jim.shamlin.com

13: Building Your Brand Halo

View the warning on the contents page regarding "facts" presented by this author.

Because the marketplace is crowded with brands, each competing to win customers away from the others, building and maintaining your brand is not an occasional concern, but require constant attention.

The author scoffs at the notion of "integrated marketing communications," a passing fad in which companies focused on the breadth of branding by coordinating their communications in various channels, but failed to consider the depth of brand experience in any given channel. The coordination led to a shallow experience of brand for many firms, reducing all channels to the lowest common denominator rather than using each to its full potential.

As the existing approaches to brand marketing are unsatisfactory, the author presents his own concept: the brand halo, which he means to discuss in this chapter.

The idea behind a Brand Halo

The author's conception of the "brand halo" derives from the halo effect of cognitive psychology, which maintains that people inherently depend on cognitive biases.

(EN: The halo effect has previously been mentioned in marketing literature in terms of extending a brand: a company that makes one good product can use the same brand to sell several others, and the customers will perceive the other products as better than they actually are. But I don't think the author means it in quite the same way here.)

That is, a person forms a general opinion based on a few traits - the classic example being that someone who is physically attractive is assumed to be a "good" person in general (having intelligence, personality, morals, etc.) and someone who is physically unattractive is assumed to be a "bad" person in general (stupid, brutish, deceitful, etc.)

Moreover, the first-glance assessment we make tends to bias our perception in general: once we have formed an initial opinion, we tend to recognize evidence that supports our initial reaction and ignore evidence that contradicts it.

Naturally, a person of reasonable knowledge and experiences knows that you can't judge a book by its cover - and stereotype a person based on superficial characteristics, especially regarding gender, age, and race, is considered to be entirely wrong. However, it is evident that in practice, this is what people actually do.

And as we do this of people we encounter in general, we carry this tendency to bias into business and commercial interactions.

Whether it is a salesman or a job candidate, we come to a quick conclusion based on the appearance, dress, and mannerisms of a person that lead us to seek evidence that supports our initial reaction to them.

The author asserts that the same is true of brands: if the customer initially observes just one or two positive characteristics pf a brand, he clings to a positive opinion of the brand in general, ignoring evidence to the contrary.

You may agree or disagree, and think that people would be better off if they kept and open mind and reserved judgment until they had more exposure to the facts. But they do not do so, and it makes no sense for marketers to behave as if they do.

Everything Does Not Matter

We can create a positive impression of a brand by focusing on the factors that a customer immediately notices about it, and that same customer will seem to ignore or be forgiving of factors that are not quite up to par.

Companies, like people, are not good at every single thing they do, and even legendary companies get a lot of things wrong. Consider the example of Babe Ruth, a legendary player in spite of the fact that he struck out twice for every hit (of any kind) he ever made.

This is the reason that may people hold in high opinion brands that have faded: their memory of the initial experience, which may have been years and decades ago, carries them forward even when the companies have lost their edge. And even at their pinnacle, these companies often did more things poorly than well - but they did well enough at a few things that they build a brand halo that outshines their foibles.

A completely perfect customer-oriented business has never existed and never will, and any attempt to be perfect in every way will lead to failure and frustration: but if you can identify a small handful of things that are important to the customer, you can build a very powerful brand.

There's a bit of a sneer at consultants who a specialize in niche topics, and who will point to its failings of a business and promise to help them improve, for a nominal fee. But very often, the ways in which these individuals "help" a business does not matter at all. Even if the business is genuinely negligent and defective in certain regards, it can still be a legend if it gets a few critical items right.

Customer-contact points

In a general sense, there are three categories of customer contact: promotion, conversion, and retention. Within those categories, there will be multiple specific events where contact is made with a given customer.

Most business have merely a general knowledge of what those contacts are. An better approach is to plot out a customer contact "map" that lists all the ways in which a customer may come into contact with a brand. It seems rather complicated, but is generally straightforward: begin with the three categories, then brainstorm each contact that may occur in each of them.

For each contact point, answer some key questions:

(EN: All of this seems business-focused, and there is failure to consider the customer's perspective on contact - not only what you want to get from them, but what they want of you. AS well, only intentional contact seems to be considered, as opposed to the incidental contact.)

The author goes into an extended hypothetical example, tedious in its level of deal, but what it seems to communicative is that the firm should place its greatest effort into the customer contacts that have the greatest impact, whatever the cost, and consider the remainder in terms of cost versus effectiveness.

However, in doing so, he suggests that the firm should abandon rather than seek to improve upon practices that don't seem to be effective - for example, the company's Web site doesn't get much attention or generate many responses, so it's regarded as unimportant. (EN: The problem being that if it were promoted better and some of the more egregious flaws addressed, it might be an effective channel, so the firm may be placing its efforts on doing what it already does well, rather than improving what it is doing poorly.)

There's also a stray recommendation to engage employees in the process, particularly those who work on the front lines of customer service, who bring first-hand practical knowledge to keep you grounded, and whose responsibility it will be to manage the contacts according to the plan.

