Brand investments are not just a matter of cosmetics but rather are the source of value creation. By this same definition, there are steps that contribute to the building and maintenance of such an asset. In economic terms, a brand creates oligopolistic market conditions through the creation of market barriers via preferences. The result is an increased tolerance for higher prices and higher customer loyalty (and increased likelihood of customer retention). This facilitates a longer revenue stream with prices above the pure commodity and protects the customer base.
So, in a highly competitive environment, your brand is the key differentiator and most basic source of competitive advantage in the field. It is delivered through a brand experience. But how do you shape and maintain an experience that consistently upholds your brand?
First, identify the segment of your market that finds a differentiating value in one or more of the attributes your brand can deliver. Then craft an offer that appeals to the market segment and finally, package it in a value proposition (also called the brand promise). This process, called Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning (STP), is perhaps the most strategic effort in shaping a brand. Examining customer needs and preferences can uncover innovative ways to segment a market, develop effective targeting, and as part of it, identify the elements that need to be part of the brand experience.
The result should be that your STP process packages the value proposition in a compelling, differentiated brand promise that elicits a similar response within your target market.
With a well–defined STP strategy, it is essential to identify the ways in which the brand will ensure consistent delivery on each of the elements of the brand. This includes the differentiators that make the core value proposition, as well as those elements that the minimum expectations for any player in the category.
To effectively manage the brand and the experience it delivers, standards, processes, and culture are needed to ensure the promise is delivered consistently.
Importantly, brand delivery needs to be cognizant of the customer journey, especially in complex or high involvement products and services. The elements visible and important to a consumer change over their experience lifecycle, and the value of influencers.
When operationalizing the brand experience, it is important to go beyond the immediate emotional and functional attributes and examine how the brand fits in the general social context. Increasingly, brand reputation and choice are impacted by social discourse and affinity with broad social forces (e.g. climate change and social justice being two prominent aspects). Those who continuously monitor the environment and trends in consumer expectations act early, while laggards pay the price in loss of reputation and market share.
Deliver. Deliver. Deliver. “A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it’s bad,” advertising great Bill Bernbach explained. And then Bernbach elaborated, “the most powerful element in advertising is the truth. If you make a promise about your organization, it should be something that can’t be disputed when people walk through your door.”
A sustainable strategy will be data-informed so that performance can be maintained. Over-deliver, and you incur unnecessary costs and build expectations that you will be unable to sustain. Under-deliver and cognitive dissonance will wipe out the value of the brand. So, closely monitoring product/service delivery to the brand standard and consumer experience can identify the areas that lead to uneven delivery or failed promises. The cognitive dissonance between promise and delivery or fluctuation can quickly create threats in poor reviews, customer complaints, and prompt trials of competing products or outright switching.
Traditional methods that focused solely on consumers, risk being blind-sighted by the power of social interactions among consumers and influencers. This means that the brand promise extends well beyond the immediate target consumer. So, effective customer experience metrics need to be frequent, complete, and calibrated to their weight in overall expectations. Two types of metrics are needed: One that is systematically examining the customer experience against the brand promise and customer expectations, and a second one, a system to monitoring and responding quickly to disruptive events. Poor reviews or even a single comment can sometimes go viral, creating severe damage in a matter of hours.
By building and maintain a powerful brand that consistently delivers on its promise and values, organizations can generate value and returns that exceed what they could potentially achieve in increasingly commoditized markets and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage.