Blog

Since organized brands were introduced alongside industrialism over 100 years ago, they have changed their nature and role in society. Brands have become "relationship brands" – brands that have a greater impact on people than the functional, product-oriented delivery of tangible, predictable benefits and features.

Brands are built on perceptions and experiences, and branding can be defined as the management of perceptions and experiences in people's minds. We look at different aspects of brands than before. We want a brand to introduce new things to us. Brands should represent the future (or nostalgia) and make us feel updated and savvy. We want a brand to offer something that we proudly show our friends. something that becomes a new favorite.

The brand should be perceived as a leader in its category. This gives us confidence in the brand, even if it doesn't always apply to their products or services. Some brands that are perceived as highly innovative don't always come first with technology, but instead leverage a new user experience first (like Apple and GoPro). It's even better when we identify with the brand and feel that the brand “always reads my mind” or that they are one step ahead of me or that I feel special and important as a customer. It's not just a different, new experience we're looking for, but also the personality of the brand.

This, in turn, can happen through a sense of nostalgia – if the brand is perceived as classic – or through following a new trend and agitating at the limits of its category. Customers already have very high expectations that the perceived top brands are predictable both in their specific deliveries and in their personality. I usually think of branding to be very similar to friendship, and positive surprises have always been a great way to keep friends interested. In fact, the same principle applies to any type of relationship.

Surprise leads to brand loyalty

This becomes the greatest challenge for strong brands. Since we love to be pleasantly surprised by our favorite brands, the surprise effect makes us more loyal. And when we are more loyal to brands, our friends and family will become aware of and influenced by us. Even if we don't really mention the brands in conversations, we are major promoters of the brands by just using them. We forget that sometimes.

When our favorite brands exceed what we expect of them, a surprise makes us more excited and increases our interest in and loyalty to the brand. One of the few things that keep us loyal to a brand is experiencing something positively unexpected. And when a brand (and a company) fails or disappears from the market and our minds, it is usually caused by a lack of positive surprises for a long time. Surprises can become almost like a drug to us; the kick of the new and the different that we don't want to do without. If the time between the surprise kicks gets longer and longer, we lose interest. This is why brands that don't deliver these kicks have it very hard. Especially if the brand had previously given its customers reason to expect surprising innovations.

We can take a look at google to see this. The Google brand is constantly on the advance and always comes up with new surprises and out-of-the-box ideas such as Google glasses, driverless cars or singularity research and thought leadership with Ray Kurzweil. Even all of the startups that Google picked up are surprising, despite Google's outstanding business strategy and its leading role in the development of the digital world, the internet, and the wireless business. With Android, Uber, Waze, Nest and more, Google continues to surprise. Even the Google logo changes from time to time, which a classic transactional brand would never do.

In contrast, we can turn to Apple. In the years following Steve Jobs's death, the company's surprise flow stalled. The perception of Apple as an innovative company that challenged the status quo and viewed the world differently began to wane. The result was that her relationship with her many fans and brand followers began to show signs of a fading marriage. This was reversed when Apple introduced several new products and concepts at a very important launch event nearly two years after Steve Jobs' death.

Apple's example shows that these failed brands can recover. However, this type of long-term disappointment and lack of surprise can result in the loss of even a brand's most loyal customers. Not every strong brand that was temporarily felt to be boring returns to the same dynamic strength it had before.

Make every surprise personal

The main surprises are those presented in a personal way. These are the surprises we look forward to and expect, but we're not sure we'll get them. At the very least, we want our anticipation to be confirmed, which itself creates a sense of surprise.

We like new surprises that make the brand more human and personal, like the pulsating light when the first generations of Apple's laptops closed. Steve Jobs wanted it to mimic the beat of a human heart.

It is of great importance that a relationship brand is perceived as personal. The tone of voice a brand uses today should be surprisingly human. The intuitive and proactive perception of the nature of the brand needs to become truly human. We're getting used to that now. The situation has matured and brands that don't have the right, human tone are perceived more than ever as cold-hearted and rude and difficult to relate to.

ContriBranding Strategy Insider by: Thomas Gad, excerpt from his book Customer Experience Branding, with permission from Kogan Page Publishing.

The Blake Project Can Help: Define the strategy behind your brand perception in The Brand Positioning Workshop

Brand Strategy Insider is a service from The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy that specializes in brand research, brand strategy, brand growth and branding

Free publications and resources for marketers