My Hairdresser Smells Like McDonald's (And Other Mistakes Brands Make)

I used to think empathy was a curse. Since I was a kid, I have bawled my eyes out over anything from a senseless tragedy reported on the news to the inevitable fake proposal on The Bachelor finale. For as long as I can remember, I have felt the pain of others…and feeling pain, no matter who owns it, well – it’s painful.

As I've grown, personally and professionally, I have come to appreciate the fact that my empathy cup runneth over. It is a gift, I have decided, because it’s an important component of emotional intelligence – that ability (we either have or do not have) to understand, manage, and convey our emotions, to know our impact on others, and to handle our relationships fairly, honestly, and gracefully. The most successful people have a high degree of emotional intelligence (EQ), for which empathy is key.

Empathy matters. It matters in human-to-human contact, and it matters in brand-to-human contact. As an expert in brand strategy, I have witnessed my share of brands that do it right (and by “do it” I mean interact with their target audience in an emotionally intelligent, empathetic way) and I’ve seen brands do it all wrong.

Wise marketers learn from both.

Brands can, and should, be empathetic. An empathetic brand mirrors its audience because it “gets” them – understands on the deepest level their feelings, thoughts, and attitudes. How can a brand do this? By being built and backed by marketing teams that understand the importance of understanding. This is particularly true for experience brands.

Econ 101 recap: experience goods are products or services whose value can only be quantified once consumed: food, wine, books, software, medical procedures, a vacation…a haircut. With experience brands, quality or value is not readily observable. It must first be experienced. We put a lot of trust, even faith, into the decision to invest in an experience brand because there is a higher degree of inherent risk. What if I don’t like my experience with the brand? What if the wine is sour, the book is dull, the hair implants don’t work? What then?

To conquer the inevitable FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt), we often make purchase decisions for experience brands based on brand reputation and third party recommendations.

We commonly measure a brand’s reputation by the amount of chatter that surrounds it (online, in line, in the press, amongst our inner circles, etc.) as well as how readily we think of the brand when considering our alternatives. This is basically whether or not the brand enjoys top-of-mind awareness with its target audience. We solicit recommendations as a very natural part of the information search process. In today’s environment, it is the most natural behavior to read online ratings and reviews (professional and amateur alike), to crowd source (get feedback from our broad social media “friend” group), and we seek opinions first-hand from our more tightly knit crowd. Why do we care what others think? Because we want to avoid – at all costs – the dreadful run-in with the experience brand faux pas.

From my rich bank of personal encounters, here are some common experience brand faux pas:

• Books with typos. Faux pas.
• Flights that board late, or worse, sit idle for hours on the tarmac. Faux pas.
• Hotels that over-book. Faux pas.
• Over cooked surf with under cooked turf. Faux pas.
• Expensive beauty treatments that do nothing at all. Faux pas!

Perhaps the most commonly flawed experience brand? The human being.

• My waiter was rude and gratuity was included. Faux pas.
• The receptionist ignored me for ten minutes. Faux pas.
• The sales woman was pushy…and opinionated. Faux pas.
• My nurse missed the vein – eight times. Faux pas.
• My hairdresser smelled like McDonald’s. Major faux pas!

So, how can we, ourselves, avoid making these common faux pas?

Empathy. Know (or at least make an effort to try to know) your impact on others. Care enough to figure out how others experience you – your personal brand. Be articulate. Be kind. Listen to what is said, and to what is implied. Put others before yourself. Be inclusive. Be tolerant. Be forgiving. Be authentic. Understand your imperfections. Try harder than everyone else does. Aim for continuous improvement instead of perfection. Take the world one baby step at a time – and allow others to do the same. Cry when you’re sad. Laugh when you’re happy.

…and maybe skip McDonald’s for lunch.

Wouldn’t it be great if all brands (and brand drivers) thought like this?

-       Dr. D.