Opted Out Customers : Brand Loyalty is a big lie!

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MY BLOG

A huge tectonic shift is happening. Consumers have come to become incredibly online (they can search far better, deeper than search engines can fathom), they are super fast on mobile and finally they are gaining social power at an incredible pace!

Warning "Dumb Retailers": Trying to stop them can see you get destroyed by their social power. Take a look at this instance when a store tried to charge its customers $5 for "showrooming" (a practice where you check out a product in-store and buy online). This went soon viral on Reddit possibly damaging the store's reputation.

Update 11 Jan 2017

Warning Hungry Advertisers! Storytelling is a nice feature we will see in 2017, for instance see the following example Instagram came up with; it is trying to keep its 150 Million DAU's hooked. Take a look!

Although a cool feature soon many will emulate expect also a massive surge in Ad Blockers with advanced techniques to block such content.

Two years ago I had shared a loyalty growth map with Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Yes, I'm not kidding, if you're close to him you can ask him. It was actually a response to a VP job to head APAC. Instead of merely sharing my resume, I was inclined to share with Mark why Facebook needs to capitalise on its huge social network and redefine the brand love.

So I worked for a couple of days and analysed FB's reach and future potential. I wanted to explain why traditional brand loyalty is actually truly dead and how immersive, engaging friendship could be the true model for a "genuine brand love".

Here are a few snippets from the deck I shared. Naturally, the confidential parts I'm leaving out, since I think any firm that needs to grow in this market of fickle consumers, be it the new Snap Inc., Slack, Airbnb, need to latch on to building love and friendship with their consumers.

Why you need a Social Playbook

Are you ahead of the curve or, your best days are behind you?

If you think that you're leading the pack no matter what your digital or marketing department may be telling you, you simply can verify it by segmenting your sales and revenues if that is really true. There are researches done on varying levels to measure if you're leading or the best days are behind you. Here is an example I use occasionally to tell brands if that really is true for them.

So, why is this happening?

Actually, you know it. The "customer journeys" are a great tool for your managers to map their customers' purchasing intents but for consumers it's merely a zig-zag path to explore and buy.

Let's still stick to the automotive example and see through the consumers eyes.

While automotive industry is really trying to bust this brand loyalty myth by addressing the following key aspects such as distinctiveness, authenticity, relevancy and immersive experiences*, they are hounded by their competitors who are all doing the same! There goes your differentiation. So, what do you do?

Enter Brand Equity: How to move from brand abandonment to brand revolution!

Clearly, forcing yourself upon your customers with needless offers, smothering them with your "please, allow us to win you back!" (Read: "Sorry for being jack asses when we ignored you for 5 years when you were our customer..."), is no way to get their attention. You (industry) put them in a hunting mode and now you have to get at the back of the line as the consumers decide what to do with each one of you!

But still you should continue to design your brands to today's needs. See what firms achieved when they designed their products as per today's customer needs. They outperformed the laggards by 228%!

While all the companies want their brands to be ...

..this is what actually happens in reality!

The Friendship Model: Experience Driven Platform Services

I proposed a friendship model** where an ideal combination of immersive experience services with products (software and hardware) could help Facebook move faster and deeper into the minds and hearts of its >1.5 Bn users.

In Closing

The brand revolution is best achieved when you continue to tinker and make your product so lovable that folks fall in love with it. Great and 24x7 customer care and engagement experience is the only way to stay on top of their minds. Goofy marketing tactics just won't work, neither will some cool data analytics gimmicks will win their hearts unless you focus on these consumers and help them participate.

* I will detail out these 4 aspects in another article.

**Unfortunately I cannot share the growth model since it was specifically meant for FB but I can imagine upstart firms like Snap, Airbnb, Uber as well as established corporate firms definitely need to move towards this model. I will be writing a detailed article soon on my personal website.