brand as business bit:  My latest Brand New Perspectives column in QSR Magazine answers a QSR operator’s question about keeping customers coming back.

The piece outlines my thoughts on increasing purchase frequency — an objective of practically every marketer — I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the effectiveness of a heart-felt ‘thank you.’  Said with earnestness, those two words have so much power — they:

• convey emotion — humans are emotional beings
• make a personal connection — what marketer wouldn’t want to do this?
• stand out — because it’s becoming a rare occurrence
• increase profits — read the evidence in this great bit from last fall’s Fast Company
• give me a reason to buy again – nuff said

Here’s an example of a well-executed “thank you” I recently received in an order from the White House/Black Market:

Love it!

brand as business bit:  I just taught “Why Small Businesses Need Brands and How to Build Them,” a session in Marketing Profs University course on Marketing Your Small Business.

I talked about how brands don’t only create value for large companies — they’re also important to small businesses.  A couple of reasons:

Small businesses need to build relationships with suppliers and distributors, the media , investors, local government, banks, etc.  You need to stand out among the sea of proposals or plans they are inundated with and you need to be crystal clear about what your value is so they will want to business with you.  A brand can help you do just that — a thoughtfully-designed brand identity and substantive brand story communicate what the company stands for and express it in a memorable, compelling way.  If your company doesn’t have the salience and clarity that a strong brand provides, your business is likely to be passed over by these people without a second thought.

Also small businesspeople have so many decisions to make and a brand serves as a compass for making them.  For example, the pressure to grow and produce immediate results can lure entrepreneurs into pursuing areas outside the company’s initial charter.  While branching out into a new technology or adding to your service offering may make sense when viewed through the lens of short-term growth, these distractions divert precious dollars and manpower away from your top priority – that is, developing a strong and sustainable core offering.  Because a brand embodies the values of the company, it can serve as a decision-making filter when you and others are evaluating growth opportunities.

Heather Rast, the course curator, tweeted some of the other points I made — here’s a screen grab of her Twitter feed during the session:

P.S. If you’re interested in the course, it’s recorded for use on demand.  Use my code “BRANDASBIZ” when you register to save $200!

In the spirit of New York Times Magazine’s annual Year in Ideas, I’ve compiled an alphabetical digest of ideas, from A to Z, that I wrote, spoke, and passed along over the past 12 months.  The following are excerpts — the original pieces linked. 

By assembling this collection of preoccupations, provocations, and predilections, I realize how random my ramblings may seem at times – but I hope they’ve been helpful to you in some way.  So here we go:

All You Need Is Love – Love is a driver of business — when businesses are grounded in love and when leaders love the people around them, the result is growth and goodness and success and strength. (my op-ed published by the Greenville News)

Belief Repositories – “Belief repositories are fueled by hard evidence but can lead marketing teams to make investments where no experiment or marketing mix model has yet been run.” (Joel Rubinson in a guest post on my blog)

Culture Isn’t Enough — A vital, vibrant culture unifies, aligns, focuses, motivates, and propels.  But it is not enough to produce a profitable business.  Culture must be linked to, and pursued with the same rigor and vigor as, the customer experience. (blogpost)

Decrease Your Deal-Dependence with Differentiation — Differentiation is really the best way for all businesses to address consumers’ new value mindset. (my bylined article published by Franchise Update Media)

Embrace (and Enforce) an Inspiration Policy –  Clarify why inspiration is important to the company, and how people will be supported and encouraged to develop it.  (one of the top10 things i’m going to use from Andy Stefanovich’s book, “Look at More Stuff”)

Failure Is a Gift – “I think of my failures as a gift. Unless you view them that way, you won’t learn from failure, you won’t get better.” (from my three-part recap of Harvard Business Review’s Failure Issue which quoted former P&G CEO A.G. Lafley)

Grow As Slowly As You Can — Growing slowly allows you to make sure you have the right people and allows you to personally foster your culture. (learned from talk by Jason Fried, CEO of 37signals)

Health Is In the Eye of the Beholder –  Health means different things to different people — and that variation is actually good news for restaurateurs. (my bylined article published by SmartBrief for Restaurants)

Innovate Around the Person, Not the Technology — The temptation with any development in technology is to use the new capability as the starting point for innovation.  But this often leads to developments which fall short of or are off base from what end users want and need. (my guest post on CEA’s Digital Dialogue)

Just Because… “Food is served fast, doesn’t mean it has to be the typical fast food experience” – (from my recap of the reality TV show, America’s Next Great Restaurant, quoting Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle)

Kodak Tries to Bring Its Digital Revival into Focus — Kodak is not giving the consumer a reason to purchase. I don’t know that a good brand halo helps if you don’t have the ability to convert it into sales. (my POV quoted in Bloomberg Business Week)

Less Is More — “Trader Joe’s may offer customers less choice. However, in terms of ease of choosing and relevance of choice, it is definitely where less choice is more.” (C.B. Whittemore in guest post on my blog)

Modern Brand Names — Brand names reflect the business climates they’re developed in — modern brand names need to tap into the differentiating power of values and personality. (blogpost)

Not 360 Degree Marketing – “The goal shouldn’t be 360 degree marketing.  Find 10-20 degrees that give the most leverage.” (advice from Tim Maleeny, Ogilvy’s Director of Planning)

On-Stage Leadership – “Leaders are always on stage… it’s a metaphor [to explain] role modeling is the key element. They’re always in the spotlight.” (the philosophy behind Sharp Healthcare’s leadership training, as explained by Director Mark Tomaszewicz)

Progressive Brands Should Turn Their Backs on Sustainability – “Brands have a far more important – a far more exciting – role to play in helping us all move towards becoming more sustainable in our lifestyles.” (POV of Guy Champniss, Managing Director of Meltwater Consulting, as relayed in my blogpost)

Quality… of engagement is a better measure of brand strength than quantity of followers (from my piece “Leveraging ‘Like” Into Loyalty” published by Franchise Media Update)

Remarkable Retail — What makes a retail store an experience so compelling that customers will tell others about it?  Interactivity, a personal and local feel, and an editorial voice. (my e-newsletter recapping a series of Brand Experience Briefs)

Storytelling – “If you’re curating really excellent thought-provoking content, and then sparking conversations around that content, you can build that kind of equity…so that people naturally develop a relationship with you.”(recommendation from Sam Rosen, Creative Director and Co-founder of ThoughtLead)

Take a Crap – I told a CEO to “take a crap” – that is, go sit on the toilet in her restaurants — so she could see how much the details of the customer experience get overlooked.  (blogpost)

Use Your Fear – Survivors aren’t fearless.  They use fear:  they turn it into anger and focus. (one of many business leadership lessons from the book, “Deep Survival” as relayed in my presentation)

Visibility – A logo must achieve impact and contact. The former is about visibility, stating what the brand is and stands for; the latter connects the brand to the customer, making a personal, emotional connection. (my Brand New Perspectives column in QSR Magazine.)

Wallets…are becoming as unnecessary as watches.  Smart phones are easier to use, provide more functionality, and offer greater security.  (blogpost)

X…as in TEDx San Diego – spoken word artist Sekou Andrews opened this year’s event with an inspiring declaration:  ”When our ‘ready’ is ‘able,’ our will be done.” (from my slideshow recap)

You Need More Competition — More competition is a good thing because it generates increased demand, gives customers confidence, builds up infrastructure, and helps you get better. (my bylined article published by SmartBrief on Leadership)

Zappos — CEO Tony Hsieh says, “Every employee can affect your company’s brand.  Not just the front-line employees that are paid to talk to your customers.” (quoted in my speaker video)

Thank you for following, reading, re-tweeting, liking, commenting, and sharing me and my work this year!  See you in 2012 for another year of ideas!

(Here’s another installment of “brand experience briefs” — insights from my audits of new and interesting retail and restaurant concepts.)

