You Brand

Names are important. We like to hear our name. “Hey + name” sounds friendlier than “Hey you”. For premium brands it is even more important. As a matter of fact it is vital. “I bought a car” is not really helpful for the brand you bought it from.

A premium brand like Hermès should know that. Hermès was founded by Thierry Hermès back in 1837 – the brand name is therefore not just a pseudoword, it is a ‘real’ name – and is about as premium as it gets.

They have a store in Munich and I’ve been a customer for several years. I happen to like their ties, even though they are insanely expensive. Every January they invite me to a sale (if you can call it that at Hermès), which is nice.

What annoys me however is that they seem to be unable to get my last name right (see photo: no ‘Umlaut’, no ‘s’ at the end).

All the fancy brochures and expensive advertising campaigns will ultimately fail, if you don’t know your customers and that includes their names.

If you define your customer as a consumer and treat her like one, that’s exactly what she’ll be. At the most, she’ll consume your brand.

Opportunity missed!

Why don’t you define and treat your customer like an afficionado? Consider the potential endorsement “I enjoy this brand” as opposed to “I consume this brand”.

Words can make all the difference in the world and attitudes most certainly do. It’s worth the extra marketing effort.

This morning I was in a hurry and called the taxi stand close to where I live. A guy picked up the phone and I gave him my address. Apparently he did not understand me and confirmed a different street name. I repeated my address, he still didn’t get it and responded with yet another street name. I repeated my address again, he still didn’t get it and asked me, whether I was sure to have dialed the right number. I confirmed, repeated the address and this time he understood. He showed up 5 minutes later and told me that he’s been driving a taxi in Munich for over 30 years and knows every street in town and insinuated that I had ‘mumbled’, which is why he didn’t understand me. If I can, I will obviously avoid this taxi driver in the future. After all, he tried to make me feel like an idiot. Brands often behave the same when ‘dealing’ with their customers. Like the taxi driver, they consider themselves to be ‘perfect’. If something does go wrong, it must therefore be the fault of the customer. Sorry is not just a word, it reflects an attitude. People don’t have a problem with taxi drivers or brands because they make mistakes, as we all make them. We have a problem, if they refuse to admit it and try to blame us.

Posted via email from achimmuellers’s posterous

I have mentioned before that brands shouldn’t try to engage with their customers before engaging with their employees. This calls for vertical integration.

Equally important is horizontal integration. In many companies – especially old economy – the caste system is still very much alive: There’s the R&D crowd, the guys from production, sales people, marketing people, finance people and so on. Sooner or later many different ‘esprit de corps’ develop.

For example the production guys will insist that they obviously do a great job, but R&D always wants fancy solutions, HR doesn’t give them enough people, finance doesn’t give them enough budget, purchasing doesn’t give them the best parts, sales wants the product yesterday and marketing insists on USP’s. Depending on the perspective, other divisions will argue in a similar way.

The system is held together by the good old hierarchy. Board members from all divisions usually meet once a week, but what about the rest? They only meet when working on a common project, which usually doesn’t involve all divisions. It is difficult and time-consuming to develop positive relations and common understanding under these conditions. Some employees, which are more proactive than others, develop their own ‘private’ and ‘personal’ networks. But this is not the solution.

Customers don’t differentiate between divisions – for them there is only one brand. Companies are well advised to break down the caste system and facilitate horizontal and vertical integration. It improves the relations: inside and outside.

What’s your view?

Brands are defined by their customers. Not only by what they say about the brand, but also by how they use it. This obviously depends on how public the usage is. Cars are a great example. On the German Autobahn – parts of which still don’t have a speed limit – some brands tend to spend more time in the left lane than others. I know, because I used to work for one of those brands

Driving behavior directly influences the brand perception by other users of the Autobahn. After all, the only thing they can see at high speeds is the car and the brand, but they can’t identify the driver. Some people consider fast driving to be aggressive, therefore the brand they saw will get an aggressive image. Many potential customers can be lost that way.

What can the brand do? Traditional broadcasting of other brand values will not be credible. After all, the above mentioned experience was authentic. People won’t trust statements that are contrary to what they have experienced personally. The personal conversation is the only solution. But how can the brand identify those that have a negative opinion, when it is not even aware of the incident that caused it? Social networks are a good place to start looking and listening.

Another learning from this example is that your most loyal fans are not necessarily your best brand ambassadors.

What’s your opinion!

The other day I was finishing up an important presentation and realized that in some charts the artwork wasn’t optimal and I needed better photos. I got in touch with a company I had used in the past, realized that my account was empty and transferred some money via PayPal. Usually this takes a couple of minutes, but not this time. After a couple of hours, I sent the company an Email, expecting a quick response – no such luck. The matter is still not sorted out. Once it is, I will post about it.

Since I wasn’t getting anywhere, I started looking and listening around and found Shutterstock. I checked their royalty-free stock photography and saw that they had what I was looking for. I then looked at their subscription models – they have some very interesting ones – and chose one that met my requirements. The money transfer only took a couple of minutes, I downloaded some great stock photography and could at last finalize my presentation.

Then I found out that Shutterstock are also on Twitter and decided to ‘follow’. An auto responder thanked me for following (I usually don’t like auto responders) and gave me a coupon code for a 10% off at my next purchase (that I liked). Having just bought a subscription, I couldn’t use the coupon immediately. So I asked them via Email for how long the coupon was valid. An auto responder (again) thanked me for contacting them and informed me that someone would get in touch within one business day. As I mentioned before, I usually don’t like auto responders, but in this case it made sense to me.

Believe it or not, but within one business day they did get in touch. Stephanie, their account executive, sent me an Email in perfect German (she must have checked my IP-address) and asked for the coupon code number. I sent her the number and in less than one hour, she informed me that the coupon was valid till 2012.

I was and am impressed – this is customer service at its best. Shutterstock have obviously realized that happy customers are their most important asset in today’s Social Web. So if you’re ever looking for great photos, why not check them out.