“Customer-Centered” Branding = Waste of Time
Your customers are valuable, but not when it comes to developing your brand. The “customer-centered” approach to branding argues that you should get permission and validation from the customer before developing your branding concepts and value propositions. The “customer-centered” approach basically means that customers are surveyed to find out where there is a need and then the company works to fulfill it. This sounds very logical – in a sense of supply and demand. However, in reality, “customer-centered” branding and marketing is the road to mediocrity. It pigeon-holes innovation by limiting the brilliant inventions of the future.
It is good to be in constant communication with your customers. Sales people, anyone on the front side of your company, and the executive staff are the best sources to use when developing and maintaining the brand of your company. They should be in sync with your company’s “crowd”. Better yet, they should be elbow-to-elbow with your crowd to have a “finger on the pulse” sense of what is in demand in the your specific market.
But any vital business constitutes just a tiny fraction of the customer’s life. As a customer, I want to know what is possible for the future of the product. I rely on the people who eat, sleep and drink their products all day long to come up with the next big thing. Surprise me! As your customer, I have no clue as to what the next new feature for the printer will be. I expect the innovative people in the printing industry to take care of this with no effort on my part. Don’t ask me what I want in a survey or focus group — I might want a printer that prints on invisible paper, what do I know? Show me your innovation and let me be the judge as to whether you actually improved the customer experience for me. I will applaud your efforts with cash.
Why doesn’t “customer-centered” branding work? Branding and marketing that is based on research is frequently irrelevant, unimaginative, and outdated. Time and again, the most enthusiastic survey respondents who swear that your product is the greatest, won’t spend a nickel to buy your product. Finally, if you have to survey your clients to know what they want, you will be delayed in fulfilling your customer’s demand; once you know where there is a need, you still need to develop, test, and market your new product or service.
If you are looking to develop a great brand with a powerful position, don’t look to your customer for answers or approval. It wasn’t the coffee drinker who came up with duplicating the Milan coffee bar experience in the US. Not even the original owner of Starbucks, who was standing right in the middle of the goldmine, could understand the brand’s scope. Genius-level ideas don’t come from the suggestion box (however, the principle of the suggestion box is valid in another context). Great branding concepts come from obsessed, but in-touch business people deciding to brilliantly elevate their customer’s experience…without permission, without surveys.
Brand well and prosper!
Andy Cleary