800-CEO-READ Excerpts

Married To The Brand - Part IV

STOKING THE FIRES OF PASSION

When researchers dug into what it takes to build brand Passion, there were three obvious conclusions:

• First, the particular drivers of Passion vary by category and by brand. What passionately bonds a car owner to a BMW is not the same thing that forges relationships for Lexus, Jaguar, or Volvo owners.
• Second, it's never just one thing, like the styling or the handling for an automobile. Not when we're talking about Passion.
• Third, the key in every instance is differentiation -- being meaningfully different in the signals and cues that tell customers that their brand experience is something unique and really special.

Research among recent fliers shows that Passion doesn't result from schedule convenience, memorable commercials, or the age and condition of the aircraft. Though these are relevant factors, they're not what creates brand Passion.

When it comes to airline customers, Passion stems first from exceptional people in the air, followed by exceptional people on the ground, and last, by dependable arrivals and departures. That's interesting, especially because that's precisely the performance profile pioneered in the United States by Southwest and now also pursued by carriers like Ryanair and JetBlue. Small wonder, then, that these newcomers have outperformed the larger airlines, which have had difficulties in their attempts to deliver a warm and welcoming brand experience. Small wonder, too, that the larger legacy airlines have had to rely on discounts, sales, and frequent flier programs to bribe their customers
into returning.

When there are no people to serve as brand ambassadors, companies must rely on other factors to build brand Passion. But it can be done - and we've seen evidence of that fact, in ketchup, coffee, hand soap, and face cream. Passion derives from meaningful differentiation in the experience of using the brand, which is what brand greatness is all about: a truly unique flavor, as we found in a study of salsas in Latin America and a study of beverages in the United States; a distinct and refreshingly clean feeling, as we discovered in a study of bath products in Asia; or a uniquely satisfying experience, as we noted for a food product in India. To build customer Passion in any country, the brand experience must be uniquely different.

For products like ketchup and coffee, great advertising and distinctive packaging help frame and support the distinctive brand experience. Again, the fundamental requirement for Passion is greatness, not "good enough." Therefore, the marketing challenge is to create, communicate, and consistently reinforce a distinctly different feeling, one that can come only from buying and using -- and from being married to -- the brand.

But this requires understanding the total brand experience from the customer's perspective, not just the company's. Is the Starbucks brand experience the coffee, or something beyond that? Is the Starbucks experience replicated in the aisles of a United flight from Denver to Chicago -- or is it just the coffee that's replicated?

The elements that signal a differentiated brand experience are often subtle. But they are crucial cues to the customer, because they're the aspects of the total brand experience that set it apart. In his book Clued In, Lewis Carbone addresses the need to identify the clues that trigger emotions. And in his recent book Brand Sense, Martin Lindstrom points out how each of the five senses serves a vital role in building the emotional associations that separate strong brands from weaker ones.

Companies can use a number of qualitative tools to probe the potential triggers of a customer's brand experience. But one key question remains: Exactly what emotions should the brand be triggering? Here's an answer: Confidence, Integrity, Pride, and Passion. Focus on the clues and sensory signals that convey these four, because these are the
essential ingredients for a brand marriage.

Importantly, building Passion isn't just a challenge for the company's ad agency. It also confronts its product developers, store and package designers, flavor profilers, merchandising managers, process engineers, and everyone else involved in crafting and executing the brand experience.

Customers cannot simply be told that a consumption experience is uniquely pleasurable, regardless of how much advertising weight is placed behind "bite and smile" ad campaigns. A promise demands delivery. Customers must experience the brand's uniqueness. They must feel the difference -- because emotions are all about feeling.

Identifying the subtle but important signals that reinforce the platform for brand Passion isn't a simple task. Neither is the creation of a unique product experience that consistently conveys those differentiating signals. It's all easier said than done. But there's no Passion without it, and marriages without Passion will drift ultimately, and sometimes speedily, into separations.

Married to the Brand - Part III

CALL ME IRREPLACEABLE

Passion can be detected and monitored, and that paves the way for how it can be managed. The metric for assessing brand Passion consists, as with the other three components of brand attachment, of two related rating scales:

• [Brand] is the perfect [company/product/brand/store] for people like me.
• I can't imagine a world without [Brand].

Copyright 2000 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ. All rights reserved.

