Create optimum brand experience. Brand flow between organisationand customer experience

Create optimum brand experience Brand flow between organisation and customer experience

Michel Jansen TOTAL IDENTITY

Create optimum brand experience Brand flow between organisation and customer experience Michel Jansen

2010 TOTAL IDENTITY Amsterdam

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In essence, every organisation faces the same question: what legitimises our organisation’s right to exist? Put another way, why is it justifiable for an organisation to carry out a certain activity? The answer to this can be found in the extent to which added value is created. In practice, this simply means that the organisation’s offer of products and services must meet the wishes and needs of its customers, in as surprising a way as possible. If the added value is substantially larger than the added value offered by other suppliers, then the customer will show his appreciation in three ways, namely preference, loyalty and readiness to invest. The reverse is also true; a lack of added value will mean the customer will have no trouble switching to the alternatives provided by other suppliers. These days we see this phenomenon occur in a lot of markets. Customers move relatively easily from one supplier to another. If an organisation wishes to guard against this then it will have to come up with a unique offer based on its own skills that is better than what the competitors are offering. It is then immediately clear that the creation of added value surpasses finding the right balance between a) a company’s own competences b) its relevance to the customer and c) its distinguishing capacity in relation to the competition. By offering the right added value, the organisation creates a strong market position and ensures its right to exist.

The creation of added value is a delicate process because it is a moving target. This is because it listens very closely to the extent to which the three factors mentioned above are balanced against each other at any given moment. The difficulty lies in the fact that the three factors are continually subject to change so that the way they relate to each other keeps on being altered making it difficult to find and keep the right balance. However, every organisation will have to strive towards this because if they can’t, the added value they are offering will come under

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pressure and they will lose the market position they have built up. The creation of added value is never ending and organisations must continuously come up with new propositions (products and services) to prevent their market position being taken by their competitors (see image 1).

Added value

Proposition Proposition Proposition Proposition Proposition Proposition Proposition A B C D E F ...

Time Image 1 The challenge in continuously creating added value

The creation of added value is top-level sport Building a successful organisation is like a race without a finishing line.

The organisation cannot hold any power in reserve for a final sprint as it needs to stay ahead all the time. A moment of weakness or loss of concentration means the leading position is immediately taken by other participants. The organisation therefore needs to excel in the present and innovate, while always being focused on the future, in order to keep its momentum and create added value. It is striking to see how some are bet-

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ter at doing this than others. Organisations like IKEA, Nike, Albert Heijn, HEMA, Rabobank and Interpolis are capable of being successful over long periods because they keep on serving the customer in a way that is relevant and sets them apart. Consistency in management radiates power and vitality which the market translates into the brand’s added value and makes the market position unassailable. What is remarkable about these powerful brands is that they possess a paradoxical characteristic: they manage to excel in their markets in what appears to be a simple way. They seem to perform effortlessly at the peak of their ability and yet at the same time they are capable of responding at lightning speed and with great flexibility to market opportunities that arise. For this reason, they are capable of continuously creating an optimum brand experience and linked to that a customer experience even though they have to deal with the same difficult circumstances as their rivals.

Go with the flow This characteristic, the moment an organisation seems to perform effortlessly at the peak of their ability shows a lot of similarities with what Csikszentmihalyi calls Flow. In his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (2007) he describes the special state of consciousness people achieve when they are focused on a certain activity at the peak of their ability. During such moments they feel strong, they are highly alert, they do their work effortlessly, they have a full grasp on the situation and experience intense happiness. Although a flow experience appears to run effortlessly, this is by no means the case. It requires a huge spiritual and/ or physical effort and without using the right skills, the flow experience will not get off the ground. Flow happens when people are busy achieving great things, such as a musician playing a piece of Mozart, a group

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of mountaineers scaling Mount Everest or a football team playing for the championship. Flow comes about the moment the required skills and the challenges being faced - at a high level - are in balance (see image 2).

Challenges

Customer (experience) Fear (situation b)

l ne an h c el ow ann fl d -ch an Br Flow Organisation Boredom (situation a) Skills

Image 2. Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Model (2007) Brand Flow Model (Jansen, 2009)

Flow cannot be reached by taking a short cut; it is achieved by taking the long road. The musician, the group of mountaineers and the football team all had to invest in extensive training in order to reach their goals. Moreover, during their performance they are fully focused in achieving their goal and are in a supreme state of concentration. They cannot allow themselves to be distracted because one false move could be fatal. Through their powerful focus they arrive at the state of consciousness called flow, which enables them to draw optimally on their strengths and skills and achieve that top performance. At that moment they are completely in balance; everything happens automatically and all the pieces fall into

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place at the right moment. Although it appears that the performance is achieved without any effort, the reality proves otherwise. During the performance the maximum is demanded of body and soul. The mountaineers will have to brave the elements in order to reach the top of the mountain.

