer to keep coming for more. Starbucks has gone beyond selling its brand of coffee. It thrives profitably on the unique experience that loyal patrons enjoy while drinking Starbucks coffee with friends and business clients at its coffee shop.

Hospital experience need not be stereotyped as dreary and boring. While it may never be exciting nor elating, it can be differentiating and non-dreadful. One such example is the newly-opened Asian Hospital and Medical Center, designed to provide patient centered care in a total healing environment.

A hotel-like lobby, comfortable waiting areas, subdued lighting, warm and nice touches like complimentary send-off chrysanthemum flowers and congratulatory bouquets for first time mothers are some of the things that add to the hospital’s unique, differentiating experience.

The Body Shop does not merely sell natural-based body care products. When one buys any of Body Shop’s personal care products, one is literally buying into Body Shop’s unique advocacy experience against animal testing as well as advocacy for fair trading relationships, environmental awareness and care and community involvement.

• Know who you are and what you stand for when you create the realm of brand experience. Great brands recognize that they cannot be everything to everybody. Successful marketers have long realized that it is more profitable to be the best in one’s niche while continuing to serve the customer’s needs and wants in a particular segment of the market. Valuable brands know their limits. Phil Knight, founding chief executive officer of Nike knew only too well not to enter the casual shoe market with the brand name, Nike, because the brand’s values are associated with competitiveness, athletics and fitness. After all, what is stirringly competitive about a casual, leisurely walk on a Sunday afternoon?

• Create a brand personality that you can sustain with brand experience. Your brand’s position and statement of identity must be translated into symbols, visuals and copy that your target market can relate to, have emotional affinity with or aspire to become.

When computers were first introduced, it sounded, felt and looked too cold and alienating to many – until the Apple Macintosh and its Mac symbol of a rainbow colored apple with a bite. The apple, a very familiar, warm symbol, soothed and calmed the frayed nerves of the computer illiterate. Today, there is massive awareness of the Mac symbol. The symbol has helped trigger consumer acceptance of computer technology and has reinforced experience with the brand as friendly and easy to use.

Providing for a consistent brand experience can only reinforce the consumers’ awareness of what the brand truly represents. Having a delightful experience with the brand can only encourage the customer to keep coming back for more of these happy encounters.