This is a story about brand culture and the DNA of a Brands Experience. Every great brand aspires to achieve it, yet few take the disciplined steps to be courageous enough to experience it. Instead pride, ego and cowardice become the story. With the proper leadership your brands story can thrive creating a strong brand culture. If done properly your clients, partners and prospects become the ambassadors of your brand sharing your story creating significant growth and a solid brand culture.
What is brand culture?
It is the very DNA of a brands experience where employees live to brand values, solve problems, make decisions internally and deliver a branded experience eternally. What does this have to do with ROI return on investment?
A brands value is directly determined by the experiences the customer has with the brand and the relationships you have with them.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them.” ~ Albert Einstein
There are hidden values many decision makers may overlook when making many key important branding and marketing decisions. For example, is your brands message consistent throughout the entire customer journey beginning to end.
A few questions that may uncover a few hindrances to growth:
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Do our customers experience a joyful journey with our brand from beginning to end?
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Key 🔑 : Are we creating relationships with our customers/clients?
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Is our message consistent from our mission to the customer experience?
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Are we listening to our audience? Even deeper are we taking action after listening…………
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Are we taking action from our surveys?
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Key 🔑 : Are we recognizing and supporting our brand ambassadors?
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Do we even know who our brand ambassadors are?
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Do we offer our brand ambassadors something in exchange for their support? If not, why?
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Have we gone above and beyond what it takes to make it a pleasurable experience for our customer?
What goes through the mind of someone who really wants to support a brand after a great experience?
A short story illustrating how valuable it is to understand the meaning of this question. A recent personal experience with a brand uncovered the significant hidden value of a brand that only the wise will understand. They took action on the front lines from the initial contact to the delivered result to exceptional service.
The Genius Bar at Apple Store Otay Ranch is an example of an extraordinary customer journey. It began with a serendipitous encounter with an exceptional human being by the name of Niko at the Genius Bar.
We didn’t have an appointment and had a lot of ground to cover as an Apple family. Going above and beyond Niko quickly uncovered our needs and synched us as a family via Apple iCloud. He went above and beyond for evaluating all of our apps and making sure we were not being double billed. To him it was second nature, however to us it was rare to receive such exceptional care from many past experiences at other Apple Genius Bars.
It is the small things like this that add up to significant value within a brand’s culture. Niko did two things. He added value to the service of Apple Store Otay Ranch and added value to the entire Apple brand. Every customer touch point is so important beginning to end. Great brands listen to your customers needs, take action and go out of their way to make sure the customer journey is joyful.
What we learned from visiting Apple Store Otay Ranch:
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They listened, took action and went above and beyond to help us with our needs giving us amazing advice and helped us by looking at our challenged by many different angles. It was a joyful journey and customer experience
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They reward their ambassadors by having management contact us to set up an account – Niko, Jeremy and Tony – Thank you all
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Our actions can affect more than just one brand – In this particular case the brand of the Apple store and the Apple product brand
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Their brand culture was consistent throughout our entire experience
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Customers will return and support brands where they have great experiences