What:  Subway Café

• a test concept featuring (as stated in the company’s press release) “an upscale coffeehouse ambience, an expanded menu, and Seattle’s Best coffee offerings including espresso drinks, lattes and frozen blended beverages, along with amenities such as Wi-Fi, and DIRECTV”
• “There are coffee people out there who like to have their Starbucks but want to have something to eat too,” one of the store managers explained the concept to the local newspaper.

Where:  Twenty locations including two stores in the San Diego market – one downtown, the other on the edge of Mission Hills, an upscale neighborhood.

What worked:

• Décor and fixtures – The only thing that seemed even somewhat appropriate were the décor and fixtures.  Instead of the standard Formica countertops and generic fixtures that adorn a regular Subway, the Subway Café featured nicer items.  A stone wall made the store seem higher quality than your typical Subway, bar stools and tables gave the place a hipper feel, and the wall hangings were eye-catching.

What didn’t work:

• Product – The coffee is advertised as Seattle’s Best brand, which is a positive association for me, but the coffee drink I ordered (a Caramel Latte) was made in one of those one-cup dispensers and that detracted from the perception — and reality — of quality coffee.  That Subway Café uses a machine to make their coffee drinks means they miss all the compelling cues of a standard coffeehouse and the benefits those cues suggest and deliver — no fresh ground coffee, no hand-made product, no sense of real ingredients.  Plus the drink tasted awful – and trust me, I am not a coffee snob.

The food selection was equally off-the-mark.  The pastry selection, standard and stale-looking, didn’t tempt even my overactive sweet tooth.  Plus the assortment skewed toward breakfast items despite my visit taking place in the late afternoon – why not offer more daypart-appropriate items like cookies, brownies, etc.?  Or better yet, use those ovens the store already has to make fresh-baked items?

• Training – The employee who served me was not trained.  She didn’t know the menu, she had to study the instructions for operating the one-cup machine (really?!), and she couldn’t answer a standard coffeehouse question (“We have half-and-half” is not an acceptable answer to the question “Do you have soy milk?”)
• Brand visuals and messaging – The store was filled with signage for Subway, Seattle’s Best (old and new visual identities), and Tazo Teas, but none of the designs or messages were integrated.   Further, the Subway Café logo has no cohesiveness – it looks like someone simply slapped on the word “Café” to the end of the Subway logo. This visual disjointedness detracts from any sense of a concept.

• Overall concept – If Subway Cafe intends to create a “third place” a la Starbucks, it’s got a long way to go.  Delivering a coffeehouse experience requires more than putting up some coffee signs and installing a coffee machine.   A different level and type of product quality and selection, service, and ambiance is called for.  Subway doesn’t have the credibility, nor the executional chops, to go there.  Plus, Subway’s primary brand equities are fresh, healthy, and made-to-order-right-in-front-of-you – Subway Café leverages none of these.

What I’d change:

• Shift gears — Focus on building Subway’s breakfast daypart.  Subway shouldn’t try to be something they’re not — especially since they’ve got a great concept as is.  This new concept is probably intended to offset the sluggish growth Subway will eventually experience, as the chain reaches a point of saturation in most markets.

So instead of creating a new concept, they should introduce a “Breakfast at Subway” program.  Offer fresh brewed Seattle’s Best drip (skip the coffee drinks), more breakfast sandwiches and sides (including fresh and perceived healthy items), and breakfast combos.  Keep executing the heck out of the grab-and-go experience that Subway does so well – and leave the coffeehouse aspirations to others.

Bottom line:  Starbucks and McDonald’s have nothing to worry about.

(Interested in learning how to improve your in-store experience?  Sign up for a Brand Experience Day.  We’ll head out into the field to experience retail concepts — good and bad — and then regroup to identify and apply the insights to your business.  Learn more.)

other brand experience briefs:

• Walmart.com store
• 77kids
• Central Market

The holiday shopping season is upon us and retailers are trying to navigate the challenges and opportunities of the new retail reality.  As a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article observed, “Americans don’t shop the way they used to.”

