How do you think about the consumption situation when thinking about a service? Fuzzy categories.

As I mentioned last time, when you think about the concept of college attendance, you have, as  a marketer, expectations about the category and its boundaries, but the experience encompasses  many aspects of life. A service brand–even more so than a product brand–probably can’t “own” any one word when you’re talking about an experience. Virginia Tech’s spokesman Larry Hincker said, “The brand doesn’t come from the words you see. The brand comes from your experiences…”

You’ve got a kind of metaphysical complexity working here, and you’ve also got the problem of originality. What’s new in the universe? Nothing. Which means it is highly unlikely for one  company to “own” a word in the mind the way many marketers say.

Concepts are by nature fuzzy.  Concepts overlap. Concepts are meshed with emotion.

Some purveyors of service knew about experiential marketing before marketers discovered that using products could be thought about as an experience. And there are those who have a strong brand because  they have integrated the experience with their brand attributes. Do they “own” the words that comprise their brand attributes? They own the experience that ties these words together, which is a concept that is hard to grasp unless some “brand contact” is made.

Here’s what I mean about experience beyond words: Brian Boylan, chairman of brand consultancy Wolff Olins, once said, “ A successful brand is all about detail. Every facet of a brand must be apparent in an organization’s communications, behavior, products, and environment.”  

There is no better example of a brand’s power than the following, whose attributes (listed as an  interwoven set of concepts) are apparent in every facet of the organization. These concepts are very  much tied together and are fuzzy. They are not separate categories, but every one contains, to varying degrees, all the others:

Excellent Undergraduate Experience…..Catholic…..Athletics/Football…..Service…..Know this one?

Article Tags: brand | Branding | experiential | marketing | Service
Filed under: Branding, Experiential Marketing, Visual Identity