Customer Service Excellence - Lecture 3

Branding & Brand Experience Management Customer Service Excellence – week 3

Marketing Week – July 2008 • Global consumer brands damage the economies of developing countries, distort competition, drive out local rivals and create consumer aspirations which often lead people into debt. • These negative perceptions are not just the views of some wild-eyed anti-corporate campaigner fresh from the latest G8 riot, fired up on reading No Logo, Naomi Klein's Jeremiad against global corporations. • Far from it. This downbeat assessment of the effects of brand globalisation is shared by some of the world's most influential people, according a survey conducted by brewing giant SABMiller.

Strategy Evaluation and Choice Budgets and Customer Branded Strategic Focus Resources Experience Sales Retention Retention promotions Customer and sales Retention Retention branded packages experience Customer Acquisition Acquisition Sales branded Acquisition Acquisition promotions experience and sales packages

Focussing on the customer?? • Customer need/Product • Cost/Price • Convenience/Place • Communication/Promotion

Branding is a Key Source of Competitive Advantage Defining the Concept: • It is more than just putting a name on a product • It is a marketing process, designed to deliver: – Long-term customer preference – Profitable long-term customer relationships • It is a systematic and continuous process, requiring: – Professional skills and techniques – Judgement and creativity

The Purpose of Branding • To create and maintain long-term customer preference for a company’s value propositions by: – Establishing unique identification for these – Associating this identification with the most desirable net resulting experiences in the customer’s mind “We need some printing “We need to improve efficiency and “We need… and related services” productivity and build a platform for continuous improvement.”

Brand onion A snapshot of A belief system the future A way of working and communicating Vision Values Positioning Personality A summary of the brand in relation to competition in the consumer’s mind Informs consumer perception and all communications

So, Where Do Brands Exist? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Brands Exist Only in the Minds of Customers • “… and, as I’ve already said – and will continue to repeat – there is only one place where a brand exists – inside consumer’s heads…” • “…brands exist only in the mind. We may talk about them in terms of their structures and designs, but those physical manifestations are just ‘products’. Brands, as such, are different. They exist only as thoughts.” Thom Braun, The Philosophy of Branding (2004)

Failure to Understand How Brands Work Can Lead to Disaster! • In the 1980s Coca-Cola faced declining sales • The company responded to the ‘Pepsi challenge’ (blind taste test) by changing the formula – New Coke • BUT: Coca-Cola had become an “institutional” brand – Intrinsic to American cultural identity, part of the American psyche • Changing the taste was tantamount to taking the brand away from consumers – It was just plain anti-American! See: Jim Baggott A Beginner’s Guide to Reality • Consumers campaigned to bring back the “real thing” • They won!

Brands Provide Identity… • Trademark® – Name, symbol and/or design • Visual identity • Distinctive physical characteristics – e.g. packaging, signage • Communications ‘properties’ – e.g. slogans, visual devices

… and Meaning • Brand meaning must be rooted in understanding customers, their motivations for purchase and use of the proposition • Critical to understand how customers make their trade-offs and choices: – Customers do not buy products, but the expectation of resulting experiences – These resulting experiences must satisfy the relevant financial, functional and/or emotional needs – Customers make judgments on their own criteria (remember the Toyota example?)

What’s in this Box? Struggling? This is not an image you recognise… It carries no meaning for you… You therefore have no idea what’s in the box

What’s in this Box? Recognise this image? What does it mean to you… Perhaps it tells you that you can expect lots of really cool stuff inside!

