The Minder

In my last post I argued that real brand strategy is too big, too important and too much work to be expressed only through a creative brief that goes to communication specialists, design firms, public relations types and advertising agencies. In Part One I proposed the Organizational Brief, in which the implications of the brand are fully explored across everything you do, not just marketing. In Part Two I propose the Experience Brief in which the real work of the brand – the experiences that it creates – are explicitly identified and managed throughout the organization.

Beware the brand ambassador
The more go-getter brand managers of the world have figured this out (sort of) and are creating armies of “brand ambassadors” and “front-line staff” who “live the brand”. I’ve seen “brand alignment” programs rolled out to everyone from phone repair crews to grocery store butchers to hotel front-of-house staff and more. We’ve all read the business magazine features on creating armies of customer service representatives with uniform training, consistent call scripts and water-tight service protocols, all linked to unified CRM data and all guided by the all-important brand promise.

Is this making you feel a bit queasy? Me too. Nothing creates a worse experience than feeling that you’re just an X in somebody’s playbook and you’re being moved up the field according to the “brand-right” rules. Furthermore, how can you really claim a brand promise if you have to fit a whole lot of ugly step-sisters into very tiny jeweled shoes? Isn’t the brand, by definition, something that is embedded in the culture, not imposed programmatically? My third issue with this kind of approach is that it invariably focuses on the so-called “customer touch-points” or the obvious ways in which customers interact. What about all the other experiences that make up your brand: experiences inside the organization (if Staples wanted to represent Easy for customers and were Stonewalling each other, the promise would be a lot harder to deliver); experiences for investors (if IBM doesn’t bring some Innovation that Matters to their investor relations, how credible is their promise to customers?) and so on to prospective customers, government, communities, unions, recruits, alumni and yes, even competitors.

Define the experience, not the tasks
As if three strikes didn’t make an out, my biggest objection to the brand ambassador regime is that it tends to define the actions, words, deeds and constraints of the ambassadors, as opposed to defining the experience we want to create and then granting the freedom to act based on clear values and good judgment. In other words, its better to help people understand what the brand means, let them spell out what it means to them, and then let them interpret it as situations arise. I’ll say more about the power of meaning to motivate staff in a future post, but it is my strong belief that people want to know why what they do matters to the people they are selling to, and if you can make that clear, they will find a way to make it happen. A brand promise is a lot more likely to help in this regard than anything you will say to them about shareholder value, market share or even corporate social responsibility.

This may sound and a bit scary, especially for enterprises with 50,000 CSR’s in ten countries and a turnover rate of 30% per year. I won’t tell you to throw out the play-book yet, maybe just tear out those pages that say “thank-you for choosing CIBC” when I’ve just called to threaten to cancel my account….

Focus on where the experience is forged
The Experience Brief is designed to help focus on the experiences that have the greatest impact on those that matter most to you. It begins with an inventory of the major interactions with whomever you consider to be your most important audiences. Customers are examined by segment, as are employees, suppliers, regulators, recruits, community groups, professional associations and so on.

For each of the most important groups, target experiences are defined that are closely linked to the brand promise. Important: this is about THEM not about YOU. It is the impressions, feelings and beliefs that you want to occur in THEIR minds, through what you do.

As with the Creative Brief, the Experience Brief is then used by every division and department of the organization to inform service standards, interaction protocols and whatever else the playbook demands, based on your strategy and the economics of your relationships. Done right, the Experience Brief will highlight gaps and opportunities in the experience and can be a gateway to new and expanded offers.

This may seem like a daunting task, but you can start small. Try it with one customer segment. Then see how it affects the breadth of your offer, the behaviour of your people, and the loyalty of your customers.