Tag Archives: Brand versus customer experience

Admiring a Brand for the Wrong Reason is the Biggest Branding Mistake

Apple Logo

Do you have Apple Envy?

Several years ago I was put in charge of informing how a giant telecommunications company should rebrand after a major acquisition. The client saw their past as an era of “utility monopolization” and all of the consumer negativity that comes with it. The post-merger future appeared to present an opportunity to start a new chapter, and be an iconic brand that people would love and respect, versus tolerate. The available resources put towards the new brand seemed limitless, so the potential for this big change seemed plausible.

What resulted was what I dubbed “Apple Envy”, and it inspired me to look at brands in a fresh way. Following Apple was a potential trap. Did the audience for telecommunications services want their provider to be like Apple or did emotions and “belonging” not drive their choice?  We did exhaustive research on what does drive choice in this space and concluded that consumers did not. In fact they hated the idea. They certainly didn’t want the current brand, but they did want one that helped them do more and be better connected to the world.

So can a brand be iconic and not be another Apple… not be a rockstar? This client’s brand was an American institution so it seemed destined to make an impact, but how and why?  The answer appeared to lie in how we as humans attach to brands, not how brands project themselves to us. Understanding Brand Attachment was going to provide the answer, and it did.

I won’t disclose the details behind the eventual solution for this client, but I will share what I believe to be an important aspect of how we all should approach Branding, based on how customers engage and attach with Brands.

To begin, we humans are not hardwired to create relationships with corporations; we are wired to relate to each other as fellow humans. We identify each other by name and we categorize each other based on perception and experience: friend versus foe, strong versus weak, supportive versus destructive, etc. We can see this categorization in action when we feel in need. Who do we turn to when we feel lonely, feel depressed, need leadership and wise counsel, or maybe need a ride to the airport? This categorization process is fundamental to our social abilities as humans.

Brands are the personification, or humanization, of corporations. We can’t help it. As humans we automatically evaluate corporations as human entities. We project our human bias onto whatever and whomever we have a relationship with. This can be seen in our behavior towards our pets. Who hasn’t felt like their dog is sad when we leave them alone? We project our human feelings and emotions onto a dog or cat irrationally and expect them to be like us emotionally. In reality the opposite is also at work. Our dogs and cats project their “dogness” and “catness” onto our behaviors. A recent scientific article just proposed that cats see their owners as giant, benevolent felines. We import each other into our respective realities. Likewise we project our human bias onto organizations, and Brand is the manifestation of that projection.

The mistake many Brands make is benchmarking against a homogenous, monolithic notion of a great brand. The reality is that there are myriad ways a brand can be great, or iconic, just as there are many ways a person can be great. We categorize people as great leaders, athletes, entertainers, hard workers, and on and on. We would not expect an Olympic champion to go through a makeover and become a world-class chef.

With brands the first level of categorization is utility. Not basic utility, but a higher order idea of what we need from them as human surrogates. This first division is Affinity or Enabling.

Affinity brands fill our need for identity; to define ourselves to others, project our values, and our basic need to belong. Affinity brands end up on tee shirts and tattoos. Apple is an affinity brand, as is Harley-Davidson, Nike, and Rolex. These brands are iconic in the way celebrities are iconic. These are the friends we want to be associated with. The cool kids who make us feel good that we know them.

Enabling brands fill our need to be more powerful and effective. They give us “Superpowers” to become like comic book heroes. Enabling brands give us extreme capabilities like the ability to get a package from New York to LA overnight, or get a pizza to magically show up in 30 minutes. We don’t wear enabling brands on tee-shirts, but they make us feel secure and empowered on the inside. They make us feel smart.  UPS, Delta, and Verizon are enabling Brands, and iconic. These are the experts we go to when we have a problem. These are our BFFs.

There isn’t a “preferred” place to be with this Affinity/Enabling classification. Both fullfill a need and both have icon potential. It is like male and female; they are different but equally human. I also believe that it is more of a scale than an absolute, but be careful not to try to be both. Take a stand. The point is that a brand should know how its desired audience desires to attach to it and the utility it provides. For existing brands, like my telecom client, it is not impossible, but unnecessary to change from what they were (Enabling) to what they aspired to be with Apple Envy (Affinity) and they fortunately saw the logic.

