Brands Create Customers

Today’s SF Chronicle reviews the renovated San Francisco Ferry Building and its highly positive impact on the San Francisco urban experience, five years after its grand re-opening.

Social lessons for brand builders

There are many lessons here for brand builders. Perhaps the most salient is that the social and community aspects of any place become the real backbone of its success. A place rises to the level of a brand when it becomes an extension of the community, a continuous invitation to visit, linger, explore, express. It enables visitors to make the place a part of themselves, and in so doing to extend the brand context, and the brand experience.

Re-creating a place in new dimensions

A re-created place re-creates visitors, leaving them revitalized in new dimensions. A key aspect of the renovated Ferry Building—apart from its stunning 600 ft. nave, upscale shops, diverse eateries and Bay-side location— is that it hosts a thriving farmer’s market twice a week, with a huge turnout on Saturdays. It’s a social food mecca in a food-crazed city, with a wide variety of organic produce and artisanal food products.

A few decades ago the Ferry Building was a disheveled mess in the death shadow of a stunningly egregious eyesore. At that time it would have been almost impossible to imagine what it is today. Thankfully, it was saved by the same civic spirit that rescued the cable cars in the 1950’s.

Locals pave the way for tourists

Napa’s brand new Oxbow Public Market aims to bring the Ferry Building experience to the wine country in Northern California. Built from scratch, and still in its opening phases, its first challenge is to build a sustaining community around itself. On my latest visit the Market outposts of (local) Taylor’s Automatic Refresher and The Model Bakery were bustling. As with all such public places, locals pave the way for tourists. All they ask is a context they can make their own.

Top photo: Mike_sj40 — Flickr

Inset photo: Geigenot — Flickr

Every brand has to focus its value stream to deliver an optimal experience to customers. This is not a matter of managing dozens of brand “touchpoints.” It’s understanding the very few elements that define the brand experience in its purest form.

The key is to simplify, and intensify.

Powder ski destination Alta, Utah seems to understand this principle. The resort sees its mission as connecting skiers to the snow, in a simple, no-frills setting, so the elements can speak for themselves.

Purists drive simplicity, and intensity

Alta attracts purists who want the pristine powder experience. There’s a brand lesson here. Purists simplify and intensify by their very nature. And purists are often the power behind brands, both from the company side and the customer side. Purists are brand drivers. They know what counts. They don’t settle for less.

Alta is sometimes criticized because it lacks the glitz and glamor of high-style destinations such as Vail, but glitz and glamor often means a long wait in a lift line, and a longer wait for dinner. Not much simplicity, or intensity, in that.

Photo: Alta Ski Area