Between developments in social commerce, mobile apps that facilitate shopping on the go, and increases in multi-channel purchasing, retailers are faced with a multitude of possibilities for engaging customers.  They need to create a cohesive brand experience across all touchpoints.

A Customer Experience Architecture is a tool that retailers can use to optimize, prioritize, and unify all of their customer experiences.  It’s a framework for describing and delivering the optimal experiences to different customer segments in different channels.

It’s an “architecture” similar to other strategic architectures like a brand architecture or an information architecture that are used as planning tools.  Plus, assembling a Customer Experience Architecture is like building a house.

A few years ago my husband and I got the crazy idea that we would build a house.  That delusion didn’t last long, but we learned a lot about the process of designing a house — and I learned a lot about the process of designing customer experiences.  After all, a house is more than the materials to make it – we were really building our desired home experience.

So here are the steps for building a Customer Experience Architecture:

1. Brand platform — Our first step was to hire an architect and the first thing he worked with us on was our vision for the house – did we want a mission style?  Modern?  Spanish?  etc.  That vision is equivalent to your brand platform, the first step in developing a Customer Experience Architecture.  You start by defining what you want your brand to stand for, the overarching idea that represents you.

2. Customer experience strategy — We then worked on translating that vision into the overall feeling of the house we desired – e.g., did we want a cocoon to rest in or a clubhouse for our family to gather in or an entertainment hub for our friends and neighbors?  That’s the second step – articulating your customer experience strategy, the overall experience you want to deliver across all channels.  Perhaps you want to create a “place” to discover and try; or perhaps you want to deliver legendary service.

3a.  Channel requirements and objectives — Next we broke our plan down into the specific considerations and priorities for each room – e.g., a wide-open kitchen; a walk-in closet in the bedroom, etc.  We had to factor in the limitations of the property we had purchased and the budget we wanted to stick to.  In the same way, in a Customer Experience Architecture, you break down your plan by channel.  Outline the business requirements and objectives of each and factor in your operational capabilities and assets.

Your website may use sophisticated filtering technology, for example, that makes it easy for the customer to find whatever they’re looking for, so you may specify that channel for carrying a very broad assortment.  Or, the location and layouts of your brick-and-mortar stores may be perfect for grab-and-go purchases, so that channel may be all about speed of service.

3b.  Segment needs and drivers — At the same time in our home-building process, my husband and I defined our different needs so the architect could tailor his designs to address those differences – e.g., in the living area my husband “needed” a large area for watching TV on a big screen while I needed a sightline to the kitchen.

Similarly, your target segments have different needs in general and in different channels.  Some may value convenience over price; others may be looking for an entertaining experience.  Whatever they may be, outline those different needs and drivers of their purchase decisions and brand perceptions.

4. Customer experience — Then like our architect, outline the ways you are going to meet those segment-specific needs in each channel.  Use all the levers of customer experience – product, service, content, community, value, facilities, etc.  What product categories will you feature?  Will you do sampling and demonstrations?  What added value services will you offer?  What information is provided and how?

5. Assessment and integration — Once your Customer Experience Architecture is assembled, assess it as a whole “house” – is the brand strategy delivered throughout?  Do the discrete experiences ladder up to the overall customer experience strategy?  Do the experiences complement and enhance each other, or do they conflict or detract from each other?  You may need to go back to the drawing board a few times.

You also need to show how you will integrate the experiences.  A map that shows how different experiences feed into and from each other will ensure customers get a seamless shopping experience.

6. Prioritization — The next step is to value the different segment/channel intersections and prioritize them.  Use criteria like profit potential, fit with your long-term strategy, differentiation, and value to the customer to determine which experiences are the most important.  You should also look for synergies between the intersections, meaning if you focus on one, you might also be improving another.

7. Description – Finally once you’ve set your priorities, use narratives, images, idea boards, videos, etc. to convey your vision for each priority experience and the granular details that comprise them.

Creating a Customer Experience Architecture isn’t rocket science.  And believe me, it’s a lot less painful than trying to build a house.   It simply requires discipline and a deliberate process.  Great customer experiences don’t just happen.

