Customer experience key to brand image

Marketing Week, June 4, 2008, Vanessa Cohen

Your Best Brand Performers 2008 supplement provokes an interesting question. Why do some brands gain more respect from the public? What is it that sets them apart from their peers?

For the top three brands in your survey, Amazon, Google and the BBC, several similar characteristics point all the way to an answer. They have all developed unique solutions to consumer needs, are innovative and put quality and superior delivery of brand aligned to customer experience first.

This focus on innovation and customer experience conditions that way these organisations spend their marketing budgets. Amazon is so focused on creating new features, category expansion and lowering prices that it spends little on advertising. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, famously said, "If you build a great experience, customers tell each other."

Google also focuses on customer experience, believing that revenues will follow as a result. Hence placements are decided on both customer relevance and bid value, rather than bid value alone. This results in a win-win outcome for both Google and its customers and the entry of a brand name into our daily lexicon as a commonly used verb.
Likewise, the BBC has built a domestic and global brand reputation based on the quality of its programming and its broadcasting technology and content innovation. The record number of Prime Time Emmys won by the BBC for its Walking With Dinosaurs show is a case in point.

For brands to succeed they need to heed the lessons of these three organisations. Marketers need to maintain their focus, and invest their budgets in innovation and giving their customers the best possible experience.