That’s right – an expert. Put me up alongside Stephen Hawking and Physics, Sir Alex Ferguson and football management, and Steve Jobs and the above black-turtle-neck-blue-jeans combo. I’ve had a mere ten days work experience at a brand consultancy and a totally unrelated degree, but I’m still a brand expert. And so are you, whatever your experience.
It was recently estimated that consumers (what a horrible word – since when do the people ‘consume’ anything other than food and drink?) are subjected to over 4000 marketing communications per day. Is this figure exaggerated? Well firstly, let’s clarify what a marketing communication really is. Wikipedia tells us, in its never unreliable manner, that MarCom is defined as ‘a message and any related medium used to communicate with the market’. It goes on to cite advertising, branding, graphic design, marketing, packaging, PR and sponsorship as just some examples of MarCom. So, if I look up from my desk and around my computer I can count ten marketing communications, through brand logos, names or unique designs. If I look back at my laptop, I can count another 31 examples through similar media. So, from the few seconds that it took me to count those messages, it is not impossible to envisage the above estimation as being true, in which case it adds up to 1,460,000 marketing communications in one year. It is also estimated that we remember just 5% of those messages and shed the others, directed by our personal response to a brand’s messaging. This efficient separation of the wheat from the chaff is just one reason why we are all brand experts.
Another reason is adequately portrayed in the below image. I bet you’re able to spot which global brands these first letters belong to.
From matching the letter with the brand name, you also probably have a, at least general, idea as to what the brand stands for. This little experiment is adapted in the image below, too. We can all instantly spot that the brand image doesn’t match the brand name. It is this – a minute glimpse at a brand’s communication – that gives a brand such power over the people to whom they market. What’s more, in contrast, it is this glimpse that gives the people such power over the brand as from it, we can swiftly decide, from our past experience and relationship with the brand, whether to file its message in the 95% of communications that we forget every day, or the 5% that we remember.
This word, relationship, is the crux of another reason why we are all brand experts. If we think of words that are connected to our perception of ‘relationship’, we think of loyalty, trust, honesty, reliability, understanding and much more. I can certainly think of one sustained relationship that I have with a brand – Apple. Apple is loyal and reliable to me in that it is consistent in producing quality products. I trust it to carry on producing these quality products, I understand its products and position in the market and it has always been honest in its messaging... Well, that is until recently. The saga with the iPhone 4 has left a rare sour taste in the mouths of many regular (and crucially, first-time) Apple customers due to the unclear and not consistently honest messaging over the seemingly simple issue with their new product’s antenna signal. When the time comes for me to look for a new smartphone, I will certainly consider other brands when previously I would have not have hesitated at buying an iPhone. Apple and I will be on a break. You see, while personal relationships are more like partnerships, relationships between a customer and a brand are led almost wholly by the customer (one anomaly is ISPs' threat to ban illegal downloaders). Crucially, it is this that qualifies each and every one of us as a brand expert for if, as Stevie Wonder recently joked on stage in London, ‘this relationship has turned into a relationshit’, we can always pack up and consider as a replacement one of those 4000 marketing communications we receive everyday.
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