The one-sentence summary

Customer perception of brand quality is a combination of pre-existing expectations and experience when interacting with it, so companies need to practice what they preach.

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WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • Companies need to align their internal and external brand values to build a self-confident organisation
  • Customer perception of quality is a function of their pre-existing expectations of the brand, coupled with their experience when interacting with it
  • Brand reputations can be ruined by a poor interaction
  • The Brand Manners Improvement Cycle has five stages:
    1. Individual Behaviours. It’s not enough to talk about missions and values – they have to be manifested in the concrete reality of individual actions
    2. Encounters. Stay close to customers and staff, and engender an atmosphere of trust
    3. Brand Promise. Technology and automation must not be allowed to remove humanity from brand interaction
    4. Happy Surprises. Direct human interface generates defining gestures, pledges to customers, and moments of truth that should reflect the brand
    5. Feeling Good. The art of ensuring continually satisfied customers is to define your version of outstanding service, realising the importance of under-promising and over-delivering, and recruit in line with the brand’s values

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • The Brand Manners cycle makes good sense and enables you to start a strategic debate with clients that goes way beyond marketing communications
  • The philosophy of the book is a useful antidote to macho marketing styles
  • Case histories include Orange, Tesco, Coca-Cola, Ronseal, HSBC, and Pret a Manger – many of which could be directly applicable to your business
  • The format is in user-friendly chunks, with lots of diagrams that may help to inspire the content of other presentations

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • Face-to-face interaction with customers may be one step too far removed from the briefs for most marketing campaigns
  • You could end up having a lot of theoretical debate about the behaviour in an organisation without making any particular progress on marketing issues