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The
way to a man's heart is through his stomach and diamonds are a girl's best friend.
Funny, you would have thought that should have been revised by now to the way
to a man's heart is through his BMW and Jimmy Choo's are a girl's best friend.
No, but
aren't brands the most important thing in everyone's life? Surely the sun never
sets on our need and desire to be connected to the brands we love. You're right
it does, as the great and wise Doug Daft of Coca-Cola said "brands are too
interested in looking in the mirror when they should be looking out of the window".
We are
always asking consumers what they think of our brand and how great they think
our advertising is and what was that? You think our brand is great? Did we ask
you about the advertising?
Now more
than ever we need to find out about our consumers and where the brand fits into
their lives.
As Stuart
Leach, Head of Planning at Interfocus says " brands have the mistaken belief
that consumers are entering their world, it is the other way round, consumers
invite brands into their own lives and they better have something meaningful to
say when they get there".
What do consumers want in their relationship with a brand? Well you could ask
them? What we do know is that they want help increasing the pleasure or decreasing
the pain. Find a way of doing that and you will be building a Super Brand. A brand
that has relationship with its consumers that transcends the transactional and
becomes truly transformational. Those are the relationships that last.
OK so what
does that mean? Or is it only the latest line in marketing mumbo jumbo to make
client marketing departments think you are clever and keep your competitors on
their toes? No it's not, and anyway we would never do that.
So back
to the point, transactional to transformational. Well transactional is about the
purchase, the only relationship a consumer has and maybe wants, with that brand
is when they buy the product. Transformational is when both parties in the relationship
get something out of it, and it moves them both to a higher level. Isn't that
where we are all trying to get to? Spurred onto higher achievement in a Steve
Ovett/Seb Coe sort of way or even dare I say it Alex Ferguson/Arsene Venger sort
of way, you know it is my theory that if Arsene hadn't have come along Fergie
would probably have retired by now, but he has kept on developing his brand of
football.
How would
we do that in the brand/consumer context?
For this
part of the process we have a little technique here at Interfocus, we call it
going to the pub.
Oh yeah,
ground breaking I know, never been done before.
Hang on
it's not that. It's so much easier to think of that mass body of consumers that
make up your target as one person " the bulls eye", create a pen portrait
of them, describe the average week, hour by glorious hour. From the minute they
wake up to the minute they go to sleep. Then make the brand a person. The premise
is, if the brand and the consumer met each other in the pub what would they say
to each other and how would they say it.
Would the
brand start with a Dear Sir or Madam (would you believe it still goes on)?
No it would
be conversational communication, it would be direct, friendly, enquiring, understanding
and supportive, because that's how you want relationships to be … don't you?
The relationship
between consumers and brands should be no different, they are - shock horror -
real relationships that run the whole gamut and need a whole mix of media in order
to deliver that.
All media
should be used as appropriate. It's not all advertising, "advertising is
the friend who only phones you when he wants to borrow money". It's not all
DM, "it's like having a pen pal, I don't want a pen pal".
It's not
all anything; it is a mix as diverse as the relationship you have. Let them build,
let them develop let them change and let them grow, let them move on and create
new relationships but most of all, listen.
What is
it we all want? We want to feel we have been heard.
About
the Author
Kevin Jackson is the Director of Innovations at Interfocus. He is an expert in
identifying consumer trends having worked for and with an eclectic mix of companies
both locally and internationally. Those companies are hugely diverse, as varied
as British Telecom, Federal Express, British American Tobacco, Diners Club, News
International and Coca-Cola to name only a few.
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