The key question is not whether or not customers can recall the brand, but rather where and when do they think of the brand, and how easily and often do they think of it?
(Building Customer-based Brand Equity: Kevin Lane Keller, Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and K. K. Davey, Knowledge Networks WARC, 2001)
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| Rupin Jayal |
Imagine installing a massive, multi-crore telephone network, but neglecting to provide any telephone connections. Absurd isn’t it? Yet, this is precisely the mistake many brands make when trying to reach out to people. They spend millions of rupees on high visibility and high cost advertising but pay much less attention to the place where people actually make the decision to pick up the brand or not—at the point of sale.
There are some companies that have paid attention and have reaped the benefits. Frito Lay, by taking their range of salty snacks out of the dark interiors and crowded shelves of grocery stores and on to racks placed at the entrance of the stores brought the brand closer to the shopper’s field of view and in time, to their hearts as well. That one single innovation gave their range of salty snacks a step jump up in terms of sales and consumer preference. What they recognised was that apart from high voltage advertising, how you reach out and touch people when they are actually about to buy, can make a very significant difference between growth and stasis.
People view mass media advertising but most often do not participate in it—they are mere spectators. They do not choose the ads they see or read and they very often simply skip over them. However, when they visit the shop, the telecom company outlet or the bank branch, their involvement levels are far higher. This is precisely the point when many brands simply seem to say “Okay, we’ve got you so far. Now we’ll leave you to it.” The last mile connection is lost. But a chorus of protests could break out with marketing professionals pointing out the ubiquitous consumer promotions that most brands indulge in from time to time. What are these promotions actually saying to people? That “things are a bit sluggish” so the brand would like to give you an inducement to buy it. Or that it may not be as good as its competitor so here is an inducement to choose it. Or that this might not be the season when you would consider the brand or the category so here is some enticement to purchase it now rather than later. Promotions are part of the marketers’ armoury and a necessary one at that. However, very few have the power to actually strengthen a brand’s connect with its audience.
So that brings us back to the core issue of finding ways to bring the brand to life at the point where people seek to purchase it. An off-road automobile brand, for example, brought the wild outdoors into dealerships by recreating a camp, complete with tents, etc. In the personal care industry, the presence of promoters significantly increases the sales of the brand versus stores in which promoters are not present. The best promoters do not actually hard-sell their brand but instead start a conversation with the customer to ascertain their needs and advise them accordingly. The customer does not feel under pressure to buy but rather feels that the promoter, and by extension the brand, is there to help her. This can be further strengthened by giving training to the promoters about the brand and the core values it stands for, so that they go beyond just selling products and evolve to winning customers over to the brand. For this, the brand does need to have a strongly differentiating core value that can be simply articulated. But should that be the case, the promoter could be a very powerful person to communicate it and if done effectively enough, encourage word of mouth to spread the message.
Many times the people present at the point of sale become the brand’s biggest handicap rather than its greatest asset. There are so many luxury brands where sales people are completely unaware of the magic that needs to be created around the brand to make it worth paying so much more for, car salesmen who are unaware of and not terribly interested in the cars they are selling, disinterested telecom service staff who just want to close the deal and move on to the next customer, rather than spending time to understand what the customer needs and advising them accordingly. With the flood of FMCG imported products, people are faced with an array of bewildering choices clustered together on grocery store shelves. Other than being stocked at the retail outlet what do these brands stand for? Other than colourful labels and occasionally interesting packaging, what can people expect from these brands and why should they recall them or return to re-purchase them the next time they go shopping?
Apple does not just have sales people in its stores. They actually have brand advocates, people who deeply believe in the brand, are proud of it and take the trouble to find out as much as they can about the brand so that customers feel that they are in the hands of expert enthusiasts rather than paid sales people. Of course, for this you need to have strongly differentiated brand values. But to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment is there really any other way? And there are some categories that can easily lend themselves to the point of sales enthusiasm in the Apple mould. Automobile brands are one clear example. The test drive can become an experience rather than just a routine. There is a Mitsubishi dealer for example who actually expects you to treat the drive test as a test for your own off-road skills (being an ex-rally driver helps!). There was a salesperson at a mobile handset shop who spent the best part of an hour ensuring that the screen protector film fitted a digital camera’s screen perfectly. Yes, that is right, fitting a screen protector to a product that wasn’t bought from the store in which he worked and wasn’t even a product that the store dealt with. But what he did ensure was that the next time a mobile phone was being considered, his store would be the first stop.
We all have anecdotal examples of individuals who go that extra mile to help out, to advise and to create invaluable goodwill for the brand. But can you recall any brand that does this as a matter of course? A brand that, wherever you go, will give you the same unique and positive experience? Some fast-food brands have ritualised elements of service and thus uniformly created a unique experience but these are few and far between. What happens most often is a uniformity of indifference. Service sector brands have the greatest challenge of creating a brand out of intangibles. But they also have the greatest opportunity of truly bringing the brand to life. Every interaction with people creates a brand moment of truth which if handled well comes to represent the brand for those who come in contact with it. If there is a clearly articulated brand credo that has a direct impact on the brand’s customer, this can be codified into a training program and the staff dealing directly with customers can be taken through it. By understanding the credo and the raison d’être for its conviction, rather than mere process knowledge, could be inculcated. This would have two significant benefits. Firstly, it would bring the brand to life for customers when interacting with these brand advocates. Secondly, these advocates would be able to show how the brand is uniquely “right” for the customer and thus enrich its competitive advantage in the mind of the customer.
It is said that this is easier for service and durable brands because the opportunity in each case to engage the customer is so much greater both in terms of time and level of customer interest. However, people of a certain generation would remember the time when Binaca used to have little plastic animals in each pack of toothpaste. People still remember this with a smile and it was such a long time ago. Shell used to print road maps and these were coveted by road travellers thus making the brand more meaningful to people. Recipes are fairly ubiquitous with various brands of foods but how many seek to capitalise on the housewife’s desire to experiment by providing unusual ideas for the product concerned? In fact how many true “food” brands are there, as opposed to individual product-driven brands? When the housewife walks into a retail store what does she see, apart from a plethora of products with names on them? At the point of sale does any branded food product try to reach out to her and bring her into its world? In fact how many food brands have even articulated an overarching brand core or credo? With competition getting more and more intense will her decisions increasingly be driven by the lowest priced product? Are food brands missing out on an opportunity to create a larger and more powerful connect with their customers at just the point when these customers are making up their minds on which brand to choose?
Be it an FMCG, durable or service brand, how much effort goes into communicating the brand effectively at the moment of truth, at the point of purchase? This a crucial “last mile” of connect with the brand’s customers. Some brands have made the connection. These brands are getting visibly stronger and building customer conviction and not just behavioral loyalty. For a brand to finish first in the race to a person’s heart it is critical for it to lunge ahead of its competition at this, the final and crucial decision point.
The author is Director-Strategic Planning at M&C Saatchi.
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written by Gucci outlet, July 03, 2010
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