Building Winning Brands - 4 of 16

The fourth most important thing to know about building winning brands is that the brand and its products and services must exceed customer expectations. 

No amount of customer communication and relationship building can compensate for inferior or even parity products and services.  New brands win in the marketplace because they meet customer needs in superior ways. 

Amazon.com introduced a new, much easier way for people to find and purchase books on specific topics (through its sophisticated search and browse techniques and its 24x7 store hours). 

Starbucks turned coffee drinking into a pampering, indulgent experience. 

Chrysler’s PT Crusier and the new Volkswagon “bug” sold so well because of their superior design aesthetics. 

Midwest Express delivers a superior level of airline service throughout the cabin with its “best care in the air” promise. 

Think of the brands that have exceeded your expectations.  They are likely to be “tops” in your consideration sets for the products and services that they provide.

The “legendary service” movement in the eighties is as important today as it was then.  That movement encourages brands to deliver legendary service so that people feel compelled to tell others about the incredibly positive brand experience.  For example, Saturn created a television commercial spreading the news about one of its dealers flying to Alaska on a rented plane to replace a part on a recalled car in the customer’s own garage.

In their tremendously popular Harvard Business Review article, “Breaking Consumer Compromises,” George Salk, Jr., David K. Pecault and Benjamin Burnett state that the best way to create breakaway business growth is to identify all the ways in which a business has made compromises with the consumer and then break them all so that that consumer gets exactly what he needs and wants.  Brands exist because they meet important customer needs in compelling ways.  They thrive because they exceed customer expectations.

Through rigorous brand equity research, The Blake Project has discovered that five factors drive customer brand insistence: awareness, accessibility, value, relevant differentiation and emotional connection.  Three of these brand insistence drivers make my top 16 list: awareness, relevant differentiation and emotional connection.