Branding Your Customers Limits You

Branding is a two-way street

There are many definitions of the concept of branding, but one of the easiest describes branding as "the emotional connection" that consumers have with a product or service. In the branding world, customers frequently use the term "love" or "like" to describe their feelings about a product or service. I have found, however, that marketers are also influenced by emotional, non-rational, connectors when thinking about their customers. Just because you're in marketing doesn't mean you are not influenced by marketing concepts as you perform your job.

Branding customers

A few years ago, I was sitting in the parking lot of a local K-Mart store with a VP of Sales of a company that I worked with. She pointed to the customers who were entering and exiting the store.

"Those are our customers," she said.

I was monentarily confused. K-Mart was not a major channel for us. Then I realized that she mean her comment to be a metaphor. Our customers were "K Mart shoppers", the seekers of "blue light specials" and low-cost goods. A resident of the lower class. Who among us seeks to be known as your typical K Mart shopper?

What was interesting was that she had no data to back that up - certainly not sales data. But, there it was. An influencial executive's summation of our customer base. That perception drove all of our product design and development. If anything we developed seemed to be to, um, classy, it immediately ran into obstacles.

The company refused to develop anything that might not appeal to the perceived plebian interests of this metaphorical group. It was not a successful strategy and the company eventually ran into trouble.

Branding by income

I worked for another company that segmented its customers by income, and created a label or "brand" for each group. The low income group (20% of our customers) carried a lable of "down and out" - the actual internal descriptor.

Branding makes things too easy

Customers create a brand image because it makes shopping easy. In a sense, it's a tool that helps them avoid the constant work of decision-making. For marketers, it's a crutch, too.

Would a K Mart shopper like this product?

Do I want to spend time thinking about one-fifth of my customers - if they are all "down and out"?

Most of us brand our customers in some way. It helps us make quick decisions. But if we want to develop innovative products and services, we have to drop the tendency to brand customers and do the hard job of creative thinking. The first step is to recognize how you are branding your customers, and how you label them? Each customer lable, or brand, you create, limits your options.


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