Operationalizing the Brand - Aligning Promise with Reality
Operationalizing the Brand - Aligning Promise with Reality
Down the hall is my colleague, Steve Salesman. He likes the razzle-dazzle too; after all, it helps him land business. However, Steve is a bit more reticent about some of the bolder promises the company makes. When some of the marketing promise turns out to be…a bit of a stretch, life can get uncomfortable for Steve.
Luckily, Steve’s an old pro. He knows the perfect way to disarm the customer - the right roll of the eyes, inside joke and conspiratorial tone of voice when he says, “well, you know those marketing guys…” In fact, the customer does know marketing guys, and Mr. Salesman and the customer have a good chuckle.
Further down the hall sits Sue Operations. She’s squarely on the front-line. What I promise, she’s supposed to deliver. So when my promise far exceeds our company’s operational and service capabilities…let’s just say Sue isn’t quite as charitable as Steve Salesman. And when she tells the customer “You can’t possibly expect that – that @#&% Marketinguy,” no one is laughing.
This scenario may sound completely dysfunctional or unsettling familiar…or both. While it’s certainly exaggerated, it probably resembles the silo effect that plagues many organizations. Sales and Marketing vs. Operations. Human Resources vs. Training. Corporate Headquarters vs. Branch Managers. IT vs. everyone. And while all of these departments are busy jousting or – worse yet – ignoring one another, who gets the short end of the proverbial stick? That’s right – the customer. The customer doesn’t care that marketing promised this, and IT dropped the ball on that, and HR just hired some stiff. They just want what was promised to them, delivered consistently.
What our company is lacking is the ability to “operationalize” our brand. Clearly, we have no problem creating a strong, attractive brand promise – as Joe Marketinguy, I have more than taken care of that. Our ads are good and the brand promise is coming through loud and clear to the external audience. What’s missing is the internal agreement on the brand experience and how to deliver on it. That level of dissonance is invisible to the customer, but makes it virtually impossible to satisfy them.
Think about it – if the real-world delivery of the product or service in question can not possibly match the promise of that product…well, it’s safe to say that the entire customer experience is going to be short of expectations. Chances are the products and brands that have earned your allegiance over time aren’t necessarily the most expensive or innovative. Rather, they’re the ones that deliver, time after time - your favorites don’t smack a home run on Tuesday and strikeout on Wednesday. They line a solid double into the gap, every time.
And that’s why Southwest Airlines has a customer base every bit as loyal, if not more so, than Singapore Airlines. Southwest customers aren’t expecting flutes of champagne in the passenger cabin – nor are they getting them – but they are getting a friendly, efficient travel experience, from Sarasota to San Jose. That precise level of execution, whether it’s applied to Dom Perignon or a smile and a wave, is the sort of brand promise delivery that inspires customer satisfaction and loyalty.
We all know that an effective advertising campaign will drive consumers to your door. Once there, all future purchase behavior is based solely on the efficacy of that experience. It’s easy to make promises. It’s much harder to deliver on them.
Think of an iceberg. If you’re the lookout on a ship, what you see above the water is really only about 10-percent of the iceberg. That proverbial tip of the iceberg represents the brand promise. It’s the 90-percent under the water – the part that the lookout never sees but assumes is there – that gives the iceberg its strength. That underwater portion, my friends, is the culture, leadership, alignment, discipline and process necessary to “operationalize” the brand, and turn brand promise and customer strategy into operational reality.
When the brand execution is aligned with the brand promise, you have a powerful iceberg capable of sinking the Titanic. And when the brand execution is missing? Despite appearances on the surface, you really just have…ice cubes.
Let me tell you a quick story about an experience a colleague of mine had with Commerce Bank – a 300-branch regional player in the Northeast that is scaring some of the big boys silly because of their reputation for customer service. Said colleague realized five minutes before bank closing time that she was desperately in need of a roll of quarters to do some laundry. She phoned the closest bank branch to her house, which happened to be a Commerce, found out it was still open, briefly explained her situation, and rushed over. The teller she had spoken to on the phone was still there…and had kept the bank open ten minutes past closing. Best of all – my colleague isn’t a Commerce customer.
