This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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Seth Godin: "Every customer touchpoint needs to be actively reevaluated."
Seth is referring to his experience while trying to get his Mac repaired at an Apple store. Ever the Purple Cow hunter, Seth is simply brilliant when it comes to analyzing and converting his daily experiences into a business excellence case study.
Anyway, the quote I selected above can be applied to any and every business. Branding is about so much more than the marketing and the ads. It’s about so much more than the message. Branding is about the soul of an organization. It’s THE LIFE FORCE that permeates every square nanometer of the company. If part of the organization is cut off from THE FORCE, then the customers who interact with that part of the organization are cut off from THE FORCE.
THE FORCE is the ideavirus. The meme. The buzz. The chutzpa. The juice of a company. The energy that connects a product – via mainline – to the customer’s heart and soul.
Do you want to fight a price war? If so, forget about THE FORCE because without it you are merely a commodity. Something I can get anywhere for the lowest price I can find it. Wherever your customer and product/company/brand interact – customer touchpoints – THE FORCE must be present. And it must be transferred to your customer along with the commodity/product.