Brand Trust

'that's what we're after...why?
if we trust the motive, we trust the brand
then we trust it's content'


and my apologies to John Le Carre for abusing one of his lines The Russia House

'that's what we're after...why?
if we trust the motive, we trust the man
then we trust his material'

Brand Experience - A Brand Definiton

Just Thinking Out Loud

The Design Council defines a brand as: “a set of associations that a person (or group of people) makes with a company, product, service, individual or organisation. (Source: The Power of Branding: a practical guide. The Design Council).


An 'association' can be defined as


a. A mental connection or relation between thoughts, feelings, ideas, or sensations.
b. A remembered or imagined feeling, emotion, idea, or sensation linked to a person, object, or idea

Now of course these thoughts,feelings and sensations may very well be based on reality or perception - and you could very well argue that perception does its fair share in defining reality

If we take the idea of feelings and sensations then we can look at our 5 Senses  of  hearing, sight, touch,smell  and taste.


But these are things we experience

These are all important aspects when we create a perception of a brand.

Experience defines the brand. So if my only experience of a brand is the TV Ad I see, or the website I experience, they still play an important role

First Impressions Gain Loyalty and Trust

I've argued in previous posts that Trust is a key factor when trying to convince an audience to read your content or buy your products and services - See the A-Z of eCRM A is for Ancient Greeks . No real surprise there.
I've also suggested that first impressions do count. Whether that be the content of your subject line or the landing page you direct people to - See the A-Z of eCRM G is for Gladwell.

And now a new report from ClickFox has suggested that indeed lasting first impressions are key to gaining loyalty and trust. 48% of customers indicated that the most critical time for a company to gain their loyalty is when they make their first purchase or begin service.

As you can see from the chart, 40% become loyal when problems are resolved in a way that exceeds expectations.

Only 1% of the customers indicated that a good time would be at the point where they are considering switching to a competitor. I would argue that also applies to win-back campaigns that target customers when they have not shopped with you a while. I regularly make use of those 'missing you' communications that include a tasty 20% off. Its not making me loyal. It's just buying my attention for a while.

But lets not assume that once you've made a good impression a Brand can take a foot off the pedal. I mentioned a while back about a great first impression that Space NK made with me when I signed up for their NDulge Rewards Program. Sign up was easy and I received my welcome email as I walked out of the store. I have to say however that since then I've been very disappointed. I didn't get my promised Birthday treat, and the email content has been geared towards my initial purchase - a gift for my fiancee - and not based on me - a man!

So although I do agree that first impressions do count, I would argue that every touch-point impression is an opportunity to to exceed expectations. But also an opportunity to slowly erode the trust and good will you originally gained.

ClickFox 2012 Brand Loyalty Survey available here (registration required)

Integrating Social and Email

Interesting video conducted by my friend Jim Ducharme from Get Response with Sundeep Kapur of Email Yogi at the Marketing Sherpa Email Summit . 


Yogi answers this question: “What is the optimal way to integrate and connect the activity of your social and email marketing efforts?”


In particular Sundeep talks about using Social to get more customers, cut costs and improve email marketing results.

From Benign Dictatorship to True Democracy

That was the title of the very interesting after dinner speech at the Digital Leadership Dinner given by The Marketing Society on Tuesday evening.


Read a summary here  and listen to a snapshot from speaker John Grant, author and co-founder of  Ecoinomy here 


My own view from a marketing perspective, is that even with many marketing models where we believe that we are moving towards true  democracy we are still just painting Benign Dictatorship in a different colour. The recent example of Subway for example allowing customers to choose between a variety of new sandwiches for the new product launch is limited democracy. They were given a choice from a selection from Subway.


If we are looking to see how widespread democracy through crowd sourcing is, the take a look at over 1000 crowdsorcing and crowdfunding sites listed here . 


Of course it depends on how we define democracy. If we believe that all brands should be run by consumers, then quite frankly I'm not sure there is a future in that. But if we believe that democratic barnds are ones that allow consumers a say in new product development including suggesting new products and services ( eg Starbucks) , or allow consumes to openly cast a vote on how good a product or service is ( eg Amazon ) then I'm a believer!

From Crowd Sourcing to Crowd Tapping

A new way for Brands to connect with and reward consumers
Essentially it allows rewarding of actions like completing surveys, voting polls, participating in a live-online discussions or sharing brand-related content with a few friends via social media and the Crowdtap platform. The reward points  can be redeemed for things like  Amazon gift cards, or  donations to a charity. 


 


www.crowdtap.it

Phygital* - Will The Real QR Code Please Stand Up

A read an interesting piece from Adam Hutchinson the Lead UX Architect at EHS4D ( in fact there he is sat 10 feet away from me), on the value of QR codes.

Adam argued quite legitamately that 'for all their wizardry, they are currently being used in exactly the same way as URLs. That is, to link to a web address'


And indeed in the majority of cases that's right. eConsultancy did show, however, some really clever uses in a recent article, my favourite being the one below





The jury is still out in particular as QR codes penetration is still quite low although recent experiments by broadcasters such as the BBC could very well increase awareness. The BBC One TV Program ''The Good Cook'' now has QR codes on screen to allow you to access recipes from the show.




Danny Cohen, Controller, BBC One, says: “I want BBC One to lead the way with interactivity and technological innovation so that we can keep engaging audiences in new ways. I hope viewers will find this experiment with QR codes to be a simple but useful tool to help them re-create the recipes they see on screen.”

But of course as soon as one technology is in the consumers hand, another one takes another large step forward. Why stop at black and white boxes when actually the object itself ,once plastered with a QR code, becomes the tag itself. Check out the video


>
<

*Phyigital belongs to those clever people at Momentum

Reading the Signs

I came across the FIAT Street Evo app recently and was impressed by the numbers claimed at the end of the clip.

1. 1 million signs spotted
2. Great feedback
3. The most viewed Fiat brochure in history!

I think the use of technology, location , gamification make the campaign truly engaging.

Let's hope the conversations turned into conversions.

An A to Z of eCRM - P

P is for Practice

Because there is no such thing as Best Practice.

Every Brand, Business Model, Audience combination is unique and as a result you have to create your own Best Practice.

And you can only do that by creating and sticking to a good Test, Learn and Refine programme, remembering that the world of audience engagement is ever changing so models you created six months may no longer hold true.

Also remember that all models are flawed; it’s just that some are more useful than others. Gravity is a law, expected open rate is not

As Lee Trevino the famous golfer highlighted, the more you practice, the luckier you get.