The most prominent point that stuck out to me under this entire topic is, "your brand is what your customers say it is." This really stands out to me from a customer perspective, because I know that there are brands that I don't like and brands I do like. I might say good things about a brand I do like, but my friend might say bad things about that same brand and think it is a bad brand. I would recommend that brand over my friend and we dictate what brands we vouch for or not. I think this point is so simple yet so overlooked by companies. Regardless of how the brand sees itself, the customer decides how they see your brand and communicates that opinion to others.
The point of that statement is to encourage companies to take a minute to stop and listen to their customers to see what they are saying about their company. The book says that there are a few ways that a company can listen to their customers:
1. Google your product name along with the word suck or awesome
2. Google blog search
3. Check out tags that people have for your company or products
4. Work with vendors that provide professional tools who can set up brand monitoring or a private community
With all of these strategies listed, they are useless if a company doesn't actually use this information and act on the knowledge gained. Businesses should listen and act accordingly. The book gives a great example of how Mini USA listened to its customers and advertised according to the information they gained. The lead marketer knew that anyone that owned a Mini loved his or her car, so the campaign that was created targeted the Mini owners community. This conclusion was made when the lead marketer monitored online conversations among the Mini owners community and learned that Mini owners prefer to see themselves as members of an exclusive club of people who belong together. That is exactly why the lead marketer created advertisements that had secret messages for Mini owners only. This in turn created more buzz on the Internet and could have contributed partly to any future sales that were made.
I think that this is a prime example of how easy it is for businesses to create relevant products and services for their customers. It only makes sense for companies to give the customers what they want. The more businesses give customers what they want, the more sales they will make, all it takes is for them to listen. So what do you all think? Do you think that your favorite brands listen to what their customers are saying? Have you ever asked a company for something in their brand and later saw improvements? Do you agree that brands should listen to the customers?