Nowhere in the Commerce customer service manual does it decree “stay open past closing to help non-customers with change needs.” But the leadership at Commerce found it was valuable to sit around a table with representatives from operations, IT, human resources, marketing and the branches, and map out the types of experiences they wanted their customers to have and the types of people they wanted to deliver those experiences. And then they created service standards, job descriptions and training to guide and empower those people to do the right thing at all times…for the customer. So where do you think my colleague is opening her next checking account? I guarantee you it will be at the “iceberg” with the big, red Commerce “C” out front.
So the next time you think about a new ad campaign and wonder whether you are internally aligned to deliver on that brand promise to benefit the customer, ask yourself one question. Is your company an iceberg…or an ice cube?
Operationalizing the Brand Aligning Promise with Reality - To learn more about this author, visit Rob Rush's Website.
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Call me Joe Marketinguy. I like big marketing ideas. Bold promises. Sexy websites, glossy collateral materials, flashy TV spots, you name it. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get my brand top-of-mind, consumer by consumer.
Down the hall is my colleague, Steve Salesman. He likes the razzle-dazzle too; after all, it helps him land business. However, Steve is a bit more reticent about some of the bolder promises the company makes. When some of the marketing promise turns out to be…a bit of a stretch, life can get uncomfortable for Steve.
Luckily, Steve’s an old pro. He knows the perfect way to disarm the customer - the right roll of the eyes, inside joke and conspiratorial tone of voice when he says, “well, you know those marketing guys…” In fact, the customer does know marketing guys, and Mr. Salesman and the customer have a good chuckle.
Further down the hall sits Sue Operations. She’s squarely on the front-line. What I promise, she’s supposed to deliver. So when my promise far exceeds our company’s operational and service capabilities…let’s just say Sue isn’t quite as charitable as Steve Salesman. And when she tells the customer “You can’t possibly expect that – that @#&% Marketinguy,” no one is laughing.
This scenario may sound completely dysfunctional or unsettling familiar…or both. While it’s certainly exaggerated, it probably resembles the silo effect that plagues many organizations. Sales and Marketing vs. Operations. Human Resources vs. Training. Corporate Headquarters vs. Branch Managers. IT vs. everyone. And while all of these departments are busy jousting or – worse yet – ignoring one another, who gets the short end of the proverbial stick? That’s right – the customer. The customer doesn’t care that marketing promised this, and IT dropped the ball on that, and HR just hired some stiff. They just want what was promised to them, delivered consistently.
What our company is lacking is the ability to “operationalize” our brand. Clearly, we have no problem creating a strong, attractive brand promise – as Joe Marketinguy, I have more than taken care of that. Our ads are good and the brand promise is coming through loud and clear to the external audience. What’s missing is the internal agreement on the brand experience and how to deliver on it. That level of dissonance is invisible to the customer, but makes it virtually impossible to satisfy them.
Think about it – if the real-world delivery of the product or service in question can not possibly match the promise of that product…well, it’s safe to say that the entire customer experience is going to be short of expectations. Chances are the products and brands that have earned your allegiance over time aren’t necessarily the most expensive or innovative. Rather, they’re the ones that deliver, time after time - your favorites don’t smack a home run on Tuesday and strikeout on Wednesday. They line a solid double into the gap, every time.
And that’s why Southwest Airlines has a customer base every bit as loyal, if not more so, than Singapore Airlines. Southwest customers aren’t expecting flutes of champagne in the passenger cabin – nor are they getting them – but they are getting a friendly, efficient travel experience, from Sarasota to San Jose. That precise level of execution, whether it’s applied to Dom Perignon or a smile and a wave, is the sort of brand promise delivery that inspires customer satisfaction and loyalty.
We all know that an effective advertising campaign will drive consumers to your door. Once there, all future purchase behavior is based solely on the efficacy of that experience. It’s easy to make promises. It’s much harder to deliver on them.