In today’s customer-centric, brand-experience focused world, an understanding of Brand Attachment is not an option. Resources are too scarce and there is less time to correct mistakes. So start by asking yourself if your brand would pass the tee-shirt test. Would your shirt make you feel like you were really cool or delivering a delicious pizza?

Bill Chidley is a Partner and Co-Founder at ChangeUp. Creating Innovating Experiences that Drive Growth. http://www.changeupinc.com

Brand Experience versus Customer Experience: Twins Separated at Birth?


Natural Happy Girls

 

Is there a difference between Brand Experience and Customer Experience? The answer makes me think of stories about identical twins separated at birth and reunited many years later. Amazingly many have the same hair styles, similar jobs, and they like the same flavors of ice cream even though they never met. Why? Because they share the same DNA, which is more powerful than circumstance or environment.

 

BX…CX… What’s in a name?  In business today there is a lot of energy put toward managing either Brand Experience or Customer Experience. Based on my involvement with both I want to set the record straight on the key differences. Like identical twins they share the same DNA therefore they look and act similarly. With twins their differences are influenced by the families that raised them and may result from having different cultures and customs. Likewise Brand and Customer Experiences have different upbringing but their common DNA makes them overwhelmingly similar.

Regardless of nomenclature, experience management and innovation is strategically important to growth. What drives the difference between BX and CX are three things:

1. The Brand building versus customer service bias of the organization

2. How the differentiating and value adding aspects of the experience are inspired

3. How success of the experience is measured and tracked.

The initial difference is cultural bias. If the organization has a Brand driven culture, the bias is toward a Brand Experience mindset. If the organization has a customer service driven culture, the bias is toward a Customer Experience mindset. “Brand” is a complex idea that many organizations embrace but is not often codified, so in the absence of a clear Brand idea and proposition, strong customer-centric values are a fine substitute. Here either bias has a noble purpose. My client experience bears out that a great experience design can result from Brand or customer service scenarios.

 

Design inspiration comes next. Both BX and CX development processes involve journey mapping and seek to define touch-points and create value-adding and differentiating experiences. Both must bridge the digital and physical seamlessly, address a variety of segments, and accommodate different need states and occasions. They also seek to address problem resolution as a key opportunity to shine. Their DNA is the same. The difference is in inspiration. Brand Experiences look to actively and passively embed Brand-building into the experience whereas Customer Experiences do not have the same primary motive.

Brand-centric organizations have defined Brand attributes and an activation strategy (which should be based on data and customer insights). The experience design is an opportunity to leverage the power of the Brand strategy and build positive equity on specific attributes as intentional additions to the customer experience. This Brand building may not pay dividends immediately, but it is a longer-term investment that synchronizes with Brand messages in advertising and other Brand communications to build equity and brand salience. Alternatively, in the absence of a defined and pervasive Brand, Customer Experiences are focused more on delighting customers in the here and now. They must have core-tenants that are linked to strong customer-centric values. These have the net effect of a Brand, but they are not directly inspired by a defined Brand idea. It’s like getting to your destination using a map or by familiar landmarks. The important thing is that you arrived.

 

Success criteria is the ultimate differentiator of BX versus CX.  Brand Experience adds Brand-derived attribute tracking to the measurement. It all ladders up to the need to correlate attribute performance to business performance and see the effect over time on Brand sentiment. Ultimately both Customer Experience and Brand Experience measurement have “macro” metrics that inform Brand sentiment… like net promoter scores, defection rates, etc., but Customer Experience measurement may not include (or they just “throw in”) Brand related measures.

 

So the wrap-up is this: if you are asked to manage or execute an experience innovation initiative, don’t get hung up on semantics because the core DNA is the same. All Brand Experiences are inherently Customer Experiences, and all Customer Experiences result in a Brand Experience by default. Both put the customer at the center with insights and empathy as they seek to create proprietary experiences that foster enduring relationships versus mere transactions. The important thing is to be consistent or else the confusion could bog your organization down.