Your brand intelligence PART I
Posted on February 13, 2010
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While we evaluate and purchase products, “We are now the products of $500 billion of advertising each year. (…) By the time we reach the age to go to college we will have taken in 1,000s of hours of media (…) We can identify 100s of corporate brands yet fewer that 10 animals and plants native to our own area.” We are well-informed on the brands we create and ignorant of the resources they require to exist.
What interest does this have to you and me? You and I co-create the importance of brands by responding to them. In the process of consuming products and services, we lose the awareness of what consumption engenders on a grander scale because our focus is on price rather than overall cost.
Incentive and reward is proven to narrow our focus at the expense of dulling our ability to understand peripheral factors. We have created a new brand designed to represent a new approach to sustaining our habits and comforts. We named it “Green”. This umbrella brand is designed to motivate a new conscientiousness calling for a degree of frugality and discipline that counters the momentum of consumption required to maintain our economic system. Can you conciliate these two needs in your behaviors as a consumer?
No human contact please… PART II
Posted on January 29, 2010
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The industry recognition and consumer adoration Apple enjoys today was not always so. The recent success of the iPhone now has the multitude appreciating what long-time users have felt long before the mass adoption: a real fondness for the product and most importantly feeling well taken care of when things don’t work. A feeling of security, one could go so far to say.
Google built its brand on utility and ubiquity. The opposite of Apple, its products appear to deliberately look as if no time at all was invested towards esthetics. That works for a search engine. For all the many applications Google now offers, I have found the lack of design quality to be detrimental to usability. More troubling is not having any avenue of speaking to a real person. Google is practically the antithesis of Apple in this regard.
As these two heavyweights enter a dual of epic proportion in the wireless phone arena, iPhone and its app store vs. Nexus One and its Android OS offered to other phone-makers, it’ll be interesting to see the two throw jabs, hooks, and combinations to gain market share with such different relationships with their customers. Google stands to evolve the most. Apple stands to re-enforce its foothold if Google falters with its Android and Nexus One customer service.
No human contact please… PART I
Posted on January 24, 2010
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Like any relationship that evolves, there’s the reality of what we experience that dissipates the fantasy we started out projecting. As it pertains to the most influential brands we interact with, the real experience is how we’re treated as a customer in a moment of need. There’s nothing more comforting than knowing there’s a way to get in touch with a real person who will walk us through solving the problem with minimal effort.
I have an extraordinary low tolerance for anything that doesn’t work that I paid for or that I’m getting billed for. This low tolerance developed over the years from the growing efforts it takes to solve an issue through a knowledgebase, user forums or ever- growing help sections online. I want concierge service, a real person. I want to rant, then be pacified and have them solve my problem quickly.
Many brands, particularly online ones, that reach out as “friends” to their customers go through remarkable lengths however to distance themselves from having to undergo human-to-human contact. Apple hit the ball out of the park with it’s Genius Bar where users can bring their computers, iPhone or iPods to a real person who actually uses the product. Aside from Apple’s esthetic sense and leading innovation, the caring human-to-human relationship established with its customers is where the brand outshines its competitors.
Facebook’s brand: from personal to corporate
Posted on January 10, 2010
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I have no emotional attachment to Verizon, my wireless carrier. None whatsoever. They charge more than their competitors, which I had to disregard given that I only get coverage from them where I live… and they don’t (yet) officially offer the iPhone. So when I stumble upon the Verizon Fan Page on Facebook and see over three-quarter million devotees, I am amazed. I had no idea a person could feel close to a phone company, let alone so many. Clearly there’s been a party going on and I un-invited myself.
Aside from charging a premium for coverage, Verizon must be doing something right to extend its brand so successfully into Facebook. For starters they offer a large selection of quality video content that cause “fans” to comment in addition to a very well built “Cool Stuff” area that has excellent functionality. I’m still not moved, but I do recognize the excellence of the marketing of their brand. The marriage of corporate brands with Facebook is fascinating because what started out focused on online relationship between people is evolving into people developing a relationship along the same model with products and services.
This is more than brands penetrating our social circles. This is us consumers changing how we relate to brands. We want to be friends.
The Twitter brand… Now… No, now!
Posted on January 7, 2010
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The Twitter brand gains equity as it continues to shape our habits. I’m not an early adopter. I begrudgingly join an emerging trend after my scrutiny is satisfied for having, yet again, to change what was working just fine for me. I’ve asked myself “Do I care about knowing what someone else is doing all throughout the day _let alone multiple people? How is reading what a celebrity is doing now relevant? How does someone process the information on the activities of up to thousands of people they don’t even know?” Interestingly, because I like the work of Evolution Bureau, I was motivated to follow what they are up to. Hearing what’s going on there almost makes one feel part of their environment.
As Twitter buttons are fast becoming ubiquitous at the punctuation of content, who for long cannot know about it and eventually understand it’s purpose. I was surprised to see it on the site of the California Healthcare Foundation. They Tweet?! My perception of the Twitter brand changed right there. I may not adopt quickly, but I change opinions fast. I went from thinking Twitter represented frivolous self-indulgent narcissistic postings to seeing it as a specific communication channel for informing what is happening “now”, as Twitter claimed in the first place. Conclusion: online brands and users mutually shape each other.
Don’t forget to Tweet this post so that all your followers can know you just finished reading this… now!