Think of an iceberg. If you’re the lookout on a ship, what you see above the water is really only about 10-percent of the iceberg. That proverbial tip of the iceberg represents the brand promise. It’s the 90-percent under the water – the part that the lookout never sees but assumes is there – that gives the iceberg its strength. That underwater portion, my friends, is the culture, leadership, alignment, discipline and process necessary to “operationalize” the brand, and turn brand promise and customer strategy into operational reality.
When the brand execution is aligned with the brand promise, you have a powerful iceberg capable of sinking the Titanic. And when the brand execution is missing? Despite appearances on the surface, you really just have…ice cubes.
Let me tell you a quick story about an experience a colleague of mine had with Commerce Bank – a 300-branch regional player in the Northeast that is scaring some of the big boys silly because of their reputation for customer service. Said colleague realized five minutes before bank closing time that she was desperately in need of a roll of quarters to do some laundry. She phoned the closest bank branch to her house, which happened to be a Commerce, found out it was still open, briefly explained her situation, and rushed over. The teller she had spoken to on the phone was still there…and had kept the bank open ten minutes past closing. Best of all – my colleague isn’t a Commerce customer.
Nowhere in the Commerce customer service manual does it decree “stay open past closing to help non-customers with change needs.” But the leadership at Commerce found it was valuable to sit around a table with representatives from operations, IT, human resources, marketing and the branches, and map out the types of experiences they wanted their customers to have and the types of people they wanted to deliver those experiences. And then they created service standards, job descriptions and training to guide and empower those people to do the right thing at all times…for the customer. So where do you think my colleague is opening her next checking account? I guarantee you it will be at the “iceberg” with the big, red Commerce “C” out front.
So the next time you think about a new ad campaign and wonder whether you are internally aligned to deliver on that brand promise to benefit the customer, ask yourself one question. Is your company an iceberg…or an ice cube?
Operationalizing the Brand Aligning Promise with Reality - To learn more about this author, visit Rob Rush's Website.
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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Michel NerayMichel Neray has over 25 years of experience as an award-winning copywriter, an Internet pioneer, a tradeshow pitchman and a senior sales and marketing executive. An online pioneer, he was one of the first marketing professionals to embrace the Internet by building websites as early as 1993. In 1994, Michel co-authored a book entitled "The Great Crossover: Personal Confidence in the Age of the Microchip", which made it to Jack Canfield's Achiever's Recommended Reading List. Michel founded Portfolios.com in 1995, the world's first online source directory for creative professionals and one of the first websites based on community generated content. Since creating The Essential Message in 2003, Michel has helped thousands of independent professionals and entrepreneurs as well as growing corporations find a better way to differentiate, position and brand themselves. In 2005, his chapter "Everything Starts With A Conversation" was selected as the lead for the book, "Sales Gurus Speak Out" and re-published in 2008 for 'Awakening The Workplace Volume 3'. He is also a co-author of "In the Company of Leaders" (2008) with 40 top North American leadership experts. - Visit Michel Neray's Website |
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 Rob Rush (Visit Rob's Website) Rob Rush is founder and CEO of LRA Worldwide, Inc., a Horsham, Pa.-based consulting firm specializing in Customer Experience Management or CEM. LRA helps clients such as Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Hard Rock, First Niagara Financial Group, the PGA TOUR and the NBA design and deliver the optimal customer experience across all key touch points and channels. Rob is a regular contributor to a variety of marketing, branding, and trade publications, including Brandweek, Casino Journal, Hotel Business, CRM Weekly, Golf Business and Resort & Recreation. Rob also serves on the National Hotel Executive Hospitality Forum Editorial Board and is active in the National Institute of Golf Management (NIGM). Rob is a frequent spokesperson on customer experience, loyalty, internal branding, and strategy, and has presented and/or delivered keynotes at numerous industry conferences and corporate annual meetings. Rob received his B.S. degree from Cornell University and is a member of the Cornell Real Estate Council. You can reach Rob at ro b.rush@lraworldwide.com.
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