But the return on your investment is significant.  One retailer used a Customer Experience Architecture to get all of its employees, executives, and vendors on the same page about how it would increase its competitive advantage.  It showed how the company was going to get more business out of their existing channels and how to appeal to growing segments.  The framework increased marketing efficiency by helping the company target the right people in the right way.  And it improved customer satisfaction.

As the number of brand touchpoints grows in today’s retail environment, retailers need to focus and unify their customer experiences. A Customer Experience Architecture enables you to deliver a cohesive experience that builds your brand and your business.

(To learn how to use a Customer Experience Architecture for your business, to request a custom proposal, or to book a workshop, contact me at mail AT deniseleeyohn DOT com.)

(This is the first installment of “brand experience briefs” — insights from my audits of new retail and restaurant concepts.)

What:  the Walmart.com store

• two stores in shopping malls — one store is 3,000 square feet (roughly 1/60th of the size of a typical Walmart supercenter) – the other is even smaller at 1,000 square-feet
• “a small test we’re conducting during the holiday season to offer local customers easier, more convenient access to products” according to a Walmart spokesperson
• open from November 1 until December 31

Where:  two stores in Southern California – I went to the one at Horton Plaza, a mall in downtown San Diego popular among tourists

What worked:

• Assortment – The selection was gift-appropriate — primarily toys and electronics.
• Hands-on displays – The game consoles and devices were available to try.
• Bright lights and modern fixtures – The store definitely had a more upscale feel than a regular Walmart store.

What didn’t work:

• How to shop – The sign at the lease line was long and confusing (I stopped to read it but no one else seemed to) and the staffers didn’t explain the store (they greeted shoppers with a “Welcome to Walmart.com” but it was several minutes before one of them feebly explained “all of the products here are available to purchase online” as she gestured toward one of the PCs.)  The Apple-esque set-up with PCs and tablets was confusing – are customers supposed to use the devices to place orders or are they supposed to buy the devices?  Most of the customers looked confused and I overheard one ask another, “What is this place?”

• Displays – Other than the game consoles and devices, most products were not available to try or play with.   Plus, the PC and tablet set-up dominated the space so the rest of the store seemed crowded.  The products seemed packed in and the displays were standard-issue mass mechant.

• Staff – The employees seemed more interested in figuring out one of the products themselves than in interacting with customers.

What I’d change:

• Clarify the purpose – Make it clear what the store is for and how to shop it.  A descriptive line like “Try it here; buy it here or online” used liberally throughout the store would go a long way to helping customer understand and navigate it.
• Align the experience with the strategy — If the point of the store is for people to experience products first-hand, then products should be out of boxes, displays should invite customers to try them, and employees should demonstrate them.  If the point is for people to be able to buy products while shopping at a mall vs. making a trip to a Walmart store, then don’t waste so much space promoting online shopping (and don’t sell TVs.)
• Hire differently — This kind of store requires different kinds of workers than a typical Walmart – they need to be salespeople, meaning they need to actively engage customers, soliciting questions and suggesting items.
• Make a statement – Promote the hands-on experience and gift-giving purchase occasion with an editorial voice and visual strategy.   Right now the store doesn’t have a distinctive point of view or personality.

Bottom line:  Good intentions but poor execution.  Plus, while a showcase store for an online retailer is a concept with potential, I’m not sure Walmart needs one.

(Interested in learning how to improve your in-store experience?  Sign up for a Brand Experience Day.  We’ll head out into the field to experience concepts — good and bad — and then regroup to identify and apply the insights to your business.  Learn more.)

I’m guessing most of you don’t frequently have the opportunity to tell your CEO to go take a crap, but that’s essentially what I did last year – and ever since, we’ve had a fruitful and rewarding relationship.

