If you’ve been following along in this article series, we’re now on our third date. This is getting serious. Or maybe for some it’s our first date. Either way, if you need a quick reminder of our dating profile, skim through the previous articles about defining brand experience and making sure yours is relevant.
We’ve covered the foundations for creating a lifelong relationship with customer, employees, investors and everyone important for true brand love. I.e., building up a stronger brand equity. Today, we’re talking about #2 of our four essentials for mapping the brand experience: gaps.
Brand equity is the commercial value that derives from consumer perception of the brand name of a particular product or service, rather than from the product or service itself (thanks, Oxford Dictionaries). Getting the highest return on that depends on the seamless experience, because where there are gaps equity leaks out.
As a simple example, let’s say you’re a B2B brand that stands for simplicity. Well, if finding a parking space outside your sales office, figuring out your check-in system, and hooking up my laptop to your conference room WiFi are just complicated, you’ve already lost me on simplicity. Now there’s this subconscious break with your brand experience that you have to work harder to recover from in your next interaction with me.
As we work with the Brand Experience Infinity Loop, we need to be on the lookout for gaps, and realize they can happen anywhere.
In fact, one of the less recognized ways companies are leaking brand equity is through internal gaps, like employee happiness, which radiate outward to affect customer experience. Internal gaps are often the first gaps we look for when helping with a company’s brand experience strategy because the customer experience depends on employees embracing and sincerely expressing the core of what their brand stands for. Not to mention that employee happiness and brand love is proven to increase productivity and profitability.
At Graal Brand Agency, we’ve just been part of a success story with a client that recovered from a low point in both results and employee energy – doubling their EBITDA in three years. A revitalization of their brand played an important part, as we focused on the brand experience to energize employees. And let me tell you, the celebration party when they hit their target was pure love. Now, we can’t wait to release their brand experience externally. Here’s just a peek.
And you can check out their brand music on Spotify.
Now, finding gaps in your brand experience is not a failure. Everyone has them. But not everyone is looking for them actively in the right places. So finding gaps is the best kind of opportunity. It gives you an edge because you can work on closing them and strengthening your brand experience over your competitors’.
So now we’re three articles into our relationship: THE brand experience, relevance, and gaps. For our fourth date tomorrow, we’re getting personal and breaking down your silos.
