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Defining "Branding"
Sep 28, 2005
While speaking at a "branding summit" recently at a major tech company in Silicon Valley, I heard several different definitions of "branding". Depending on the speaker's background, a company's brand could be explained from a number of angles:
- It's an aesthetic style that consumers should recognize. (The visual approach)
- It's a consistent message that must be pushed out to consumers as frequently as possible. (The big-advertising approach)
- It's a story that we tell ourselves and each other. (The narrative approach)
- It's a reasonable amount of value that consumers should be willing to pay a reasonable amount for. (The classic marketer's approach)
- It's a culture.
- It's a promise.
- It's the iPod.
- It's whatever we can do to be like Nike/Starbucks/Coke.
While I think that each of those statements is accurate to some degree, the reality is different for every company. After all, different companies have different customers, services, and business goals! Not every company sells a famous logo printed on a container of sugar water; thus, not every company should try to be Coke. Every company should try to find its own path in crafting a brand.
But if I had to give one definition to apply in all cases, it would be something like this:
The brand is what you tell your friends about afterwards.
Think about it. When you have a great (or bad) experience with a restaurant/airline/hospital/website, what do you tell your friends about? Do you echo the messaging from their advertising? Do you say, "Hey, try them, because they had the coolest logo"?
Of course not: you tell your friends what was important to you - the details about your particular experience. And that's the brand. Nothing more, and nothing less, than the sum total of all the customer experiences served up by that company.
Here's an example. As I sat on the plane last week from New York to San Francisco, I heard the traveler in the seat behind me telling his row-mate, who he had just met, why he loves JetBlue. More legroom, lower fares, on-time departures, DirecTV - all the things that he has valued in his personal experiences with JetBlue. This was the most accurate description of the brand he could give, and the most effective that his row-mate could hear - better than a dozen TV commercials. JetBlue couldn't control what the guy said, but they could - and did - control the experiences he had as a customer. And thus the brand got built.
(I should also note that this exchange took place in the back of an American Airlines plane. Why did JetBlue come up in the first place? Both travelers noted when they sat down that American doesn't provide very much legroom in coach. So a less-than-ideal customer experience in one context created the opportunity for another company to extend its brand.)
With this in mind, let's simplify that definition:
The brand is the customer experience.
And that's all it is. It's not primarily a story, or a logo, or a style, or even a value proposition. Primarily the brand is just what customers tell each other about: their experience.
So if you want to create a good brand, the best - perhaps the only - investment to make is in the customer experience. This means learning from customers through direct observation, and crafting a strategy built from that customer input.
I'm not suggesting the death of advertising; nor am I suggesting that companies avoid mission/vision statements or logos or color palettes. However, I am suggesting that all of those things are secondary. The primary job of any brand executive is to create an outstanding customer experience.
Once the customer experience is set, the other elements - aesthetic style, consistent messaging, value proposition, iPod-ness, Coke-ality, all of those wonderful ideas will take care of themselves. I promise.
Mark, I agree. The brand is what gets talked about later. The negative brand is equally important. Studies have shown that when someone has a bad experience that gets talked about more often than the good.
So your advice is spot on, the product manager needs to control the experience. The brand is not created with a one-time big-push marketing event, or several of them. It is created as a result of every single transaction with a customer.
Nicely stated... One thing though. I think the categorization of *secondary* is misleading. These should be more in concert with. But the primary focus should be on the customer and how we treat them when they are within are digital experiences.
Sorry for the breif reply.
Yes Mark, the CE is today's brands most important aspect. However... we must 1st define what it actually IS the CE. If we do, we'll see that it combines a whole bunch of issues, starting with the more rational stuff that users remenber, appreciate and do comment afterwards, such as a site's usability. Continuing with the more irrational, gutsy things that also impact CE, such as aesthetics, memory recalls, unconscious sensations and stimuli, etc. I'm totally for investing heavily in CE, but I'm also concerned about confusing the brand manager. Investing in CE should be perceived as a integral, highly complex issue. And last, I don't think user observation alone does this. CE is much more than just knowing what users want, I believe.
the customer experience is central to brand, sure. and you should include the prospect experience; that is, what the person who might never use the product or service for any number of reasons experiences. some examples: pampers tv ads seen by nursing home residents or college students, someone using an ipod witnessed by an 8-year old, the same kid seeing a jetblue plane on a runway, etc.
these prospects, distant influencers, or whatever you call them help build your trial rate, and even build the category, both of which are critical to your brand's success.
once you've succeeded in building your brand and have a huge share, the next challenge is building the category.
Jet Blue is such an interesting example, because the mission, vision and values of the company are so clearly defined and lived by the employees and everything they do.
