The Law of Emotional Brand Connections

Emotion trumps everything.

Customers cannot comprehend the quality of your infrastructure, your equipment, your employee training, or your supply chain.

All the customer knows is how you make them feel.

Your brand is your reputation.

Your brand is the first thing your customers (and employees) think of when they see you or hear your name.

Brand loyalty has one mission, to enhance and enlarge your reputation.

If this seems obvious, then can we state the obvious? Every touchpoint your organization has is an opportunity to wow your customer. Touchpoints aren’t meant to meet expectations, they’re met to exceed expectations.

Imagine what would happen if every employee, at every customer touch point, wowed your customer.

Imagine if this happened half the time.

Imagine if it happened less than half the time.

The key to exceeding customer expectations is paying attention to details the customer doesn’t expect you to pay attention to. The low expectation is often driven by an industry standard or your own organization’s reputation.

Maybe you have a competitive product because of quality, price, or both. What happens when a competitor one-ups you? They lower their price or improve the quality?

What happens if they launch (and sustain) a customer service renaissance that catches you unprepared to culturally address.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

Become the Brand Loyalty Category

Lead the category or be the category?

Striving to lead your industry isn’t entirely bad if you’re ok with waiting for someone else to beat you to the next breakthrough.

Why does that sound ridiculous?

Why is it important?

Because some ridiculously important (some would say game-changing) events have happened, are happening now, and will continue to happen.

It’s called disruption for a reason.

Waiting for it to happen can destroy an organization (and sometimes an industry).

Making it happen can launch competitive immunity and have your competition scrambling to recover.

Remember how the music industry let Napster reinvent music file sharing?

Music executives got blind-sided.

As if that wasn’t enough, the music industry never saw a computer company coming either.

Apple, iPod, iTunes, and now, Apple Music.

Apple is a category of one.

The music industry had their chance to become the category.

Kodak had their chance too, but they held so tightly to film, they suffocated themselves.

How does this train of thought affect Disney Brand Loyalty?

We want every Guest to feel like we love them.

Nothing less, nothing more.

Pure love.

Literally, until death do us part.

Imagine if your customers felt you deeply loved them.

Love involves trust and an overwhelming positive emotional connection.

Your products and service obviously need to be competitive for the demographics you are aiming for. The only thing that drives intense customer loyalty is consistently delivering on a promise your customers believe only you can make, and delivering on your promise in an emotionally connected way.

When asked would you recommend this product or service, your customers only say “definitely”. They never say “probably” or “most likely”.

Only definitely.

Why?

Because you aren’t leading the category, you are the category. And your customers love you for that.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

jeff noel Deconstructed Disney to reconstruct Brand Loyalty, for your future enjoyment

If you’ve visited a Disney Theme Park, the odds are high you’ve seen at least one sign like this:

Please pardon our appearance while we refurbish this attraction for your future enjoyment.

Walt Disney Company

Why are the odds high?

The odds are great because Disney is always working to improve the Guest Experience.

Consider the effort, though. Every Attraction is unique, and each one comes with a different set of issues, opportunities, and strengths.

Closer inspection then will yield you a quick, and much deeper, appreciation.

Now imagine the difference between one closer inspection versus a lifetime of seeing it under a microscope.

When you see the actual DNA, the smallest pieces that hold the Disney Culture together, everything you believe in, and why, changes.

When i saw the Disney Institute participants struggle with our Brand Loyalty content, which focused on what we do and how we do it, i set out to find a breakthrough for those struggling business professionals.

i was on a mission to crystallize why, and how, we do what we do.

The why took me to the microscope, which led to brilliantly simplistic discoveries.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

The Brand Loyalty Gospel According To Walt Disney

Gospel: gos·pel, noun: Something regarded as true and implicitly believed: to take his report for gospel. A doctrine regarded as of prime importance: political gospel.

The good news, Disney’s Approach to Brand Loyalty is simple and serves as the world’s business gospel.

The bad news is it’s not easy.

When i first discovered i had high cholesterol, the doctor recommended two simple steps to lower the risk of heart disease.

Diet and exercise.

Simple.

Not easy.

Disney’s Approach to Brand Loyalty, you’ll see in a moment, is ridiculously simple.

And yet finding an organizational culture of overwhelming leadership excellence is roughly as statistically similar as finding a large number of vibrantly healthy American adults.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

The second greatest human fear

Most people know this, the second greatest human fear is the fear of death.

What’s the top human fear?

The only thing scarier than dying is public speaking.

So yeah, no, i never wanted to be a public speaker.

No dream.

No wish.

Not even a remote thought that just randomly came and went.

No desire nor interest ever happened before the day Carol called.

After that, the idea of being a Disney professional speaker consumed my thinking.

Like a broken record, i kept repeating the same question over and over, “Why me?”

Never thought about becoming a Disney Brand Loyalty expert.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.