The brand imperative: creating customers
I was going through my notes on creating customers when I came across the two entries shown below. They’re from a post I wrote two years ago, but to my mind they still do a good job of defining what “creating a customer” means, and outlining the brand framework that supports customer creation as an ongoing process.
What “create a customer” means
I define “create a customer” this way: To create a customer means to connect a customer to a larger part of himself or herself through the brand. This is a connection to that person’s potential and/or passion, within the context of the customer’s expected brand outcome. Your brand helps customers to discover themselves, unfold themselves, iterate themselves, and prototype new selves that are now latent, awaiting only the wondrous “developer” that flows through your brand platforms and programs.
And since your brand is a creative engagement, you have many, many options at hand to work your wonders. What counts is the nature, content, direction and value of your brand connections.
Brands and “creating customers”
“Creating customers” is what brands are all about. It’s where brands come into their own as a process of value creation, combining strategy, imagination, innovation and customer interaction. Yep, brands are all that, which makes brands the single most expressive—and engaging—process in business. Moreover, the process of building brands is most effective when it’s openly shared with customers. That’s one reason why brand building stands head and shoulders above most other business practices. It aims to team the best and brightest of a company with the best and brightest of customers. That combination is hard to beat.
The full post goes into much more detail, starting with my hero and yours, Peter Drucker, who said: “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”
See: How brands create customers.
