VOL. 0041 – FLORIDA, TUESDAY, JAN 30, 2024
Juan F. Arjona Harry
President & CEO Strategee
Once it is found that there are millions of people waiting under a frantic push to connect, we understand what is the true power of word of mouth today, plus the power of digital marketing.
In the present circumstances, at the time news, facts, situations happen anywhere in the universe (not just the planet) within seconds about 7,000 million people are commenting and expressing their views.
This reality comes to increase the power of word of mouth of marketing. In this perspective, a brand could be discussed at the time by various opinion leaders or not, belonging or not to a reference group, and comments or opinions are respected as part of the protocol.
Today we have exactly the same situation, but at a minimum speed of 10 Megabytes per second, impacting millions of people, who think, express themselves and think about the situation as if they themselves had experienced such an event. There are activated millions of "word of mouth" in a second, causing an avalanche of convenient, positive or negative information about the fact.
For brands this is another of the great challenges of the XXI Century, being able to handle this circumstance being excellent.
No brand is infallible. We see for example, two weeks ago BMW called to review thousands of vehicles worldwide for various details, sometimes insignificant details, but brands have to do it in honor of their painstaking quality policy. This circumstance (unfortunate for any brand) generates comments of such magnitude that with a misguided management, can end the prestige, reputation and brand equity.
It then becomes an interesting challenge to understand that even with all the power that now is generated by a brand expression and communication in the mainstream media or media BTL there something basic-that constitutes the foundation of the Equity-, and is the importance that brands exactly meet their value proposition.
That is particularly demanding when there are experiential brands, whose construction of Equity is built with daily experience in the use / buy / enjoy. For all kinds of brands will be crucial (both functional brands, and for the emotional and experiential brands or experience), but for this experiential brands is a giant challenge.
Because these brands are in an undergoing process of permanent construction (a bank, a hotel, a clinic, a restaurant, a cruise, an amusement park, a mechanical workshop services, an insurance company, a travel services company, an airline), they will be in the challenge to build in every interaction an experience equal to the expectation sold from advertising. This generates a tremendous challenge in terms of management, execution of marketing and daily execution of their service strategy and servuction.
It shouldn’t be that the advertising creates a brand image delivering certain value proposition, and that at the time of use / contact; customers received something that doesn’t meet their expectations.
Such a situation will immediately generate a magnitude of discomfort in seconds that connect hundreds of unsatisfied customers, generating an expanded voice or word of mouth that ends up dragging the whole effort of generating Equity to fail. Today the reality experienced with a brand goes beyond the promises made in the mass media.
This is another huge challenge that arises for brands, be able to build Equity, when an expanded word of mouth of hundreds of thousands of interconnected users speaking from their experience with the brand.