Where does a brand live? In the old school analog world, it was created and promoted by marketing people who shouted at you with advertising. They may have decided for you what you would experience, what you might feel and even, how you should behave. The marketers controlled the volume, the location and the experience. You were an actor controlled by a brand. That world is disappearing and almost gone with the wind.
What remains is experience.
How you experience a brand, product or business is where brands live today.
It is how the small things touch you, how they make you feel that creates a brand connection. It is the warm and human greeting when you enter a store not that preprogrammed “Welcome to Walgreens” or “Welcome to CVS” that gets shouted at you by some disinterested clerk. It’s the authentic human that comes over and says, thanks for coming in. Please let me know if I can be helpful to you. Brands live in the little handwritten thank you notes that come from an unknown person who works at CarMax in the corporate office. Brands live when you open up a complicated toy to put together and they send you to step by step directions on the YouTube to make it easy to assemble.
The late Maya Angelou has a wonderful quote that sums up this idea:
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
For marketing professionals, how a brand makes you feel is everything. Storyboarding a customer’s journey so that it is genuinely understood before the product development begins is critical to marketing today.
[Tweet “Brands can’t tweak their way to innovation; they have to reimagine how to help a customer’s journey.”]
You feel a brand’s strength when they have helped make your journey easier. Have they thought through all the steps it takes to go from point A to point B? What has the brand done to delight you, to surprise you and to show that they are focused on serving your needs?
It is the little touch points that created what the brand means, not the message I scream at you through my paid megaphone. These small, empathic interactions are what matter and what get remembered as they are attached to a brand.
Where does a brand live?
This past week, my daughter Fanny was in Raleigh to do some book signing events promoting her cookbook. One of the events was at a local restaurant called Margaux’s that has been a family favorite for over 20 years.
The food at Margaux has always been excellent. Consistency is their watchword. Steve, the owner, has always been kind and generous to us when we would come in for a family dinner. Fanny even got to intern in their kitchen.
But when asked by a friend what was so special about Margaux’s, I shared a very simple story.
During Hurricane Fran in 1996, we lost power at our house for 12 days. After one day of struggling without power in the house, we came to Margaux’s for a respite from the storm. After dinner, Steve came over with a huge bag filled with ice. He said why don’t you take this home and keep it in your fridge, maybe it will help preserve some of the food, or you could use it to get a cold drink.
His brand is forever connected by how he made me feel that evening. I felt cared for and protected. That little gesture of kindness represents his brand to me.
Although I have dozens of memories of the fabulous meals at Margaux’s, my strongest memory is how Steve made me feel when my family was vulnerable. Amazing how far a bag of ice can go to build a brand.
How will your brand make your customers feel today?
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Photo: Jeffrey Slater
