Brand Identity


Brand identities, such as that enjoyed by Starship, create anticipation in the minds of both consumers who use the brand and the employees who deliver it. The strongest brands tend to be the ones with the most consistent and clearest messages. A strong brand character, according to Mark Kingsbury of Research International, provides the following benefits: "Consumers know how to 'connect' with a brand that has character, they know what it stands for and they also know what it's not trying to be." [28]

A brand with character can never be all things to all people. This is a critical point. Successful brands do not appeal to everyone. Rather they reflect specific benefits or experiences that engage the hearts and minds of a discrete, targeted segment of consumers. Whether the segment is narrow or wide, a strong brand's identity is shaped around the unique alignment between "what we offer" and the identified consumer group's needs, aspirations, and preferences. Once the nuances of this relationship are understood and the brand is defined, the consistency of reinforcing advertising, packaging, endorsements, and customer service begins to build the relationship between the brand and the customer.

Brand identity feelings are primarily unconscious. Estimated to be as much as 95 percent below conscious awareness, [29] these feelings and judgments operate very quickly—much more quickly than conscious evaluation. [30] Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman relates the unlikely example of a manufacturer of paints, a commodity product. The organization discovered that purchasing agents were willing to pay premium prices for branded paint when salespeople linked self-esteem to the sale. [31] Zaltman notes that marketing researchers typically overlook the emotional benefits of brands, focusing 90 percent of their research on the functional benefits of products or services. [32]

This quick unconscious mental processing of such feelings impacts most of our consumer choices—even our entertainment choices. Julia Roberts has been the highest paid female star for twenty years, in great part because movie fans know if they see one of her movies they will walk away feeling good. It is a decision they do not have to think through when choosing which movie to see.

That feeling can be security: I made a good choice. It possibly is superiority: I know how to make good choices. I know value or quality when I see it. It might be excitement: I had a great time! It could also be a feeling of genuine, high value that will be long lasting: I was moved by that film. It possibly is relief: Now I can tell everyone I saw it, too! All variations of these judgments are held in the minds of customers, helping them make choices, define who they are, and simply get them through their days.

[28]Mark Kingsbury, "If Size Isn't Everything . . . What Else Matters?" (paper, Market Research Society Annual Conference, Brighton, JK, March 2002).

[29]For a complete discussion, see Fournier, "Consumers and Their Brands."

[30]See Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), and Joseph LeDoux, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Human Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998).

[31]For a complete discussion, see Gerald Zaltman, How Customers Think (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2003), ch. 10. John Hauge-land describes the speed of the unconscious, "[C]ompared to 'unconscious processing'... conscious thinking is conspicuously laborious and slow—not a lot faster than talking." John Haugeland, Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 159.

[32]Zaltman, How Customers Think, 10.




Branded Customer Service(c) The New Competitive Edge
Branded Customer Service: The New Competitive Edge
ISBN: 1576752984
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 134

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