When was the last time you got smitten with and truly inseparable from a pair of slippers, a spa or salon service, or an airline company? How did it grab your attention, turn you on, gain your respect, and connect with you so well that you ended up “dating, falling in love and romancing” it?
Indeed, a revolution is taking place in the world of branding. “Essentially, agencies, companies, and individuals involved in the branding process appear to be shifting their focus from the visual aspects of identity and design to the realms of brand strategy and the customer experience,” says Dr. Paul Temporal, a leading global expert on brand creation, development and management.
Business today is not just about building brand equity or value, it is creating experiences that make a difference, building powerful relationships, strengthening friendships and emotional bonds, and most important, developing a romance that will linger for years.
Against this scenario, brand management is now geared toward not just making single-minded selling propositions or producing cut-through executions but actually delivering on your claim or promised benefits. Customers demand the experience promised in your ads or whatever communications implement you are using.
The focus has now shifted from the creative pitch to the actual buyer and user. It has become audience-centered and customer-led. Message development and creative executions have to be carefully analyzed and managed or your customer-lover may just walk out on you. This shift of thought and action can be attributed to the powerful influence of what is now popularly labeled “customer relationship management” (CRM).
CRM is the process of building profitable relationships with your customers. While traditional advertising is often based on that, “eureka,” “aha,” sweaty-palm “wow” moment when the “big idea” is suddenly realized, CRM follows a well-defined process that places the customer at the very center of all thinking and activity.
Regardless of your best marketing communication efforts to get customers to think of your product, to try and retry it over time, each customer is going to give his patronage and loyalty to the product or company that satisfies his needs consistently. If you have to achieve that, you need a CRM program in place. Step out from behind the curtain and find out what is important to your customer.
You must ensure the release of what your customer looks for when deciding to purchase a product, define what is holding him back and when necessary, help him make the best purchase decision. Once your customer has taken the time to tell it straight to you, then you’d better listen, and listen well, follow through, and be able to hold the customer’s hand every step of the way.
CRM is, in the words of Temporal, “romancing the customer.” It helps you make the buyer or user feel happy, appreciated, and, most of all, loved. When planned and implemented well, CRM programs can help build the brand-customer relationship that starts with an acquaintance, develops into a deeper emotional involvement, further grows into greater friendship and loyalty, and finally graduates into “I love you.” This is where the “share of heart” protection begins, and where you are challenged to bring great interest, heightened trust, and fired-up amore to the brand-customer partnership.
To some marketing people, though, the goal of CRM is to capture a substantial “share of wallet” from defined targets. In other words, you must try to increase the ration of each customer’s expenditure that accrues to the brand. The danger here is that this “quick-buck” thinking may create short-term demand and sales, but cannot build an enduring romance.
Temporal prefers to think of it as capturing “share of heart,” where you have to face up to the job of creating an emotional bond with your customers, which at some point leads to a pledge of allegiance to your brand. If you achieve this faithfulness, “share of wallet” will be a natural by-product. In the long term, Temporal explains, if you appeal to the hearts of these customers, they will themselves become part of your best sales force — by being your happy and thus loyal customers and advocates.
A friend, a partner or a lover — you must be all these to your brand to keep the fire forever burning.
* * *
E-mail bongo@vasia.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.