You never know?

The things they say ...The things the've said in the past:

1) "The average American family hasn't time for television."The New York Times, 1939

2) "It's a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?"President Rutherford B. Hayes after a demonstration of Bell's telephone

3) "The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most."IBM to the founders of Xerox, 1959

4) "There will never be a mass market for motor cars - about 1,000 in Europe - because that is the limit on the number of chauffeurs available!"Spokesman for Daimler Benz

5) "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."Ken Olson, President, Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977.

The things tehy're saying now:

6) "I think if I was Procter & Gamble, I'd be buying billboard space. A lot of it."Professor Nicholas Negroponte, Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994

7) "Supermarkets have replaced TV as the delivery channel for a mass audience. If I want to get my message across to 70% of British households it is obviously going to be more cost-effective to run display ends in major retailers than to purchase overpriced breaks in a soap."Andrew Harrison, Marketing Director, Nestle Rowntree, UK, September 2002

8) "It [the Internet] is, beyond question, the fastest growth curve of a fundamental change in society. And almost everybody will have to get used to it."Bill Gates, April 2000

9) "The web is a very socialistic, almost communistic force. It attacks traditional ways of doing things and elites, and this is very uncomfortable for traditional businesses to deal with."Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP, UK, April 2000

Empathy for the Brand

Just the other day in class as I was lecturing this word struck me as being very profound despite the fact that we hear it so often. That word was Empathy. There is a saying: Never criticise a man till you have have walked a thousand miles in his shoes." I think this one word sums up what Brand Experience is all about. It is about really understanding what your target audience wants, needs, desires and doing something about it. Very profound indeed ... Empathy.

I will be speaking at the Special Events Congress 2007

I will be speaking at the 2007 Special Events Congress on the area of Brand Experiences in Asia. With over 6000 people attending the congress, this makes it one of the largest conventions ever. Watch this space for more information and Congress highlights.

The 5th P of Marketing - People - Create Brand Ambassadors of your people

The name of the game for any brand manager today is romancing the customer with a view to establishing a long-term relationship. Relationship, not product, is key. Relationships bind, have duration, foster loyalty, create repeat sales. The sum total of millions of relationships is a priceless asset that never appears on the brand balance sheet, but given the tremendous cost of customer acquisition, it is a foundation of profitability. One-night stands are expensive; companies need to marry customers, preferably for life.

Marketing 101 reduces the main determinants of customer loyalty to the familiar Four Ps: Product, Place, Promotion and Price. These are all critical factors, but marketing orthodoxy is myopic, for reasons that are often lodged right in the structure and culture of corporations. The result is that a fifth P is typically left out of the reckoning: People. Specifically, I mean the people who actually deal with the customer during any part of the transaction. The delivery of the brand promise often happens by human agency at the point of sale and proceeds through service, complaint and resale. Yet marketers, who have the bottom-line responsibility for brand health, rarely focus on the Fifth P.

Why this neglect? In part it's because this Fifth P manifests itself far from marketing headquarters, and a corporation's customer-facing employees are not often the responsibility of brand managers but are instead relegated to what is usually called human resources.

Adding a fifth P may sound easy, but organizational rigidity stands in the way. The CEO must demand that top-level marketing and human resource teams share insights and develop a permanent program that accounts for the employee in the brand equation.

If you need help aligning people to your Brand, contact Jerome@thebrandtheatre.net for help with your internal branding process.

Beyond Customer Satisfaction

In his groundbreaking research, management consultant and author, Fredrick Reichheld, discovered just how customers react to their
suppliers today. Reichheld’s research is summarized in the book Beyond Customer Satisfaction to Customer Loyalty and points out the following dramatic economic impact, both negative and positive, that customers have on the financial success of the firm:
• 15 to 40 percent of customers who say they are “satisfied” defect from a company each year

• It costs five to seven times more to find newcustomers than to retain current customers.
• 98 percent of dissatisfied customers never complain – they just switch to other competitors.
On the up side:
• “Totally satisfied” customers are six times more likely to repurchase a company’s products over a span of one to two years
than merely satisfied customers.
• A 5 percent reduction in customer defection can result in profit increases from 30 to 85 percent.
• If companies increase their customer retention by 2 percent, it is the equivalent of cutting their operating expenses by 10
percent (Bhote, 1996).
Based on Reichheld’s research across a variety of industries, businesses should be pinpointing that which satisfies its customers – on an
individual basis. But this level of satisfaction is difficult given the individual values and needs of each person with whom a company has an
interaction. I believe, however, that there are a few key areas that a business can focus on in order to more effectively manage its
customer relationships for the overall success of the business – and for the total satisfaction of the customer.

When a customer buys a good or service,many factors certainly influence that purchasing decision. The bottom line is, however, a
customer buys a product or service when his or her expectations have been met, or exceeded, in terms of the offering and the personalized attention of a firm’s employees.

Businesses that do not meet customer expectations on a consistent basis do not survive in the long run, especially in this day and age of competition and advertising clutter.

Create a Branded Differentiation for your Customer Experience to create a memorable and differentiated brand that will turn customers into advocates.

For more information on my Branded Customer Experience Programs please have a look at www.brandone.us or contact me at jerome@brandone.us

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

I did an interesting debate in my lecture the other day. I asked which is the most powerful Communication function. This are the results. Out of the 30 students. 10 voted Advertising, 10 voted PR, 5 voted Events, 3 voted Direct Marketing, 2 voted Sales Promotion while 1 was undecided. This is my take. All these tools are powerful. A marketer has to adopt a Strategic outlook ... which tool will best serve his needs to achieve maximum ROI.

My class however persisted. Pick one, pick one. So I told them. If it had to be 1. I would pick Internet Marketing as the most powerful communication tool right now. More thoughts on this later ...

Cheers

Jerome