Brand Misery
The joys of brands you know, brands you don’t,
and the horrors of MSN
Over the past couple of years I’ve given a lot of thought to the concept of branding. This is not necessarily a natural activity for me. I’ve never worked for one of the big brand powerhouses like Proctor & Gamble or Kraft, though I’ve done a fair amount of consulting with advertising agencies on how to sell their wares. Still, I’ve been stuck on this idea of creating a “branded customer experience” which keeps leading me back to the concept of brand.
From what I can tell, a “brand” is nothing more than a promise of consistent value. Not just any random value, but specific value that the brand owner wants you to associate with an offer or that firm’s unique and differentiating attributes—the kind that would cause you to bypass a competitive offer and pay a premium.
Brands and branding are at least as old as the last century, though it’s only recently that firms have connected the concept to services (though I often wonder how many really have, but more on that in a minute). Modern brand management grew up in the years after World War II when a surging sense of well-being, education, and affluence created a huge appetite for consumer goods. Big companies like Proctor and Gamble, Colgate, and Unilever honed brand management to a fine art, using mass media to inundate the populace with promises for whiter teeth, cleaner laundry, and brighter lives.
Unless you’ve been asleep for the last forty years, you’ve surely noticed that branding, or at least attempts at branding, has extended well beyond the daily soap operas and the shelves of the local supermarket. Today, firms all sizes aspire to create the preference, presence, and pricing power associated with a powerful brand.
The View From The Road
I bring all this up while sitting in a hotel room in Toronto, Canada, one week into a three week road trip. There’s something about being away from your home turf that heightens my awareness of what I buy, the service I receive, and the expectations that are either met or dashed.
I love to walk and explore the cities I visit, usually with camera in tow. While I’m generally tempted to buy my coffee at Starbucks, I’m just as frequently drawn into shops and eateries that smack of localness (a multi-owner brand that still pervades large parts of the world).
In keeping with that theme, I’ve been in Victoria and Toronto this week, and at least two Starbucks with more to come. I always order the same thing, and it tastes the same wherever I get it. The service is consistently inconsistent and often indifferent, but obviously there’s something about the total Starbucks branded experience that keeps me coming back more or less regularly, at least when I’m on the road (At home, we go to Peet’s).
I also had a silly experience in Victoria involving a sweater. The short version of the story was that I managed to rub up against a creosote covered post and ruin an old favorite sweater. For whatever reason, I wasn’t especially torqued by this mishap and set off to find a new wrap.
Without much effort I finally found my way to what I guess you’d call “the shopping street”, though the locals surely know it as something else. It is no doubt named for some deceased royal or something suitably Britannic, but I can’t say I noticed.
As I had surmised, every third place sold fiber pile, sweatshirts, or sweaters and they were all on double sale (marked down and then the bonus discount I get for living in the land of strong currency).
As grand as I’m sure I would have looked with the Canadian Flag emblazoned across my back or the word Victoria festooned on my breast, I resisted the temptation to trumpet another country’s or city’s brand. Finally I was drawn into a pleasant looking place that promised Scottish plaids, tartans, and sweaters.
I shopped around the shop and soon enough found something that suited me. Everyone was pleasant as they could be. We bantered back and forth and generally had a good time while I made my purchase. The part where I gave them my old sweater for the “dust bin” left them a bit puzzled. I think this was the first time a customer had bought a sweater and left one behind (sort of like trading in a used car).
So those were the good stories. In the case of Starbucks, I understood the brand promise and got an experience that was completely consistent with my expectations. It’s possible that Second Cup or Timothy’s World of Coffee or even Tim Horton’s might have been better, but I’ll never know. The key here is that the promise matched my expectations and my expectations matched my experience.
The same was true of the nameless sweater shop. Part of it I’m sure was due to my generally cheery frame of mind, part of it because my expectations perfectly matched the “local small town shop” promise.
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Last modified:
05/03/06