I've been to their corporate offices over by LaGuardia airport. Completely unimpressive! And intentionally so. No investment in plush carpet, a dreary lobby, even the senior VP floor had borrowed furniture. Their explanation - Jet Blue only spends money where they know the customer will benefit from and appreciate that investment. So, no sexy corporate offices.
Of course, a great story in defense of customer experience. But also a great story for brand as the FIRST priority.
Now which came first - the Jet Blue experience, or the corporate vision, mission, and values. In this case, it was the latter. The brand drove the experience.
This reminds a small project to evaluate the customer experience on the website of a major online retailer. I was talking about different clothing brands with a mother who purchases primarily for her children. We were talking about brand. I got her to articulate how she differentiates this retailer from other brands, and she said (paraphrasing): "With [this brand], the knees wear well. You don't get holes in the knees like you do with other brands."
Too bad the this retailer's marketing team have trouble understanding this. They asked me to show the customer a webpage filled with pictures of stick-thin models in bikinis standing on the beach, where the links to product were even more obscured (this customer was having trouble browsing to begin with). They thought that those images would improve her "brand experience." Needless to say,
they did not.
Brands - who actually owns them? Businesses communicate their identity either through ads, PR, info-torials etc and by optimising the customers' experience..whatever. I am not convinced that by concentrating just on 'primary factor' such as customer service is the final answer - it has certainly a very postive influence, but it will only work when supported by strong ad campaigns, Mktg, clever PR work etc, to assist the customer (and potential customer) in communicating his/her message. Issues such as recall, recognition, image, identity all still play a key role in word of mouth (WOM) and for WOM to be successful this must be an integrated brand comm effort. What the business communicates is the 'wished for identity', the customer / potential customer owns his/her image of the brand but I believe it takes more than just good cust. exp. to help programme that image and get the desired effect from the customer.
I like your 'service' approach because I am a consumer however, I also appreciate a good logo because I am a visual person. I will go to Target before K-Mart or Wal-mart because I very much appreciate the simpleness of their logo and TV advertising.
I used to love the logo and saying 'Ride the light' until Quest took it over. I still appreciate the logo.
Maybe I am an anomoly but I like a well designed logo and a company has to do a lot to lose me after that. Let's face it, no company values service to customers anymore.
One article and 8 comments later, and not once has price been mentioned.
I submit to you branding entails little pieces of everything that has been mentioned thus far, but all these examples are lesser extents of the core reasoning behind a 'brand'.
When consumers choose a product for reasons other than price, that is branding in action. The 'experience' can be just one of many reasons a choice is made.
The brand consists of the recognizable aspects - the reputation of the product/service/company - and what the customer identifies or associates with it. User experience goes beyond click flow, leg room, the human encounter (of attitude and message). Was the price right certainly factors in - as does whether the logo is pleasing or easily navigable, or whether the product or service was of good quality.
Mark's "The brand is what you tell your friends about afterwards" allows for whatever any one customer identifies with about the product - enough to repeat to someone else.
Well, I agree with a lot of this article. However, I also think that brands also are built on perceived value (not just real value). Just consider Nike. Yes, they produce a great product. But their brand is also about achieving the unattainable. They are offer a feeling of accomplishment that customers want but for whatever reason, feel they can't get.
Many brands do the same thing. They focus on customer desires - and deliver a value or perceived value that addresses those desires. Think of all the sexy jean or cologne marketing strategies that suggest you'll be irresistible by using their product.
So, while I agree that customer experience can absolutely define the brand, I also believe that creating perceived value for a status, a feeling or desire previously considered unattainable can also define a brand.
The brand is what you trust. It is your trust in a brand that causes you to patronize it.
Your experience with a brand is one of the factors that might cause you to trust it. You might also decide to trust it because you heard some guy sitting behind you on a plane say he had a good experience with it.
I told my friend I had a good experience at GEL, but I'm not sure if she trusts me.
I do think there is a tendency for some companies to think of the brand in terms of all the activities that drive a customer to consideration/purchase, and then neglect to recognize that the experience of the product/service is a core component of the brand.
However to say "the brand is the customer experience" does give short-shrift to those brand components (e.g., advertising, packaging, executive leadership, PR, corporate citizenship, etc.) that help generate awareness and shape one's feelings or impressions about a brand *prior* to direct experience with it. Simply put, if I'm predisposed to feel a particular way about the brand, then there is a greater likelihood that I'll have a more positive--or negative--experience with a branded product or service. (And for some products--e.g., bottled water, colas, alcohol, etc.--what you are calling "secondary" brand elements may even be more important than the experience itself.)
