Brands Create Customers

Modern brands have brilliantly grown from labels to lifestyles in their first 100 years, but along the way they’ve had the chance to pick up a few bad habits. One of the most notable is a strong dependence on the missionary position. In this approach, the brand does not lead as much as it tries to dominate, positioning customers as docile and passive subjects. The brand assumes a superior, top-down role, dispensing thrills and goodness from on high, while grateful customers are expected to swoon with desire, and rejoice.

Instead of freely interacting with customers, the missionary brand rather crudely projects itself upon them.

Slam, bam, thank you brand

To a certain extent, the missionary position of brands is every (male) marketer’s dream, which is probably why it has endured. It’s a fantasy that flatters the brand, and the presumed potency of its makers. As a fantasy it promises to put the brand in total control, keep customers “loyal” and submissive, make sales easy, and limit accountability to vague promises. It’s more male ideology than brand strategy. (As an approach, it might even be a distant cousin to this.)

Missionary shortfall

Alas, while the missionary position for brands may be a boost to the male ego, it doesn’t do much to satisfy customers—or to build the brand. To begin with, it diminishes customers by positioning them as permanently passive. This deadens customer initiative and leads to low-performance customers, who add little value back to the brand. Beyond that, it’s monotonous, unimaginative, predictable, one-sided and boring. So, in the long run, it’s not that productive for brands, either.

Brands are a joining—of equals

Make no mistake about it: brands are a joining. Of hearts, minds, bodies, bones. But they’re a mutual coupling of company and customer, joining what’s freest in both parties. A brand is never the imposition of one. For that matter, a brand that locks its customers in a passive role is only half a brand. It can only begin to complete itself when it completes its customer—in the greater mission shared.

A counterpoint to the media pulpit

For brands still dependent on the missionary position, a good first step is to stop preaching and start listening. Brands are a spiritual coupling, too. For every brand message broadcast from the media pulpit, there are ten thousand customer voices waiting to be heard, many far more dulcet and beguiling than what the missionary can conceive.

Postcard: http://www.vintagepostcards.com (used with permission)

This entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 9:35 am and is filed under Brand Fundamentals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.