by Scott JeffreyJan 18, 2011
Your best customers love your brand the most. We call these coveted customers Brand Lovers.
Not surprisingly, your Brand Lovers enjoy hanging out with one another, as do most like-minded individuals united by a common passion.
These social groups are called brand communities. When a brand community develops, you can be sure the brand is doing an excellent job serving its best customers.
Businesses with brand communities have a competitive advantage and enjoy an unprecedented level of word of mouth around their products and services.
Companies like Life is Good, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Zappos, Turner Classic Movies, LL Bean, Amazon.com, Harley-Davidson, Apple, and Oprah’s Harpo all profit from the power of brand communities.
But why do customers join brand communities and how can you support their growth?
Here’s an informative slideshow from the creative minds of Cult Branding:
If you enjoyed this slideshow, check out Why We Join: A Sociological and Psychological Analysis of Brand Communities.
by BJ BuenoOct 27, 2010
In 1982, a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles, such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them.
It doesn’t matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein’s long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light.
But to understand this strange assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms.
A hologram is a three dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first covered in the light of the laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounce off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (Where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film.
When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as this film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears!
Ready for the strange part?
The fact that it is now a 3D object is cool but let’s say you decided to take a hologram of a rose and cut it in half, and then illuminate the halves by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose. If the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.
The “whole in every part” nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding brands.
A brand is all the information and ideas associated with your product/service that creates a distinct customer experience. The information or ideas can be:
- Real or perceived
- Rational or emotional
- Physical or sensory
- Thought or felt
- Form and function
- Planned or unplanned
Everything is the brand because all the parts represent the whole. Or in holographic terms, the “whole in every part.”
What does this tell us? If you break any part of your business off and looked at it individually it should represent what you want your brand to stand for in the heart of your customer. If you look at any of your sales reps, they should be what you want in the heart of your advertiser. From the front door of your business to your business cards, each part represents your entire brand.
Is this a lot to consider? You bet.
But is it worth it? There is no question.
Each touch point of your brand tells the whole story. Each touch point should push the brand forward. If a touch point is not pushing the brand forward it’s pulling it down. The reason why a holographic film continues to project the entire picture is because each peace contains the very essence of the whole. Each part of your brand has to do the same.
by BJ BuenoJul 01, 2010
“Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.” – David Ogilvy
Listening to great consumer insight is key to creating a powerful brand.
I am amazed by how many smart advertising and marketing professionals ignore good research. I have found many treasures of insight from “old” and “useless research.”
The key is to dig and connect the dots back to your best customers. It is always important to take these important perspectives before you makes choices for your enterprise. Where will the consumer go next? What should you expect? Simple consumer insights can give you more clarity and direction than ever before. Are you listening to your best customers?
A concise Brand Model synthesizes a diverse range of psychological consumer research into a comprehensive model. Your Brand Model becomes your filter for future market research and a powerful lens to help you make marketing decisions.
by BJ BuenoApr 19, 2010
As humans, we are highly visual creatures. The visual cortex of our brain has over thirty areas dedicated to helping us see and make sense of the world. When we see things, we don’t just see shapes, but we also emotionally experience what we are perceiving.
The connection between emotions and the brain has been clearly demonstrated by modern neuroscience. Brain scans reveal the hidden connections between what we see and how we feel about what we see. Without feelings, objects in our visual field hold no significance and fall into the background of our perception. If an image doesn’t trigger the emotional center of the brain, it’s without meaning. We feel disconnected to what we see, even when it’s people as important as our parents or children. Biologically, all memory is tied to an emotion.
Emotions = Energy
Every image, including your Brand Image, must pass through the thalamus–the relay station in the brain that takes in sensory information and then passes it along to the cerebral cortex. Simply put, the thalamus tells customers how they feel about your brand.
Your Brand Image carries energy, and provides information to the consumer about the brand experience. For example, the
Apple logo is one of the most widely recognized images in the world, associated with creativity and innovation. Empirical studies have shown that subjects exposed to the Apple logo exhibit greater creativity than control subjects. Like
Apple, your Brand Image stands for the sum of the brand promise.
The Brand Image has the power to connect your Brand with the emotional centers in the brain. We are wired to see. And when we see, we believe.
How much POWER does your BRAND IMAGE have today?
by Aaron ShieldsMar 28, 2010
Never in my retail experience have I seen a “consumer” enter a store. I’ve seen lots of “customers,” for that’s what they call themselves…The development of the whole consumer movement came as a result of the failure of retailers and manufacturers to give adequate attention to the physical and psychological needs of the customer.
- Stanley Marcus
Rather than focus on what a customer really wants, marketers have focused on what the average, hypothetical, composite customer — “the consumer” — should want. But the consumer isn’t a person, it’s a statistic on piece of paper; it’s a poor simulacrum of a real person.
Treating customers as the statistical consumer results in initiatives that some people may like, but nobody ever loves.
Instead of focusing on averages, look to what your real customers, preferably the best ones, love about you and forget how they fit into boxes on a piece of paper.
by Aaron ShieldsFeb 25, 2010
Motivating customers to talk about your brand isn’t about providing incentives. Incentives only drive short-term talk, and talk fades away after the incentives disappear.
Driving long-term, positive talk requires innovating around what customers love about your brand and exceeding their expectations.
Exceeding expectations and taking into account customer needs is why the original Apple iPhone dominated post-release buzz when compared the the release of the recent Palm Pre.
Apple knows that a central component to what its customers love about the Apple brand is an easy user experience. Despite levels of hype leading to the iPhone being dubbed the Jesus phone, the iPhone exceeded everyone’s expectations on its ease of use, leading to a plethora of blog posts proclaiming its virtues and even YouTube videos of toddlers working the intuitive user interface.
In contrast, the Palm Pre was positioned so that at best its interface could match the ease of the iPhone, but not exceed it by noticeable degrees. Even if the Pre matched the iPhone, meeting expectations is not enough to generate a viral spread of positive word of mouth.
Palm would have been wise to head the advice that helped Ed Colligan, Donna Dubinsky, and Jeff Hawkins to turn Palm into the giant it once was: Underpromise and overdeliver.
For more on generating positive word of mouth, check out my deck The New World of Word of Mouth over at SlideShare.
