Difference – Its The Story of How to Create Difference for your Customers

For the past year and a half, I have enjoyed reading Bernadette Jiwa’s Brand Marketing Blog “The Story of Telling”. Bernadette’s blog focuses on the importance of storytelling in brand marketing. Her posts are short, simple and inspiring.

Bernadette is a brand storyteller and strategist who challenges traditional approaches to marketing. She recently published a new book titled “Difference”. I highly recommend “Difference”. It’s a must read book for innovative marketers. Difference challenges you to re-think your approach to marketing. Many people view marketing’s role as creating demand for existing products. Conventional wisdom advocates developing a product and then creating a big marketing funnel in order to sell it.

Difference redefines how successful brands will be marketed in the future. In Bernadette’s view marketing is not a department, it’s the story of how we create difference for our customers. The businesses that succeed tell a better story because they have learned to recognize what’s true for their customers and then create solutions that matched their worldview. As Bernadette points out, “the truth is that people don’t fall in love with ideas at all. They fall in love with how those ideas, products, services and places makes them feel”. People don’t buy features they buy promises.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when Bernadette shares her story of growing up in Dublin, the storytelling capital of the world. Bernadette describes how her little brother Johnny never greeted her by saying “hello” or “how are you?” The only question Johnny ever asked was, “what’s the story?” This is a common way to greet people in Ireland. It’s an open ended question that asks people to tell everything that’s important right now. Many great stories flowed from that simple greeting.

Difference thinking is more than the ability to connect the dots, though. It’s about seeing the truth, recognizing the opportunity in that truth and then acting on it. It isn’t the person with the best idea who wins; it’s the person who has the greatest understanding of what really matters to people.

The Difference Model outlined in the book flips product development on its head. Instead of starting with the idea, it begins with an examination of people’s current reality and explores what’s possible in a world where the problems and desires of those people are solved and met. A fundamental premise of the difference model is empathizing with your customer and asking questions to better understand your customer.

The Difference Model is consists of the following elements:

• Principles – What’s the truth about us, the industry, the market and the people we want to serve.
• Purpose – Why do we exist?
• People – Who are the people we want to serve? What do they value? What’s their current reality?
• Personal – How can we change how people feel?
• Perception – What do people believe about you? What would you like them to believe about you?
• Product – What do people really want?

Difference cites examples of many brands who have taken this approach to solving customers needs. Examples include Apple, Uber, By the Way Bakery, Warby Parker, Airbnb and The Rubix Cube.

Bernadette has created a Difference Map to help guide you through the process. You can download the map at Difference.is. It is a wonderful tool for planning innovation.

Read Difference and experience a new way of thinking about marketing.

Brand Design is a Key Differentiator

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, brand design is a key differentiator. Design plays a critical role in brand building. Design can be a new product, a service experience, packaging, logo, advertising or a retail environment. Great design is a solution to a consumer need or problem. Design is a strategic skill. Design is not just a decorative act. Great design produces value. An excellent designer takes the values of a company and transforms them in a way that connects with people on an emotional level.

Design has added billions of dollars worth of revenue for brands that understand its power and purpose. In today’s economy, design is the soul of strategy. You don’t have to look very far for examples of brands where this principle is applied with phenomenal results: Apple, Nike, Starbucks, BMW, Harley Davidson, Herman Miller, Target, Gillette, Virgin – every one of these enterprises are absolute fanatics about design and its fundamental importance to their business strategy. In a world of growing complexity and abundant choice, design can set a brand apart. A simple well thought out authentic design is often the best.

Branding and design are to a large extent, inseparable. A brand is more than your logo or identity, it is the feeling that people have about you. Smart design creates the experiences that people have with a brand. Design needs to be strategic from the outset. It provides an opportunity to drive innovation and create solutions. Good designers approach design as an opportunity to ask questions and challenge assumptions. Many successful companies have created the position of Chief Design Officer. This helps to ensure that design is part of the process from the beginning.

For brands to stay relevant, they need to develop emotional consumer connections through experiences. Creating these “experiences”, and the value they offer people, is the result of the strategic and creative process called Brand Design. Great brands have great design teams.

What is your favorite example of great brand design?

JC Penney’s Failure to Market Test Its New Strategy Was a Big Mistake

Former CEO Ron Johnson faced a monumental task in trying to revitalize the JC Penney Brand when he took the helm late in 2011. He failed to turn-around JC Penney and in fact the situation deteriorated during his 17 month tenure as evidenced by a 25% comp store decrease in 2012. In early 2012, Johnson unveiled an aggressive vision for a “new” JCP that included new brands, in-store shops and a new pricing strategy. For years, JC Penney had been losing relevance with the American public. However, the chain still had a loyal core group of shoppers who responded to aggressive sales.

One of Johnson’s biggest mistakes was failing to test and refine his new ideas before rolling them out. In the first quarter of 2012, when the new strategies were announced, JC Penney was not yet in a dire situation. It was merely a dowdy, third-rate department store that needed to appeal to younger shoppers while maintaining its core customer base. The full-bore, across the nation re-branding and remodeling was way more aggressive than what was needed. He made big changes, extremely rapidly, without testing them like retailers and direct marketers usually do. Johnson has been quoted as saying, “we didn’t test at Apple.”

In a January 2013 post, I advocated that JC Penney needed to start to take a lean startup approach and rapidly test and refine new product, marketing and merchandising concepts. With over 1,100 stores, they missed a huge opportunity to market test new ideas and learn from customer response before making a big expensive bet rolling out big changes. Market Testing is a critical tool that should be used whenever possible to refine and improve ideas. Johnson mis-read the pace that JC Penney’s core customers were willing to change and the appeal of his ideas to new customers.

I believe that Johnson had some great ideas to re-make JC Penney’s. However, by failing to properly test and refine those ideas before they were rolled out nationally with great hype, we will never know if they would have worked in the long-term. Personally, I wanted his ideas to work. The future of JC Penney’s is very much in doubt. A return to the short-term sales promotional tactics of the past may stabilize sales for a while but is not a long-term strategy for success.

What do you think of JC Penney’s long term chances?

Which Brands provide the best Customer Experience?

I often hear people complain about there experiences with companies. They are frustrated by long lines, rude associates or overseas call centers who recite rules and scripts and show little empathy for their needs. It seems that customer experience and service in this country has gotten worse the past couple of years. Many companies don’t seem motivated to improve customer experience.  At best, they deliver an average or poor customer experience.

With product parity in many business categories, delivering an excellent customer experience is critical for brands to be successful in today’s competitive environment. In my experience few brands have figured out how to deliver an excellent customer experience. A recent study conducted by Forrester Research showed that 75% of the companies surveyed stated that it was their goal to differentiate on the basis of customer experience. However, only 3% of companies deliver a truly excellent customer experience. Companies like Amazon, Apple, Southwest Airlines, Four Seasons Hotels and Zappos consistently deliver an excellent customer experience. This excellent customer experience has helped drive strong brand loyalty.

So what actually is Customer Experience? Customer Experience is how customers perceive their interactions with a company. These interactions could be with a product or service, on the phone, online in store or through advertising. Good customer experiences are useful, easy and enjoyable.

The companies that are great at customer experience have a clear purpose that is visible and understood by all. Purpose is the definitive statement about the difference you are trying to make in the world. They spend time making sure that their employees understand their purpose and understand the behaviors necessary to bring this purpose to life.

In your opinion what brand or company you do business with delivers the best customer experience?