Time after time, customers show they can readily rate the brands they use on these two scales. That doesn't mean customers are passionate about lots of brands. They're not. It means only that their ratings are clear and consistent indicators of the extent to which their brand marriages are marked by a deep commitment -- a sense of brand Passion -- and not merely by convenience or habit.

Studies show that there are vast differences between competing brands:

• In a survey in India, almost a third (31%) of the buyers of one packaged food product had Passion for that brand. Their competitor generated Passion among only 22%.
• In a grocery shopper survey in the United States, one chain built brand Passion among just one in six (16%) of its customers but was attempting to compete with a chain that had achieved this same level of customer Passion with almost half (45%) of its customers.
• A leading U.S. insurance company had created Passion among one in five (22%) of its current customers, while attempting to compete with other companies whose levels of Passion ranged from 31% to 53%.

Insurance might not seem like a category that would be marked by much Passion. That's why many financial services products have been marketed like commodities. However, just because companies treat their products like commodities does not mean that consumers view them that way.

Consumers are passionate about the brands they feel are perfect for them -- brands they feel they absolutely couldn't do without. The second component rating illustrates how consumers feel about this relationship: "I can't imagine a world without [Brand]." It sounds extreme, and it is. That's intentional, because we're searching for truly great brand marriages. This measure separates world-class performers from merely good ones; it distinguishes the passionate from the perfunctory.

We've found Passion in almost every product category. We've found it among rich customers and poor ones, among the old and the young, and among men and women. Business customers express Passion, as do individual end-users. We've found it in Thailand and Brazil, as well as in Germany, Japan, and the United States. In short: Passion is there, even if it seems invisible, and even if nobody has noticed until now.

Married To The Brand - Part II

Chapter Eleven
The Emotional Pinnacle: Brand Marriage

Confidence, Integrity, and Pride constitute a brand edifice of which any CEO should be justifiably proud. Yet, as with every building, there are the finishing touches that separate the temporary from the permanent, and that represent the difference between a functional dwelling and a greatly cherished dream home. The difference between "like" and "love" in a customer relationship is Brand Passion.Consumers who are passionate about a brand are convinced that it's absolutely perfect for them. Moreover, they've come to believe that their world would be somehow incomplete if that brand were no longer available.

There are products that seem irreplaceable. These include essentials, like refrigeration or antibiotics and other wonder drugs. They also include more mundane products and services that have carved out unrivaled niches in the everyday lives of consumers: The television remote, cell phones, microwaves, and e-mail fall into this category. We can't live without them.

However, brands also inspire Passion:

"I couldn't live without ... Shredded Wheat. I have it every day. It's part of my daily routine, and without it my day isn't complete. It sounds silly, but when my husband went to eat the last bowl yesterday, I bit his head off."

"Without that brand? I would feel as if I'd lost a good friend."

"For me, it's Casual Corner. When I go there, they know who I am. I have a sense of comfort there, and I'm always happy to pick up the phone (when they call)."

"Singapore Airlines. They have great customer service. Once, when I was sick, they took care of me. I felt really taken care of. They went the extra mile."

Even business-to-business customers express their passion for some brands:

"Frankly, I just don't know what we'd do without them. They've always been there for us. They don't just react to our emergencies, and we have plenty of those. They keep coming to us with ideas. I think they care as much about our success as we do."

Passion is at the apex of the brand attachment pyramid. It's the ultimate emotional bond for any brand, one manifested in the customer's dedication to supporting and even evangelizing its merits.

While hardly widespread, brand Passion is evident in some surprising places. We've found it not only in the land of luxury vehicles and resort hotels, but also in the presumably dispassionate world of mortgages, gas stations, and packaged cheese. It's there, waiting to be stoked -- and to be understood.

Wherever there is brand Passion, there are also rival brands that fall short of their competitors -- and some that don't even come close. These latter brands suffer as a result; they have weaker emotional links with customers, and they're also vulnerable to the negative business consequences that follow from a flimsy customer relationship.

Married to the Brand - Part I

Married to the Brand: Why Consumers Bond With Some Brands for Life
by William J. McEwen
Gallup Press - November 2005
210 Pages - 1595620052

William J. McEwen explains brand Passion and why some consumers crave the brand name and others don't. Here are a few excerpts from McEwen's book about the passion that encourages consumers to pay the extra 1000's of dollars for a BMW or shell out the money for the new Apple Nano.