Loyalty Truth

Cycling commentators like to quip that the individual time trial is a “race of truth”. In other words there’s no place to hide as the man and machine face off against the clock.

The winner of the most recent edition of the Tour de France was decided on the final day in such a race, as Cadel Evans scorched his rivals and took the overall Yellow Jersey with the second best time of the day. Australia’s first overall Tour de France victor was undeniably better on this day – the truth was told.

Building a brand is much like a “race of truth”. Consumers are either for you or against you. And, there are only so many brands that stand out in today’s market evoking emotional response and nearly blind loyalty from their customers.

Starbucks, Apple, Coca-Cola, Facebook are brands that generate passion. Visa, MasterCard and Google register tremendous awareness but don’t necessarily conjure up “passionate” responses. I worked for Visa in the past and can attest to the fact that many consumers don’t understand the brand. I still get questions from friends asking if I can help fix their credit card problems! That of course is a matter between the issuing bank and the cardholder, not the domain of Visa/MasterCard.

Some brands are strong regionally but invisible outside their core market. Grocers Wegmans and Publix come to mind as do coffee chains Dunkin Donuts and Tim Horton’s. Dunkin is apparently embarking on national expansion, so the name may become more familiar across the U.S. soon.

Borders had a brand that was high profile, but became fuzzy. Some say that the lack of focus led to eroding customer loyalty and ultimately, the chain’s demise. You can read one assessment of Border’s failure here. IMHO, I’m not sure Barnes & Noble is doing a much better job in creating a brand that consumers care about – they just happen to be the last chain standing in the book-selling category.

Luxury brands drive customer loyalty through aspirational messaging, exclusivity, and, if backed up with customer experience that reinforces the brand, are sustainable. Nieman Marcus, Coach, Cartier, Tiffany are all brands that speak for themselves.

Some brands equate ubiquity with success. I wore Nike shoes in my early cross country days but my love of the swoosh waned as I saw the logo plastered on everything from golf balls to swim suits. Under Armour adopted the same approach from the starting gate as their logos seems to show up everywhere.

Does brand saturation create confidence or invite a suspicion of quality?

The brands that trigger emotion and sustain it over time seem to be highly focused. NorthFace and Patagonia have created aspirational brands among the outdoor and adventure travel set. I’m just waiting to see which one introduces the Bear Grylls line first!

Ironman has built a brand that oozes passion, commitment, aspiration, desire. Please write me if you know of another organization that sells out nearly every event it operates one year in advance, registering 2,000 people at the exorbitant price of $625, all for the privilege of torturing themselves through a 140.6 mile race.

With the ever expanding presence of the Ironman brand, it runs the same risk as Nike and Under Armour. The ubiquity of brand impressions in the market dilutes the core message to “best” customers and opens the door for competitors. As Ironman attempts to consolidate its hold on the endurance sport market, new race series have sprung up, most notably the HITS series using 6 time winner Dave Scott as spokesperson.

The importance of brand understanding for Loyalty Marketers is that we have to maintain perspective on the power of our brands to engage customers before any incentives are introduced. Every market is competitive and we need to study the range of customer choice in the market and understand the limits of impact for our loyalty strategies.

Organizations should adopt a holistic approach towards building loyalty strategy. Brand understanding is critical to crafting the value proposition that will complement core branding messages and further solidify relationships with our customers.