Opinionated Blog

I'm sure that most of you have seen the Susan Boyle/Britain's Got Talent video by now on YouTube. I saw it last week when the views were fewer than 10 million and it has already surpassed 40 million. If you haven't seen it yet, please check it out - it will make your day.

Low expectations are fertile ground for growing brand loyalty.

Companies spend a lot of money creating awareness and desire for their brands. Building positive expectations before the purchase. And so they should.

But here’s the catch, if the company fulfills its promise (price, service, quality, etc.) it merely lives up to what is already expected from its customer base. The customer is satisfied, but is not turned into a raving fan, passionately promoting the experience and the brand to anyone who cares to listen. There’s not a lot of brand equity to win by just doing what’s expected.

Now, at some point most products or services (if not all..) will fail in some area. Or, to put it in brand lingo terms, the product does not live up to its brand promise; the battery on your Mac laptop suddenly dies, the air-condition in your Toyota goes cold, the concierge at your hotel forgets to give you that wake-up call.

Not only is that annoying in itself, but the process of fixing the problem is in most cases the real pain in the...

For instance, your 14 month old vacuum cleaner sucks.. and not the way it’s supposed to. The mouth piece breaks in two and all you can do is vacuum small circular areas the size of a golf ball.
Now, subconsciously you’ve already gone through the scenario: Trying to find a relevant phone number on the manufacturer’s website, figuring out the specific part number, navigating through their phone maze, shipping the broken piece and finally getting the new part delivered straight to your front door - when you are not at home. In other words, you expect an experience you could do without.

And, this is where the opportunity is. The vacuum cleaner manufacturer has a perfect occasion to turn you into a raving fan of the brand by having a post-sales system in place that eliminates those steps mentioned above. Simply because you don’t expect to be wow’ed.

Here’s an example from my own world. I recently had a new faucet installed in my kitchen. About six months later the shower head (yes, it came with that..) didn’t work and I was immediately dreading an experience similar to the vacuum cleaner spiel. But to my great surprise, and relief, it turned out to be a completely hassle-free experience. No sending parts back and forth, no trying to find the receipt or arguing that it was covered by warranty. Just a quick phone call to a very nice sales person, and three days later the part was delivered to my home at a scheduled time.

I had never heard of this particular brand before, had no emotional connection to it, even though I use the faucet every day. But the fact that it broke down, or rather, the fact that Pegasus (for that is it’s name) had a system in place that completely wiped out my (negative) expectations, and transformed me from a brand ignorant to a brand evangelist for the company. No marketing dollars they could have spend, could have placed the brand so effectively on my short list as this post-sales system taking advantage of my pre-conceived, negative, expectations.

And next time I, or anyone I know, need a product within their range, you bet I’ll be a passionate Pegasus brand evangelist. The product failed, the brand prevailed.

There seems to be a lot of mystery about how great new brand names are created and where they come from. I read articles on how extensive name testing is done and how professional linguists help guarantee success and it drives me nuts. Take a look at this Wikipedia link on the etymology of some of the world's most recognizable brands to see where their names came from. My favorite one is the story of Kinko's.