This, of course, requires some explanation.  The background is that my partner (Shawn Parr of Bulldog Drummond) and I had been engaged to kick off a brand revitalization effort for a restaurant chain.  As is the case with many of my clients, the challenge was less about setting the right brand strategy and more about engaging all stakeholders to execute it with excellence in the customer experience.  We decided to start with a worksession for the executive leadership team – our goal was to help them take an honest assessment of their brand execution in the customer experience.

For most of the worksessions I lead, I assign pre-work for the participants.  Sometimes it’s reading briefing materials, other times it’s doing research on competitive brands or consumer trends.  The value is the participants come to the session more focused and primed for discussion.

For this worksession, the pre-work assignment was to do some restaurant visits. But there was a catch: we gave them specific instructions to follow — including visiting the same location at various times of the day/night (to help them assess the consistency of the customer experience), to taking a friend along and asking him/her to complete an assessment (to help them see things they might miss), and to going to the bathroom and sitting on the toilet (to get the full experience of using the facilities, not just looking at them).  We believed this last step – essentially telling the CEO (and the rest of the executive team) to take a crap — would be a real eye opener — and indeed it was!

The participants came to the worksession armed with stories and pictures (part of the assignment) revealing how poor the customer experience was.  The CEO reported learning so much from the exercise because her m.o. was usually to go through the drive-thru, rarely going inside the dining room and never going to the restroom, much less sitting on the toilet.

It was uncomfortable for the executive team to give their sobering reports from the restaurant visits, but their collective frustration served as the foundation for the rest of the worksession.  The exercise aligned them with a common understanding of the customer experience problems and united them with a commitment to develop solutions.

Since then, we’ve been on a journey of developing a brand strategy that’s more focused and executable, and engaging the rest of the organization with the vision and their roles in delivering the brand throughout the entire customer experience.  The company is well on its way to regaining brand equity and its key business indicators have been improving.

It’s been a terrific engagement — and it all started with a simple exercise:  go sit on the toilet.  It’s amazing how much the details of the customer experience get overlooked.  Other eye-opening assignments I’ve given include:

• For an e-retailer, order a product online and get it delivered to your home.  Most executives buy – or are given — their company’s products in the office and then take them home with them to try out. Many are surprised to see what their product and packaging looks like after getting shipped from the warehouse, taking a cross-country ride through the USPS, and getting dumped on a doorstep.
• For a restaurant brand, order the items with the lowest sales mix.  Most executives try the newest products on the menu and have their favorites they always order.  But sampling some of the least popular menu items gives a sense of what a product is like when the ingredients have been sitting around for awhile and the chef or crew don’t have the proficiency that comes from making and serving the product frequently.
• For a services company, make a complaint.  Corporate executives set and review service procedures and some might occasionally listen in on service calls, but there’s nothing like dialing up that 800 number themselves.  A CEO learns a lot from enduring the hold time (a 60-second wait time doesn’t sound that bad until you have to sit there listening to bad hold music), to trying to converse with a live representative (who may or may not have the skills, tools, authority, or inclination to fix the problem), to seeing how the complaint is (or isn’t) resolved.

There are plenty of other ways to illuminate a company’s opportunities to improve the customer experience – and some CEOs might not respond as graciously to explicit instructions on bathroom usage.  But I always try to work in a way to personally and deliberately engage in the customer experience the people responsible for making changes to it.

(This post is part of the Bathroom  Blogfest, a fun series of posts from a community of bloggers organized Christine B. Whittemore, chief simplifier of Simple Marketing Now. This is my first year participating in the series and I’m so excited to hear the different perspectives on this important aspect of customer experience.  Below is the list of all the other posts – happy reading!)

(Today’s post is the last in a mini-series of reviews of retail concepts that have caught my eye.  I’ve already covered 77kids in Times Square and new Starbucks stores in Seattle.  Hope you’ve enjoyed my takes on what makes a store more than a store – a real experience.)

Central Market defies convention.  The Texas-based chain of eight food stores actually breaks the rules.  Its stores are too big (each store is approx. 75,000 square feet – nearly twice the size of an average grocery store) and they carry too many SKUs (a single store features over 700 choices of hand-cut cheeses alone.)

