The Brand Trust Deficit

I’ve been blogging about the trust deficit in the marketing industry. Today I ran smack into another example that has me both mad and frustrated.

Mom and I went to the drug store to pick up some essentials of summer living, including some insect repellent.  So of course we looked at SC Johnson’s brand, OFF!.  Right on its home page, SC Johnson proudly announces that OFF! is a brand of insect repellents for every occasion. So we bought an OFF! citronella candle, in order to sit outside relatively bug free. 

So we get the candle home, and Mom reads the package.  On the top of the package (which is not visible on the shelf), it says, “not intended to repel mosquitoes”. 

 

 

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. A brand that has been carefully built by S.C. Johnson for the past fifty years or so based on the positioning of being a superior insect repellent for every occasion is now offering a product that is not intended to repel mosquitoes. What brand manager came up with that one?  

By branding these candles OFF!, the implication is that the product will repel mosquitoes. So, I now feel that I have been misled. And, to make it even more frustrating, I now have to get in the car, drive back to the store and return the product. I am now on my way to becoming a marketing resistant consumer.

We have to deliver on our brand promises, and do so in ways that persuades the consumer, not manipulates her.  Offering products that are inconsistent with the core benefit of the brand are bad. Then making a disclaimer in small print in a place not easily noticed is worse. Bad brand marketing is slowly creating sceptical, angry consumers. And I don’t blame them.

Engaging Customers Part 1

A comment from my friend Barbara about a recent post of mine on the idea of persuasion vs manipulation sparked some new thinking for me. Barbara talked about an idea one step advanced from persuasion — connection. The idea that connection creates a strong relationship isn’t all that new, the concept of one-to-one marketing is over ten years old now.  However, it is very rare that an organization has effectively achieved connection with their clients.

I think that this is for two reasons.  First, we often lack empathy for our customers.  Second, we seem to avoid engaging our customers for fear of raising their expectations. This morning I attended a talk at the university that presented the results of the National Study of Student Engagement (NSSE or “Nessie”).  Engagement was defined as time and effort spent on meaningful learning experiences. Canadian students are not feeling engaged. They are feeling like numbers in a room. And it’s hard to deliver meaningful, hands-on learning experiences in a classroom of 800 students. The un-engaging lecture is the default for all but the most dedicated teacher.

At the same time this lack of engagement is disastrous for a university. It has long term implications for the reputation of an institution, for the satisfaction of Alumnae, for recruitment and retention of students, and for fundraising efforts in the future. Engagement is a strong predictor of learning. A lack of engagement of the current crop of students has implications for any university and its brand for years to come.

Our level of positive engagement with a brand is a good predictor of our level of loyalty to the brand. There are brands that have followed highly successful engagement strategies for years.  Harley and Apple are two great examples.  They engage customers to help craft the brand.  The brand is essentially developed by the consumer, not by the manufacturer.  Good branding is not about controlling the brand, but about making that brand what the customer wants of it.  The purpose of the new Apple stores in to engage customers with the product and to learn more about what customers want in a face to face environment. 

Branding is about shaping the existing environment.  You can’t use branding to make a product or service something that it isn’t.  It isn’t real, credible and it will fail, because people have great B.S. detectors.  Persuasion is based on communicating about real features and benefits that meet real needs of real people.  Manipulation is about wall-papering over weak products or services with lots of smoke and mirrors.  In the short term, manipulation may work.  But in the long term, it is destined for failure.   

The more we can engage our customers, learn about their needs, and work to deliver to those needs effectively, the better we’ll get at achieving long term profitability.  It’s just good marketing.  But it isn’t easy, or quick.  That’s why many organizations use the manipulative short cuts.  So what kind of organization do you want to work in?