The Four Elements of a Great Brand Experience.

Impression, interaction, responsiveness and resilience are the key to delivering long term value as a brand.  ~ Brand Union Insights

In a world where customer journeys are becoming more complex and less linear, it is increasingly difficult to identify the 'moments of truth' when a customer makes the critical decision about whether or not to use a brand. Here, experience is key.

Our view on the world is entirely shaped by the personal, positive and negative experiences we encounter throughout our life. The more experiences we have, the broader, stronger and better informed our opinions become.

Brands today therefore exist in every moment of interaction between brand and customer. In every product, platform, package, uniform, interface, database, architectural space, answerphone message or carefully crafted 140 characters. And brands can only create positive impressions with these customers if they are able to ensure that these moments are consistently engaging, surprising, compellingly human, positive and mutually beneficial.

In such a world, it might be more helpful to think about the entire brand experience beyond 'touch points' to desired 'outcomes'. When brands look to holistically improve customers' brand experiences, it can be helpful to consider four criteria: Impression, Interaction, Responsiveness and Resilience.

Impression – 'I like what this brand has to offer me'

It's quite simple – to attract a customer they have to like what a brand has to offer – in other words, its proposition. The effectiveness of a brand's proposition is based on its relevance to a customer – whether it firstly targets the right customer and then meets a need (or creates one first, in order to meet it). For instance, it's hard to imagine that many people actively complained about vacuum cleaners losing suction (my Miele has worked brilliantly for years – or has it?), but Dyson plants the seed of doubt – and then swoops in with 'cyclone' technology. Another key element of making the right impression is differentiation. Standing out from peer brands is important but standing out across categories can ensure share of mind in a world where consumers are constantly assaulted with competing marketing messages. But probably the most critical element is that the proposition must be based on organisational truths. If it doesn't link to a core competency, and operational advantage, to business strategy (or even all three), it has the potential to leave the brand exposed.

Interaction – 'This brand does what it says'

Creating a brand is all well and good, but how often do customers find that it isn't delivering on what it promised? Optimising delivery is contingent, first and foremost, on consistency. If a brand doesn't consistently reinforce its message through every possible touch point, it's missing an opportunity to optimise the opportunities created by the impression. Several organisations today are aligning their 'experience' across bricks-and-mortar operations as well as online channels in an effort to do this. The other key component of delivery is access – is the brand available to people when and where they want it with an effective channel, distribution and online strategy? And finally there's the delivery – if Plenty kitchen towels didn't actually absorb 25% more as compared with store label towels, it would simply lose all credibility.


Responsiveness – 'This brand responds to my needs'

If impression and interaction seem like standard brand fare, this element is where brands truly start to make a difference. 'Personalisation' (not to be mistaken for bespoke) is an essential requirement to ensuring your brand doesn't become commoditised. At the basic end, this can mean variants of shampoo that address 'issues' such as dandruff, frizz or hair-loss. At a more sophisticated end, it means a digital strategy that adapts itself to users to deliver a custom experience, the more and more you use it.


Resilience – 'This brand cares about our future'

One may see this element as a nice-to-have, but it's the pillar that some of the world's most powerful brands build their businesses around. A key element of resilience is imparting a reputation of 'responsibility'. This has far outgrown traditional expectations of being 'sustainable' – it now manifests itself as organisational integrity. No one expects a brand to be infallible, which is maybe why Apple gets away with suicides at manufacturing plants in China or how Nike managed to ultimately come out on the right side of a sweat shop scandal. It's about perception more than anything else – but it does mean brands now have to subject their supply chains to unprecedented scrutiny – so that your burgers don't end up with horsemeat, or that your dishwashing liquid doesn't suddenly earn itself a reputation for wiping out entire ecosystems.

Brands also need to be future-proof – this now transcends categories like banks that are meant to safeguard your assets and provide much needed credit to businesses over extended periods of time. Today, brands in almost any category that aren't perceived as having strong businesses behind them simply lack credibility, which can undermine the other elements of the brand experience. The ultimate component of this category however, is category influence. Brands that think beyond the confines of categories, markets and capabilities – Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix – are usually the ones that shatter conventions, transform expectations and change the way customers live their lives.