Brand Reflections

The author does not define the concept of a "brand reflection," but suggests it is a collection of various components:

Here, the emphasis is to consider how the customer will react to the contact, in terms of what emotions will be elicited and how the experience will push the brand into long-term memory.

Then, there is an extended example of a salesman making a presentation to a client, which takes bits of advice that have been presented in previous chapters and weaves them into the narrative - the point being that you can plan in advance and make specific items part of a checklist for such an occasion to create a controlled impression rather than letting things happen at random and hoping for the best.

The author expects readers will balk at some of the odd advice he has provided: handing out mints to an audience at a presentation seems like a frivolous and needless expense that is not likely to land a deal. This is a widespread notion, the reason that many firms seem careless and sloppy, and an excellent opportunity to distinguish yourself from the others who don't do the same.

Also, while each little detail seems frivolous, consider their impact: a packet of mints and a pen with the company logo is provided to each attendee, the presenter's briefcase and laptop computer bear the company logo, who plays background music while attendees gather, and who does a handful of other small things makes a much stronger positive impression than the "typical" presenter who is inattentive to these unimportant details.

Your Brand Halo

Referring back to the "brand halo," your attention to detail in the brand contacts is what helps to create it: you do a number of things, many of which will not be remembered or even noticed, in hopes that the few that are noticed create a positive impression and work together to create a strong and sensation-rich experience that finds its place in the long-term memory of the customer.

There is reference to a "brand halo handbook" and a promise to consider it in more detail later, but as a general description, it is a manual for presenting your brand. It covers the loose bits of sensory data and general concepts as well as specific guidance for handling certain customer points of contact - all with the goal of providing a positive and consistent experience.

The firm that does such a thing, that pays attention to details that others ignore, distinguishes its brand from others - whose efforts to make a positive impression on customers are often general and random, and as a consequences less effective.

Determining current impression

Unless you are introducing an entirely new brand, which occurs very infrequently, your existing customers already have a perception of your brand that is built of all their previous experiences they have had with your firm (EN: this is also true of prospects, whose impression comes second-hand from others). You have to account for the existing perception as you move forward to ensure that what you do builds upon positive perceptions and improves upon negative ones.

Of key importance: do not change what is already working well. If a customer who is happy with your firm knows and likes certain things, changing them at all will create discomfort, even if you mean to make a change for the better.

This information can only be obtained from market research, which is again the province of large firms with significant budgets. But even small firms can conduct such research - handing out surveys to customers that can be completed in-store. (EN: Another simple method for a small business is to talk to the customers face-to-face - especially where a business recognizes a person who is a regular customer, it's entirely acceptable to have a brief, but frank, conversation.)

By far, the worst problem with market research is that it simply is not used. The data is collected, analyzed, and then filed away. Not only does the business fail to a capitalize on the valuable information, but it's something of an affront to the customers who have provided it. Says the author "I can't recall the last time a product or service was modified or improved because of something I wrote on a card."

(EN: a point of fast is that many firms conduct market research not to discover what to do, but to confirm that what they already plan to do is "right." That is, they already have a plan, but expect that it will be opposed, and are gathering proof that it's a good idea. If the research indicates otherwise, it is buried and they push forward anyway. Very seldom is research brought into the planning process before a decision is made. In this sense. The "halo effect" biases the judgment of the business in the same way it biases that of the customer.)

Modalities: a preferred sense of contact

The author refers to an older version of Neil Fleming's model of learning, which indicates that people have three distinct preferences for receiving information:

He refers to "evidence" in educational research that indicates that students generally retail information better when the instructional presentation matches their preferred modality.

(EN: This is a skewed and outdated take on Neil Fleming's work, which researched methods that are effective in learning, which is significantly different to preference or influential to decision-making, and has since evolved from VAK to VARK, the "R" indicating "reading" as it is significantly different from visual and auditory.)

The author cautions about oversimplification: a person who has a tendency toward one does not ignore the others. They may switch modalities for different decisions, buying furniture on like and clothing on feel, and while they prefer one modality in a situation, the others factor in to a lesser degree but are not dismissed entirely.

Also, there is great difference among individuals for modality, and the author suggests that you must put emphasis on the majority. But "majority" isn't a head-count, but should consider the value of the customer - per the Pareto principle, 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your customers, so suiting the preferences of your most productive customers is ultimately better than attempting to appease the numerical majority of customers.

(EN: Another stray note is that firms that focus on non-customers in order to convert them into customers often find that they lose more than they gain. This goes back to the earlier notion of taking "existing" customers for granted and ignoring their needs while placing a majority of effort on winning new ones.)

Sample Survey/Gender Differences

(EN: The author provides two more sections in this chapter that I have chosen not to include in my reading notes. The first is a sample survey and cover letter, which is covered in such brevity as to be entirely superficial. The second are some random remarks on the buying behavior of women versus men, which is completely random disjointed to the topic at hand. It's just filler material, and more authoritative and detailed sources are available.)

JIM.SHAMLIN.COM
DISCLAIMERS · CONTACT