During a flow experience, this pain is felt but doesn’t have to stand in the way of the top achievement. It is an almost obvious part of the optimum experience. Another significant characteristic of flow is that it is accompanied by a feeling of discovery. People performing at the peak of their ability experience personal growth and leads to them setting themselves new challenges. By training hard their skills are further developed and a new flow experience becomes possible. By continually raising the bar and skill level it is possible to keep up the momentum and experience continuous happiness.

Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas of flow offer an interesting foundation on which organisations can build because many organisations represent great challenges that demand the necessary skills. In this event, flow is the result of the fact that an organisation is in balance (between challenges and skills) and performing at the peak of its ability. At that moment the organisation creates optimum brand experience from the point of view of the customer and gives it a higher added value than the competition does. The struggle an organisation undergoes to achieve flow is relevant because future challenges will only get bigger and the organisation must use its skills to remain equal to them in order to be successful and bring about growth.

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Creating optimum brand experience Achieving flow is a great challenge for any organisation, because it means its employees use their competences to develop propositions with which to respond to customer wishes and requirements in a relevant and distinguishable way. From the customer’s point of view, flow is equal to creating the perfect brand experience. The question that arises is: how this can be achieved? This question is answered in this essay and a concrete framework is offered as to how to achieve flow and as such offer the desired added value, now and in the future. In addition, it becomes clear that a fundamentally different attitude towards customer interaction and the building of brands is required than many organisations have so far been used to. In order to indicate the desired change in thinking and acting, the framework in made up of six paradigm shifts. These are: – – – – – –

From Reactive to Proactive From Image-driven to Brand-driven From Transaction to Relation From Repositioning to Vitality From Change to Further Development From Speed to Timing

Paradigm shift 1 From Reactive to Proactive The first paradigm shift concerns the way an organisation currently deals with challenges in the market and lets its brand determine its actions. In a short time, the socio-economic context has changed dramatically and the added value of the brand has come under pressure. In many markets there is hypercompetition and commoditisation. In the brand flow model (image

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2) this changing relationship can be simply explained. In the past, organisations seldom had to deal with big problems, such as critical customers, so they weren’t spurred into action. The result was lazy brand management. These days this has been reversed and brand management faces the huge challenges of issue management, portfolio policy and issues surrounding customer experience, to name but a few (situation b). The fear and panic that arise mean the organisation allows itself to be led through the hectic situation by the brand. The organisation is thereby the greatest cause of the turmoil, whereas it’s exactly during such times that it needs to take back control. Instead of acting reactively the organisation must approach the market proactively.

Paradigm shift 2 From Image driven to Brand driven The second paradigm shift concerns the way the brand is regarded within the organisation. The most important message here is that the brand must be the driver of the organisation’s actions and no longer just a handy instrument for creating an attractive image in the market.

The r­ eason behind this is that the brand has evolved from a means of ­creating familiarity in the market into a construct that is meant direct the entire organisation. The brand ensures focus which is needed in order to p ­ erform optimally. Organisations like Interpolis, IKEA, Nike, BMW, ­Nespresso, Rabobank and Starbucks do this. They place brand ambition in a position that is central to their actions and, by doing so, they maximise the effect of its power. This is contrary to what a large number of other organisations do where initially the focus rests on the creation of an attractive image. Organisations must be prepared to give the brand a central role between the organisation and customer experience. It is

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only from this position that the potential power can be used as a predictive and reliable filter.

Paradigm shift 3 From Transaction to Relation Originally a brand was used to create customer preference. In the meantime, however, there is a large number of stakeholder groups it also has to be relevant to, for instance employees, the public, trades unions and suppliers. The reason for this is that a brand represents the entire organisation. It its task is also to create added value for the groups mentioned above and the great challenge is to pay attention to these groups’ interests. The relationships have gradually changed and the brand must no longer be deployed on an equal footing with the stakeholder groups and focus less on the customer. A brand is no longer able to act on a transaction basis; rather it has to adopt wholeheartedly a relationship-oriented attitude towards the various stakeholder groups. A brand may not just enrich the organisation but will have to search for ways to offer added value to multiple stakeholder groups. It is the only way to have a right to exist, not just now but in the future.

