I just finished watching the film, “Never Been Kissed” for the fifth time. I am an absolute sucker for ‘old’ romance films; I enjoy the way I can sense the love connection between the lead couple, and how, no matter the curveball thrown at them, when the film writes, “The End”, and the credits roll, they’re still together.
After watching it this time around, one specific line seemed to stick with me. This one line, “Write what you know” answered my question on what to write about, and suddenly I had my love connection.
Today we fall in love with things like brands, in fact, most of us have that one brand that leaves us saying “One day when I grow up I’m going to have that or be like that.”
I personally have a couple of those brands and one, in particular, is a retail brand. For the longest time whenever I walked by the store with my mother, I would tell her that same line, “One day when I grow up I would buy from that brand”. It wasn’t because I idealized the people who shopped there but because I knew I would be able to depend on that brand – the clothes were always of brilliant quality.
The touch of the material, the sight of the beautifully lit-up store, and even the new-clothing smell always drew me in. All these small details play a part when influencing a customer to buy or even fall in love with your brand.
Consistency = trust and trust leads to love.
Whether we would like to admit it or not, humans are boring creatures – we are creatures of habit, and value consistency highly.
We like when brands keep their promise. This lets us know we can lean on our brand when times are good or bad and that they won’t turn on us in those tough situations.
Let’s join in a short visualisation:
Picture your favourite brand. Now picture yourself getting an item from that brand, and think in specifics – how everything looks and feels and think about the experience. Think about the people who are representatives of the brand and how they greet you or interact with you as they hand you the item.
You get home, look at your item and realise it has something wrong with it… You’re going to have to take that item back.
What does that interaction look like? Most importantly how do you feel about yourself?
If you visualize this and you have had an amazing experience, then congratulations, your brand rocks! Although, if like most of us, you left that experience with feelings of anxiety, humiliation, and disappointment, then your brand (along with most) forgot the love; it forgot the promise it made to you, it forgot the consistency.
To those brands I give these design tips which I have learned along my journey, on how to bank some love:
1. FRAME YOUR SOLUTIONS In the same way that I’m writing from what I know, use what you know and position it to always leave your customer thinking you are adding value or uniquely solving problems. It can be quite easy to be absorbed by the rules of compliance however every now and then, try to take a step back.
2. DESIGN FOR WHEN THINGS GO WRONG (The sticky moments)
We all dislike these moments, but these are the moments that can transform an ordinary customer into your personal brand ambassador. Focus on innovating these.
3. FOCUS ON YOUR CUSTOMER
This can be a bit tricky due to all the noise that gets in the way, but if you focus on your customer and what differentiates you as a brand, you will find a solution to rise above the noise. Doing buyer/customer personas can help you to narrow down your customers’ traits. Listening to them will also help you discover how you exceed or fail their expectations at each moment. This will ensure you tailor all your energy and love to your ideal customer.
4. ADD EMOTION
Ask how you want your customer to feel in every interaction with your brand. Try out empathy maps with your buyer personas. This makes it easier to view situations like those ‘sticky moments’ from both the perspective of your customer and your employees.
My parting thoughts to you are this – your solutions are actually very simple, it is us who overcomplicate and make things hard. We build our own walls and then label them as silos. We fail to design for the ‘sticky moments’ which is why we don’t know how to frame those moments. We forget to ask how we want our customers to feel in every interaction, which is why they leave feeling either bland or horribly disappointed. We forget our promise and our love.
You are designing for another human and humans are boring creatures.