Here’s a shot of the chocolate bar aisle (yes, they have whole aisle devoted to chocolate bars!!)

The experience should be confusing and overwhelming.  After all, I’ve written and featured pieces on this very blog that promote a “less is more” approach when it comes to retail selection.

And yet, shopping at the Dallas Central Market was one of the most delightful shopping experiences I’ve ever had.  How did the store make its enormous size and selection a treat instead of a turnoff?  A strong editorial voice.

That a store would have a voice might seem confusing.  Stores are inanimate, physical spaces, not people or brands, right?!  But like a good museum, the wares in a good store are presented through a voice.  Here’s what I mean:

The store signage was strategic.

signs explained choices:

signs encouraged shoppers to ask for help:

signs described a featured item:

The store’s editorial voice also came through in their promotion. When I visited, the store was in the midst of its annual hatch chile fest (featuring chiles from Hatch, New Mexico, apparently the chile capital of the world.)  Every area of the store offered a special “hatch” item:

Yes, even the bakery.

The result?  A cohesive message that highlighted items throughout the store, instead of the usual random selection of items on sale in a grocer’s weekly flyer.

The theater-like experience also contributed an editorial voice that positioned choice as an asset.  In open areas like the bakery, the products seemed more accessible – as did the employees.

The wide selection became an invitation to discover and experiment.

Central Market’s website declares, “Shopping isn’t a chore — it’s a joy.”  Its strong editorial voice is one way it makes this so.

(If you’re looking for an injection of fresh thinking, sign your team up for a Brand Experience Day.  We’ll head out into the field to experience concepts like this one, and then regroup to identify and apply the new insights to your business.  Learn more.)

The adage “god is in the details” is usually offered in reference to a small mistake with big consequences. And when it comes to brand touchpoints, it’s commonly known how a screw-up here or a snafu there can cause significant damage to a brand’s image and equity.

But often the most important details are ones that most companies overlook.

They’re not mistakes so much as they are simply missed opportunities.  It’s easy to miss or miscalculate the value of some brand touchpoints. They’re unused branding real estate that people wouldn’t give a second thought to, unless someone else did first.

Here are three details I noticed recently:

reloadable charge card from Caribou Coffee – The card conveys simple, uplifting messages like “Yes, It is possible” and “Hold hands, not grudges” in a well designed layout. How fun!

water decanter at Ciao Bella restaurant (in Richfield, MN) – A glass bottle is labeled, “Fresh water compliments of the house. This double filtered water is free of impurities, free of wasteful packaging, and free of charge.”  How refreshing!

stamp on letter from Plant with Purpose (a non-profit working against deforestation) – A Forever postage stamp features the exhortation “use efficient light bulbs” accompanied by a cute drawing of such a light bulb. How appropriate!

What’s significant about all three of these examples is that the companies didn’t just slap their logos in these spaces. They used the real-estate to convey messages – and meaningful messages at that. The messages reflect the core values of the brands and convey a sense of the brands’ personalities.

These details weren’t necessary – we’ve all used charge cards featuring logos or fanciful designs, been served water from unlabeled decanters, and received letters with regular stamps. I probably wouldn’t even have noticed their absence if they hadn’t been there. But I did notice them, and they did have an impact on me. Each was a positive brand impression. And that’s the point.

Conventional wisdom says that there are only a few ways that customers get exposed to your brand – advertising, packaging, websites, and social media. But the reality is, there are hundreds of touchpoints between your brand and the outside world.

Below is a template of a Brand Touchpoint Wheel which shows all the possible touchpoints through which people experience a brand.

When we created one of these at Sony, the brand wheel identified over 240 touchpoints — not including all of its products. Fewer than 40 of them were advertising or marketing touchpoints. A wheel like this shows that the big things you say are greatly outnumbered by the little things you do.