Paradigm shift 4 From Repositioning to Vitality Once it has been established that the brand is a construct that leads the way for the entire organisation and that it has to create added value for various stakeholder groups (including the customer), its position alters completely. The organisation’s ambition now becomes the leit­motiv and as such the role of the brand is less informal that it used to be. The unique power of the brand is to create coherence in action within the

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organisation so that its ambition is actually realised. The brand therefore guarantees clear ambition as well as the focus the organisation needs for its actions and learning capability. In other words, the employees can fully focus on the ambition that the organisation has set for itself.

Brand strategy drives the organisation to greater heights and pre-­ programmes the customer’s perception so that the brand formulates ­customer queries in such a way that they can be answered on the basis of the right appli­cation organisation’s own competences. Informally changing the brand definition from time to time (or repositioning the brand as it’s usually called) has significant consequences for the organisation and is therefore to be avoided. A brand should be formulated once, after which the focus needs to be placed on keeping it vital to the ­customer and the organisation.

Paradigm shift 5 From Change to Continued Development The brand is expected to respond in a relevant way to the wishes and needs of its customers. The brand has to excel in living up to the ambition it communicates and this can only be achieved if there is room within the brand for the continued development of the organisation’s own skills and competences. In doing so the brand creates a sustainable competitive advantage for itself and and guarantees a relevant customer experience. It is based on the unique qualities that enable the organisation to excel and which other organisations or brands are scarcely able to translate into a distinguishing and transformational customer experience. At the same time, there is a deeper relationship with the customer because the customer perceives that the brand is really living up to its ambition and doesn’t make empty promises. By allowing the innovation process to

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be a structural part of the daily management of the company, the devout routine is interrupted and the brand keeps having to find its own rhythm.

The continual development of the competences and skills instead of continuing to alter them is the fifth essential paradigm shift.

Paradigm shift 6 From Speed to Timing The brand stands for the great challenge to represent added value in within a continually changing context. An uninterrupted stream of innovation is required in order to keep the brand up to date for the customer and so avoid endangering its right to exist. The organisation must identify opportunities in the market and simultaneously keep in mind its own competences, because creating flow means finding the balance between the challenges that the customer sets and the organisations own skills. The brand must also dare to choose its own momentum and not allow itself to be tempted to join in the everyday frenzy of the environment within which it exists.

This thought leads to the understanding that timing is more important than speed when innovating. The organisation must ensure that it introduces a correct proposition at the right moment in a response to the wishes and needs of the customer, based on the right competences and stemming from its own ambition.

Two worlds The six paradigm shifts are inextricably linked to one another and reveal their added value in the way they interact with one another (see image 3). They make sure the organisation is capable of performing optimally and that the organisation, brand experience and customer experience are aligned. Moreover they represent fundamental changes in the way in

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which many organisations currently manage their brands and customer experience. By acting from within these new paradigms the brand is not only able to survive, but to create the possibility of giving direction to its own customer interaction and the resulting future.

Achieving Brand Flow, however, isn’t an easy task because it forces organisations to continually bring their brand in line with their skills in order to respond to the market challenges of the coming years.

The introduction of these paradigm shifts will therefore not be without difficulties. A strong market position awaits the brands that are willing to think and act using the new paradigms because they will continuously find a balance, in a constructive way, between market challenges and their own qualities. The opposite applies too: organisations which are unwilling to introduce the desired changes to the management of their company will find it difficult to keep on creating relevant added value.

They are not sufficiently capable of surviving in the environment that is becoming ever more complex.

Reactive

Proactive

Speed

Imagedriven

Timing

Branddriven

Change

Transaction focus

Develop further

Relation focus

Repositioning

Vitalise

Image 3 Two worlds as a result of powerful interaction

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These paradigm shifts must take care of the required brand stability, in the context of both organisation development and customer motives. The brand has become beacon for the organisation and fills the role of innovation driver whose primary objective is to stay relevant to the various stakeholders. Brand Flow provides a framework which allows an organisation to offer an optimum brand experience all the time. This is a heavy but not unassailable challenge because just as with people, flow is possible for every brand. The ideas presented in this essay are universal. As such they are relevant and can be applied to any organisation’s brand, irrespective of the market.

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Reference list The text for this essay is based on the book Brand Flow, published by Michel Jansen in September 2009.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2007), Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Amsterdam, Boom Publishing

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