Brand Happens: How to Create the Modern Brand Experience
LET'S START WITH THAT "CONVERSATION WITH OUR CUSTOMERS" MYTH
Let’s have a conversation with our customers.
We hear it all the time.
Brand managers hire in social media and creative agencies to “create a conversation”.
They are led to believe that this conversation is the key to social media and, ultimately, brand success.
But, what these brand managers fail to understand is that these conversations are happening right now.
HOW BRAND CONVERSATIONS ARE HAPPENING RIGHT NOW:
* The way your cabin crew greets your customers when they board the plane.
* The enthusiasm your field sales staff carry to the community event.
* The conversation between your product manager and the enthusiast about her latest project at the convention.
A thousand conversations are happening right now.
And your brand becomes the aggregate of each of these conversations, transmitted by Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube and Twitter from the customer to a 100 other people.
When an employee pisses a customer off, you’ve just created a Brand Experience. Forget your brand makeover, new logo or employee training manual.
When you become genuinely interested in what an enthusiast built with your product at the Fan convention, you just created a conversation. You transmit those ideas back to 100 people within the company. The enthusiast transmits that feeling to 100 people who also stop by her stand and ask questions.
Dialogue is out there, whether you like it or not.
There are so many touch points today in creating Brand Experience that it’s impossible to manage under the Traditional Model.
WE HAVE TO LET GO OF THE CONVERSATION
We have to let go.
We have to let go in 3 ways:
1) CHOOSE NEW METRICS CONDUCIVE TO POSITIVE BRAND EXPERIENCE
* We have to use metrics that encourage our conversations to last. We want people to stay and talk. We want people to see these Fans and customers as potential relationships not obstacles to next month’s KPI.
2) CREATE A CULTURE CONDUCIVE TO POSITIVE BRAND EXPERIENCE
* We have to create cultures that encourage our people to interact and cultures that encourage Fans to interact with one another. We need to lead by example and show that each and every one of us needs to get out there and create a positive Brand Experience.
3) HIRE PEOPLE WHO NATURALLY CREATE POSITIVE BRAND EXPERIENCE
* And we need people who get it. We need people who love interacting. We need to recruit people who share the same passions as the Fans and empathize with their needs rather than people who want to manage and control markets.
Brand Management is dead.
Brand Happens.
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