I was struck when walking through Heathrow by the great use that brands make of this type of space – and of a captive audience.

Jack Daniels currently has an area dedicated to experiencing whisky, which really brings to life the brand’s values, time, care, quality ingredients and American heritage – a great way to make the link to its new ‘Gentleman Jack’ launch, which I doubt I would have noticed otherwise, and certainly would have been unlikely to link back to Jack Daniels.

We often take it for granted when we refer to a ‘brand’ that we all mean the same thing when we use the word.  Sometimes, however, it is useful to return back to basics and remind ourselves of the power of a really simple definition.

We believe that a ‘brand’ is more than a just a logo and is more than just an advertising campaign… a ‘brand’ is the total customer experience with a company across all of its touchpoints, as a result of buying and using the products and services sold and operated under the brand name. So, the brand name represents the overall promise of a certain experience which a company makes to its customers.

How would you describe your brand’s promise of a customer experience across all of its touchpoints? We can help you define this promise to help make your customers’ experience even more powerful than it is already and truly differentiated from the competition.

•  ‘Interactions with brands are sources of experience, experiences which influence consumer attitudes’ – P. Gomy / F. Casellas
• ‘The only source of knowledge is experience’ – Albert Einstein
• “A brand is a living entity – and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures” – Michael Eisner, CEO Disney
• “What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children” – William Blake
• “Every detail…image…shadow…placements…contributes to the user’s associations and judgements about the company they are dealing with” – Shawn Borsky

Borrowed with pride from all over the place.

Great brands are so much more than just the name on a product or base for a good advert; they are the vehicles for a set of values which invite consumers to become immersed in their beliefs and personality beyond the immediate product experience.  When this works, it delivers a broader understanding of the brand in the consumers’ minds…making it a brand experience that enables the brand to resonate more personally with consumers.

So…how is your brand creating an experience for its customers?

• ‘We express a variety of visual messages, but the overall message must be constant and coherent. You must sense the unity and power of the brand’ – Shiro Nakamura, Nissan
• ‘If you design your brand as theatre, plan to sell tickets’ – Brian Phipps
• ‘A great brand is more than just a product; a great brand is something that people want to be part of and share in’ – Anon
• ‘Either you make the customer experience or it gets made without you’ – N. Vale
• ‘The more space a brand occupies in our minds, the more chance it has to attract customers’ – Pierre Gomy

 Stolen with pride from all over the place.

Spied this brilliant piece of brand engagement work from Durex. A really outstanding example of how to use insight to drive compelling communication.

In this case the insight in question being ”young men don’t really worry about sexually-transmitted diseases but nothing scares them like the responsibility of a baby”! Watch the video to see what happens when their iPhone is impregnated by Bluetooth…

Will be interesting to see what results this creates for Durex’s new owners, Reckitt Benckiser!

We’ve been running a lot of interactive workshops recently for clients investigating the brand engagement, experience and communications opportunities presented by social media and smartphones, so maybe it was this that was on my mind when I made the digital world shaking discovery that one of my favourite brands does not (yet?) have an app…

I work in branding. I follow brands. I like to hear from Marmite about what’s going on in their world. I enjoy the daily eye candy offered by Australian underwear and swimwear brand AussieBum on Facebook. On Twitter I keep track of when the next Les Mills exercise classes will be released. I use the Amazon app to check prices and save my window shopping don’t-need-but-really-wants for later. I’ve welcomed these brands into my day-to-day life and love the content they provide… so imagine my horror when I found out that my favourite branded coffee shop, Caffe Nero, did not have an app that would help me find their nearest cafe. Why, marketing Gods, why?

Starbucks has a nice little app that uses your location to find the nearest store. You can customise the search to only see stores on the map if they have wireless or serve oven warmed food etc. This is simple, practical and intuitive. When driving to a far off meeting an app like this is almost life-saving to a caffeine addict.

For me, and for customers like me, apps are rapidly becoming part of our lives. I was initially delighted when I found the Starbucks app, but realise, now that the surprise has passed, that apps like this are now almost a hygiene feature in my brand experience. I’ve seen it from one brand, then I expect it from another and become peeved when it isn’t available. Makes me sound horribly spoiled… but I guess that’s the point about delighting factors becoming expectations.

Whilst it won’t stop me visiting and loving Nero, I do feel differently about them, as well as differently about Starbucks. Must remember to use myself as a case study in the next workshop…! Now, where’s my app dammit?!