The Value of a Brand is its Promise of Financial, Functional and/or Emotional Experiences Functional Economic Emotional What the ‘product’ does What the ‘product’ delivers What the ‘brand’ means ... performance in terms of financial ... Image, perception Objective, rational, tangible advantage Subjective, intangible Inherent in the product Objective, rational, tangible Created by communications Copyable by competition Inherent in the product as Much more difficult to copy Changes as technology used in the customer’s Sustainable over time if develops/needs change application managed properly Copyable by competition Changes as technology develops/needs change Added value comes Added value comes Added value from company primarily primarily commitment to from company technological from company technological understanding and satisfying skills (and service) skills customers

Why Manage Brands? • To protect the distinctiveness and consistency of brand identification – To ensure customer recognition – To protect legal rights preventing copying by competitors • To manage the meaning of the brand in the customers mind – To ensure ‘associations’ are important to customers and add value in their eyes – To maintain relevance and preference as customer needs change, and competition develops over time

Powerful Brands are Very Valuable but Extremely Hard to Create • We each receive about 1,500 marketing messages each day • Only 5% of these communications are effective • 80% of new consumer propositions fail • Marketers need to understand how their brands create or reinforce perceptions and how perceptions create awareness, beliefs and preferences

There Can be Quite a Lot at Value $ Stake… The Top 10 Most Valuable Brands BusinessWeek 2007 billion Coca-Cola 65.3 Microsoft 58.7 IBM 57.1 GE 51.6 Nokia 33.7 Toyota 32.1 Intel 31.0 Where is McDonald’s 29.4 Xerox? Top 100 Brands Disney 29.2 Mercedes- 23.6 Benz

Core values • These are at the heart of the brand, forming the basis of the brand differentiation • There should be three or four values at the core so that employees remember them and customers can understand and articulate them, and identify with them • There can be more emotional rather than functional values at the core. • Values require interpretation; e.g. it is insufficient to state “integrity” as a value; it has to be demonstrated how this will be achieved distinctively to competitors

Xerox Brand Values • Savvy We believe our deep understanding and pragmatic approach towards our customers uncovers the insights that our competitors don’t see. • Enterprising We believe our proactive, hard-working, and action-oriented attitude allows us to experiment and take intelligent risks. • Straightforward We believe our truthful and transparent nature enables others to work easily with us. • Dependable We believe our dedication and accountability for our actions builds the relationships in which our clients can trust.

Brand Personality is a Deepening of Positioning and Cannot Exist on its Own • In highly competitive mature markets, many brands are, inevitably, positioned close to each other • Further differentiation can be achieved by developing a distinctive “personality” for the brand • Brand personality describes the characteristics which the brand would have if it were human, e.g. – Warm and friendly, versus cold and aloof – Modern and dynamic, versus slow and old-fashioned • Brand personality must spring credibly from the brand position, and can add important dimensions of differentiation

Brand personality • This is the way in which the brand communicates • It covers the tone of voice and appearance • Also style and relationships or the way in which the brand interacts. • Attractive to the target market in that the personality of the brand interacts with the individual

What is the Personality of the Virgin Brand Portfolio?

How is the brand working? Generics Inner Outer An approach to Entry stakes to the directed directed category values values defining the brand and how to Core proposition raison d’etre to the consumer strengthen it How the Essence What the brand Core values brand makes fundamental values says me that define the about me brand feel Functional Emotional elements elements Absentees Peripherals Desirable elements currently Supports Values to be reduced lacking from the brand and need Brand personality to be developed into it How the brand speaks to me Interbrand Newell and Sorrell 2006

Problems in creating desired image • Competitive messages • Ineffective brand identity • Other brand signals • Ineffective messages • Wrong media • Other constraints

Scott Talgo (2006) – Brand strategist • “A brand that captures your mind gains behaviour. A brand that captures your heart gains commitment.”

Brand value • “Real sustainable brand value must equate to a “meaning” – what we think and feel when we hear/see a brand. Tough to nail down and harder to measure. This, though, is clear: a brand that can make us buy water or air is a valuable mark indeed”. • Terri McConnell (2006) • Director of Business and Brand Strategy.

Customer Service Excellence - Lecture 3

by University of Wales, Newport on Jul 06, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 1

Statistics

Customer Service Excellence - Lecture 3 — Presentation Transcript