Impression and interaction represent the basics of a well-functioning brand. But one could argue that it's the brands that exemplify responsiveness and resilience that are much more likely to enjoy enduring success and deliver long-term value.

Please don't do paper.

Recently I was exchanging emails with someone about training. They are thinking about using printed materials to educate retail partners about their company and products... 

Please don't do paper!

• First, think of the environment.
• Then the expense. Not just in printing and shipping but also you can't edit paper once printed, so updates are impossible.
• Paper suffers the same problem as websites. Neither you or retail management receives feedback or confirmation that it was shared, read or understood by staff.
• Finally there' s the timeliness and ROI factor - when a new employee is hired, is the retailer going to dig around for a paper they were given 30 days ago, let alone 6 months ago? And why your paper versus the 1000 others they have?

Training is awesome. Paper isn't.

What makes a great thentic profile?

One thing we've heard over and over is that retailers need help teaching their staff about products and issues. thentic.com is designed to help you communicate information about your organization, values, products and methods directly to natural product retailers and their staff - quickly, easily and effectively.

How? Although a thentic profile includes all the basic information about your organization - the who, what, where, how and why - but it's really there to help you go deeper than that. 

1. Engaging a diverse audience. Brand training requires you to educate people new to the industry, as well as, keeping industry veterans engaged. Because thentic allows retailers to add to brands' lessons, experienced employees can share their knowledge and be recognized for their contributions. By allowing experienced empoyees to contribute, retail managers find their workload decreased and new employees gain a wider, real-world education. 
2. Going deeper. Take a look at your marketing and promotional materials. What are the key features or benefits that are highlighted? What are alternatives to those and why did your organization choose those over other issues/features/benefits? What differentiates your brand from others? How is your processing, sourcing or packaging different/better? What about other issues like GMOs, sustainability, fair-trade, etc? Finally, what selling tips do you have? What stories or anecdotes should a retailer know about you?
3. Staying current. In life the learning never ends. Same with thentic. After completing your thentic training, retail employees may have additional questions or want to relay something heard from a shopper. Use their feedback to create follow on lessons. Alternatively, look through the news. Shoppers are bombarded with information. Is there anything there you should be responding to? 

Bottom line - thentic makes it easy to maintain communication directly with retailers and their staff. Increased communication bolsters your reputation for transparency. And today, more than ever, transparency and trust drive shopper engagement and sales.

What is training, really?

Training is the action of teaching a particular skill or type of behavior. Look online and you can read all about how training improves productivity and performance. But training can and should be more than that...

At thentic, we see training as just the first step. Training should educate. It should also inspire.

Training offers the basic information a person needs to begin asking the questions that lead to real knowledge and understanding. Why is it done this way? What are the pros and cons of this approach? How can I use or share this information to help others?

And that final bit - that how can I help bit - is what it's really all about. Because the first time you help someone or answer their question in a meaningful way, you get that feeling. The one that says I can do more, I can be a trusted resource and friendly adviser. And, in the end, isn't that something we all want?

What is thentic?

thentic is designed to be the simplest way to for natural product brands to educate retailers about their company and products.

We launched thentic in 2012 because a group of natural product retailers needed an easy way to educate their staff. Since then over 2000 retail employees have taken more than 20,000 quizzes on thentic.

With thentic, retailers can write their own lessons to teach employees how their store operates and they can access lessons published by 3rd parties to learn about products and industry issues. Together, the ability to write their own lessons and use lessons published by brands and non-profits makes life much easier for retailers. And that leads to our reason for being...

Retailers cannot afford to have employees browse hundreds of websites to learn about products and industry issues. 

There is simply too much overhead for retailers. Engagement isn't what it should be. There's no way for retailers to manage what their employees are learning, how much time they're spending, nor is there a way to track results across these disparate systems. There is a better way... and that is thentic.

thentic is a platform. We bring all the players to a single, online destination; to make training simple.