Here's a link to a nice bit of research that demonstrates of how impressions created before the experience influence the experience:
http://www.ifama.org/nonmember/OpenIFAMR/Articles/v3i1/85-94.pdf
Gaynelle -
That's an accurate description of how advertising and other traditional marketing tools have worked for a long time, and still work today to some extent.
Increasingly, though, there's so much choice (think 175 choices of salad dressing), so much noise (thousands of ad impressions per *day*), that it's no longer feasible to rely just on the message you're forcing into the marketplace. Companies *have* to create something that's genuinely important enough - "remarkable", to use Seth Godin's word - that customers will tell each other about it.
I thought this was an excellent, thought provoking article on branding. One too many forget that the experience is what people ALWAYS remember. They may be lured in by the advertising but no matter how great the logo, tag lines, commercials are... it comes down to the experience which produces word of mouth results which is just so incredibly effective. (Everyone is trying SO HARD at viral marketing now)
I do give the other aspects kudos - the advertising and overall package does encourage, build and enforce the brand.
BTW - I too have heard numerous "Jet Blue is SO GREAT because..." conversations. Kudos to them for an awesome job at what some strive so hard to do!!
I sent this to a few of my closest marketing pals! Thanks for the great info (as usual.)
Agreed, and I love your perspective, but what about the Nike example?
Wouldn't a significant component of the purchase/ownership experience come from the image attributes of the brand, i.e. wearing this clothing makes me look, or feel, 'athletic'? These attributes are built in the mass media rather than through controllable elements of the product or retail experience.
Mark,
Not sure I agree. There are lots of different kinds of brands and it's not just about consumer experiences. B2B relies heavily on branding, especially in consulting.
Brand is the expectation of the prospective customer - regardless of how well founded that expectation is. Customer needs and customer satisfaction are multi-dimensional beasts, and brands help customers decide if they are in the target audience for the product.
Part of the marketing professional's job is to build an *appropriate* brand, so that the customer's experience is consistent with their expectations. Part of the PM's job is to ensure the products deliver against the defined need and brand.
$0.02
I truly believe that brand is about customer experience. I dont think that this necessarily diminishes the role of the marketing tools or visual tools in communicating the brand. These marketing tools - particularly when the strategic and creative are bridged effectively, create the aesthetics - the language of 'feeling' or experience. Not only do they set the expectation, they are absolutely a touch point with the company and so are very much part of the experience.
To encourage a customer relationship with your brand however, and encourage 'loyalty' (is there such a thing?!)or repeat purchase we must concentrate on creating a truly amazing customer experience and on keeping it consistently amazing - particularly in the service environment.
I think this article is great and addresses a very key point - that the brand has more to do with the customer than the company. However, I am wary of calling brand components such as visuals, narratives, advertising campaigns secondary to customer experience. These things are actually *part of* the early customer experience.
I would define brand as being the *customer's perception* of your company, which early on is shaped by commercials, web sites, ad campaigns, stories told by frinds and associates etc. That perception is later (hopefully) shaped by their customer experience, which is ultimately, as you said, more influencial than any conceptual incarnation of the brand a company can dream up.
However, I do think there is a difference between customer experience and customer perception, perception being what brand "is", and experience being a component of that perception.
On your branding philosophy - the brand is the customer experience - I couldn't agree more, however, many of things you cite, including aesthetics and messaging - are often key TO the experience. At least in software. The examples you refer to as secondary are actually CREATING the customer experience. For example, in software, the experience embodies interaction and visual design, it has been shown that without good visual design, for example, there is less trust in professionalism, and people WANT to be in a "nice environment." Stanford found out of 10 categories they could have chosen, aesthetics rated almost half of all the rest (46%) in reason for believing the worth of a product and wanting to work in the product. Good design makes people feel good, and adds to the "good experience." This was contrary to what anyone wanted to hear, which was all they really want is something that works, and looks don't matter.
Form follows function, and I do believe that visuals should support the functionality of a product in software. But visual impact should not be underestimated in terms of "good" user experience; visuals not only make a big difference in ease of interaction, they often compose most of the perceived good feelings of the customer.
My point is that customer experience is the sum total of the service, the feeling, the trust somebody feels. Working well is a must, but let's not forget that this is not all that impacts customer experience - a great working but ugly product will not win hearts and minds, and may not even fare better than a bad working, good looking, product.
Bottom line is, the human being perceives and experiences on many different levels. Good feelings are created by good customer experiences, not brands, i grant you - but let's not underestimate the plethora of conditions in which one has a "good experience."
Would recommend Dubberly's brand map, which is a helpful model for discussing and defining "brand": http://www.dubberly.com/brand.html