On Customer-Centric Branding - Mark Ury (Contributing Blogger)

I've asked a dear friend of mine Mark Ury (Chief Experience Architect at Blast Radius) to contribute a piece for my blog on customer-centric branding. His special interest is in “Service Design” and customer experience-based branding. Ten weeks later he finally did it. Mark is a favorite collaborator of mine and we share many common point of views. I hope you'll enjoy his piece. Pls share with us your thoughts.

I heard a marketer talking about customer-centric branding the other day.

What does that mean?

Most marketers barely meet their customers. If one showed up in the average marketing department, the staff wouldn’t know what to do or say to her.

For the last 80 years, branding was a one-to-many distribution device. Companies made goods, slapped a logo on them, and slapped the same logo on the ads that asked customers to buy the product. There was no relationship with the customer in the same way a lab technician has no relationship with a rat. They observe, test, and occasionally stick a needle in poor creature’s ass.

Eight decades of behavior is hard to shake, particularly for lab technicians. So when people use terms like “customer-centric branding,” somehow it’s like saying the lab technician is going to create a more comfortable holding cage for the rat and pet it from time-to-time. It’s insincere, vague, and silly.

Instead of calling it customer-centric branding we should call it customer-centric service.

I know, I know—customer service is another lab. But let’s ignore that for a moment while I make a point.

When you design, engineer, and manage a service, you’re creating an experience for the customer when they buy or use your product. You consider the product features, utility, price, location-to-buy, warranty, support, etc. When you do this well, it adds up to people feeling that they bought something that was worth their money. Not surprisingly, when someone asks this customer about their opinion on what kind of product to buy in this category, the well-serviced customer recommends your product.

That’s the nature of relationships: I do something for you, you do something for me. I make something you can use and treat you like a human being, and you buy my product and recommend it to others.

Yes, I have to “position” my brand to make it relevant. Yes, I have to create identity guidelines to help manage it globally. Blah blah. At the end of the day, I need to create great service. Because brands aren’t distinct, separate “things” that ad agencies create. They’re the by-product of relationships. They are behavior. And in business transactions, “service” is the closest approximation to behavior. It codifies what we create and how we respond to the people around us.

When the Internet smashed 80 years of one-to-many distribution, lots of companies got screwed. With the insulating barriers of geography, merchants, mass marketing etc removed between them and customers, the lab technicians were revealed for what they were: scheming little weasels with less humanity than their rat counterparts. What could these actuaries DO for people? Could they make products? No. Services? Uh, uh. Provide support? Forget it—too busy reading their rat data.

In a transparent commercial relationship, there is no room for “traditional” branding or marketing—because it’s unnecessary. Service takes over and provides the context for the product and the momentum to spread the word. 

Jeff Bezos got this. Amazon put all its money into service. Is Amazon a poorly known brand? Steve Jobs got this. For all of Apple’s great “branding,” the company sucked until it a) made great products and b) delivered great service. Even tiny startups understand this. Skinny Corp, the makers of the successful t-shirt company Threadless, have no “marketing department” or “customer-centric branding.” They have people who a) design the service, b) deliver the product, and c) manage the community relationships. To them, customer centricity is delivering what they said they would and fixing things when they don’t.

Anyone looking to make customer-centric brands should make customer-centric services. Thoughtful, meaningful relationships that reward both parties for their behavior.

The industrial revolution that spawned contemporary marketing was just that: industrial. Hard, cold, and big. Before that, all industry was cottage-based, communal, and used p2p to ensure growth. The network has returned us to that state and, coincidently, let the rats out of the cage. You can put out some cheese and play some games with them, or they can chew your face off while you sleep. Your choice.

Photo credit Eviltwin (Flickr) Thanks Mark. Great piece.

A quick note on Advanced Branding Strategy Masterclass, we will be starting first week of Sept. I just got back from a small break from the Hamptons and so I am just catching up with stuff. I will post more details next week.