
For a couple of years way back in the seventies there were basically two tribes in the UK. You were punk or you were not. The Sex Pistols were storming the charts despite being banned (or arguably because they were banned), and the simple addition of a dog collar – that is a collar for a dog, not the thing vicars sport – or a safety pin to an otherwise boring outfit or school uniform broadcast your allegiance to society.
It didn’t last long. To quote the much lamented and missed Vivienne Westwood: “punk collapsed with the death of Sid Vicious in 1979”. After that you might be punk-ish, or new romantic-ish or rave-ish but style and music were not as polarised.
This came to mind when I heard an agency ceo recently refer to the tribal nature of Great Britain, and suggest that the divisions were deeper now than ever.
Not as deep as the summer of 77! Watch Danny Boyle’s Sex Pistols for an accurate evocation of the summer of the Jubilee and the release and the banning of God Save the Queen. And despite all the divisions of recent years, the nation is united now in a storm of indignation about real issues: climate crises, cost of living crises and the NHS; even if the ideas about solutions are divided by politics.
Back to our business: I have never been a fan of media tribes: over engineered clusters of consumers to differentiate targeting.
As a woman at work, who is also a mum, a daughter, a sister, in a relationship, a home owner, a main shopper, an author and a lover of music, art, theatre and Marvel movies I have never felt like I belonged to any segment that I have heard talked about by clever planners dissecting media tribes. Depending on category, time of day/week/month and mood I can represent some of the characteristics of “Savvy Sarah”, “Cautious Catherine”, “Trendy Tina”, “Dynamic Dave” and “Geeky Gertie” all at the same time, and so of course can you. Better now of course to allow digital real time data drive your insights rather than solely to rely on statements of intent or past history. Be more Byron and make your audience anyone who has a wallet. He writes: “Sophisticated mass marketing doesn’t mean targeting everyone, nor does it mean treating everyone the same. It means …catering for only the differences that matter … This is hugely different from deciding that your brand can’t appeal to a large part of the market – a surprisingly defeatist strategy that hides under the title of “target marketing”, and (leads to the) result ..that the brand’s target audience is less than a fifth of the people who actually buy the brand and category.”
How much do you really need to segment, and exclude people from your brand communications?
My co-authors and I have written about Belonging in the workplace as the most successful way to encourage inclusion, diversity, creativity and strong teams at work. Belonging can also be a communications strategy.
No brand can afford to seek to shun potential buyers (unless their strategy is highly premium and exclusive). The opportunity for most brands is to invite everyone in. Otherwise, it’s as if a major high street retailer or bank were to turn people away at the door for being too old, too young, or too different for what they were wearing. Our Inclusive Planning practises have resulted in growth for many brands by speaking specifically and empathetically to certain cohorts of people. EssenceMediacom’s Claire McAlpine championed this at Campaign’s Media360 conference last year. Of course the messaging needs to ensure that the product or service is relevant to the people you reach, but that’s about tailoring comms, not excluding people.
Of course, it is crucial to optimise media to drive returns, but in case after case we have seen plans that optimise to a sub optimal level by prioritising efficiency at the expense of growth.
In 2023 it is crucial to have a growth mentality at work. If we are to rise to the top of the competitive set we must have an inclusive and belonging strategy to drive creativity, positivity and expansion.
If every aspect of your customer experience does not support, or even exceed, the promise of the brand then you’re limiting your business and its growth.
February 21st, 2023In 2008 a Chicago based marketing man Jonathan Salem Baskin wrote a best selling book: “Branding only works on cattle”. The argument in the book was that if you focussed solely on building a brand in a silo, separately from customer service and pricing, then you would never optimise the full commercial potential of that brand.
Jon and I followed up with my first co-authored book, “Tell the truth, honesty is your most powerful marketing tool”, in 2012, with dozens of case studies proving the efficacy leveraging the brand power across the whole marketing experience.
In 2023 the necessity of making sure that every aspect of a user experience is easy and smooth is more crucial than ever.
In fact, the better the brand impression the lower people’s tolerance of substandard experience.
Let’s use an analogue example to illustrate this. I really like reading paper magazines occasionally over breakfast. There’s lots of screens in my life, sometimes its good to have something to spill your coffee on without cataclysmic consequences. I love the FT and its always there on my phone as a constant companion, but it’s good to be broad in information gathering.
Last summer, after buying a copy at a travel hub and enjoying it, we made the slightly anachronistic decision to subscribe to the print edition of a prestigious UK current affairs magazine. Which we enjoyed sitting at the kitchen table. Then the postal strike happened and the magazine stopped coming. Weeks later it still hasn’t turned up, and the subscriptions department has (according to their latest email exchange) lost all our details. They’ve suggested I look at the packaging from the last issue and send them a number from a corner of the envelope. Unfortunately, since I had no idea that the last magazine was the last I would see, I failed to preserve the envelope and it is long since in the recycling bin. In fact, I imagine that by now it has been recycled into something new and exciting. (Perhaps a paper hat?) Had I known I would of course have kept the packaging with the reverence due any such relic.
Anyway, as you can tell, the whole thing is more annoying because I hold the product and the brand in high regard. Its an intelligent read. I expect the subs team to know what they can do to solve things. Sadly, it may soon be farewell to the whole experience. Had this been a more frivolous magazine, Private Eye perhaps, or Viz, then my expectations would be much lower.
If every aspect of your customer experience does not support, or even exceed, the promise of the brand then you’re limiting your business and its growth. As Andy Nairn writes here, this includes how your employees are feeling. Not just the ones that are customer facing but all the ones with friends and families to whom they will report just how they are feeling about the workplace (ie all of them).
Perhaps if someone had picked up the phone to me from the subs team it would have been better? Perhaps the editor could have got in touch? After all he “sent” an email when I took out the sub. People have a lower tolerance of poor digital experiences as this IPA study proved where IBM’s former partner Bridget van Kranlingen commented: “The last best experience that anyone has anywhere, becomes the minimum expectation for the experience they want everywhere”. Not just want, expect. Especially from a brand with high quality associations.
Every brand needs to take every opportunity to optimise and drive customer value with a joined up experience to fulfil the expectations driven by the best brands. Any siloes, whether they originate in legacy agencies or internal politics, will risk your brand losing out to the competition. A token effort to bridge siloes doesn’t work. Organising and building for one customer experience is crucial.
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