So if you’re looking to make a bigger impact with your brand, pay attention to the smaller opportunities. By conducting a simple customer experience audit, you’re likely to discover a whole host of brand touchpoints you never thought of before. And by thinking about the best ways bring your brand values and attributes to life, you might identify opportunities to create new brand touchpoints. (Also you can always contact me to learn more about how a Brand Touchpoint Wheel might be a helpful tool for your organization.)

When it comes to your brand, no touchpoint is too small to make a big impression.

related posts:

• america’s next great restaurant episode six recap
• corporate reports are brand touchpoints
• birthdays and brands

In just the past week, I’ve had several conversations about the future of retail – and how drastically shopping as we’ve known it is going to change. From these provocative discussions, it’s become clear to me that retailers must change the way think about and build their brands, or face extinction.

Some of the observations about retail from our conversations include:

• The role of the physical store has changed. They’re no longer distribution centers — instead, they’re experience and service providers.
• “Going shopping” is being replaced by “shopping moments.” Shopping is no longer only a discrete, planned activity – it’s something that often happens throughout a person’s normal course of a going through the day.
• Those retailers which offer truly integrated multi-channel shopping are the ones that are growing.
• The value of department stores and shopping malls is declining, since online players fulfill the desire for multiple product lines and brands in a single “location” more effectively than physical retailers.
• Wallets are becoming as unnecessary as watches. Smart phones are easier to use, provide more functionality, and offer greater security.

Several data points speak to these changes:

• Tesco’s Homeplus — The company erected billboards on a subway platform in Korea that allow customers to shop using QR codes. When the online purchase is done, the goods are delivered to their door once they get home.
• Growth in Airport retail – Stephanie Clifford recently reported in the New York Times about the growing number and diversity of retailers opening stores in airports.
• Progressive Insurance – Viewers can now “Shazam” their ads: While watching a Progressive ad, viewers can use the mobile app to receive an auto insurance quote and interact with the brand in fun ways, like downloading custom wallpaper onto their device.

These changes have broad and significant implications for retailers’ operating models, technological capabilities, and growth strategies. There are also serious implications for retailers’ brands. A few different brand-building requirements for retailers come to mind:

1. creating awareness and staying top of mind. No longer can retailers rely on good advertising placement and real estate selection to get and stay on people’s radar screens. With growing “on demand” shopping, retailers must be in the right places at the right times.

That requires knowing your customers’ lifestyles and behavior patterns to such a degree that you can anticipate when shopping moments are likely to occur – and even perhaps prompt them. Anthropologically-based consumer research methods are critical to developing this level of customer intimacy.

2. fulfilling orders. Retailers must create a great experience at the “second moment of truth.” The “first moment of truth,” a concept popularized by P&G’s former CMO Jim Stengel, refers to the instant when a shopper encounters a product on the shelf — and suggests that the final moment of truth refers to when the person actually uses the product.

Now, in between these two moments of truth lies another one – the fulfillment moment, when people take possession of their purchases. With ordering products through mobile and Internet, this moment happens through shipment and delivery to the shoppers’ home or business. (I also believe there is a growing demand for retail stores to offer delivery.)

The speed and security of shipment and delivery, as well as the way the shipping package looks and feels when it arrives, are moments of truth for the brand. They have an impact on brand perceptions, and as such, need to be designed and executed as carefully as advertising, packaging, and point of purchase materials in traditional retail.

3. using brand signals. Retailers can control the physical environment in store and the virtual one online and in mobile. But when shopping happens in environments out of the retailers’ control, they still must consider how to use brand signals to create a distinctive and memorable brand experience.

As increased accessibility leads customers to emphasize convenience and price, there is the risk that they become brand-agnostic. So the consistent or prominent use of a logo or visuals in the shopping environment is not enough to make a brand impact. Retailers should think about how other senses can be engaged and experiment with multi-sensory cues (think music, tactility, and smell).

I’m sure the retail landscape and shopping behavior will continue to evolve – and the implications on brand-building will as well. But clearly it’s about survival of the fittest.

(This post was inspired primarily by conversations with several clients and as well as two of my partners: David Murphy and Shawn Parr – fine men and smart brand builders. Thanks, guys!)

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