Brands are Movie Stars, Companies Own the Theater

I’m still gnawing on the distinction between brand relationships and customer relationships.

Some distinction seems to be in order. Traditional brand relationships are one-sided: a brand is a movie star whose life is known to millions but is herself unaware of the fans’ activities. On the other hand, customer relationships are dialogues: they are based on interactions in which each side is (or should be) aware of the other.

But customers really interact with companies: they interact with a company’s brand. Think of the brand as a mask that the company wears when dealing with customers. One company can have many masks, which each appear different to consumers. Since all customer interactions are interactions with a brand, all customer relationships are brand relationships. QED.

Yet this does not mean that all brand relationships are customer relationships. Even though customer interactions are becoming more common, many brand relationships remain one-sided. Realistically, this is not an either/or choice some brands interact more with their customers than others, but most have a mix of one-way and two-way relationships.

What does this mean in terms of customer experience management and brand management? Well, it still means that all brand experiences—whether two-way interactions or one-sided messages—should be consistent with the brand image. Consistency does not mean all experiences must be the same for everyone. A brand based on caring about individuals, to take an obvious (possibly tautological) example, would make a point of explaining how it tailors its treatments. But even a brand based on something more conventional, such as product quality, could still personalize its treatments to express product quality in ways that are relevant to different customers.

On the other hand, there are still those situations where personalization is impossible. This points to a basic difference in the definition of a customer. From a brand perspective, a customer is anyone who buys your product, while from a company perspective, a customer is anyone who buys from you. Sometimes a company will be selling its products directly, but often it will not. Customizing an experience for people who buy from someone else (your brand’s customers, but not your company’s customers) is tricky but not impossible. It is what product configuration and after-sales service are about, not to mention informational Web sites.

Of course, even this degree of customization does not apply to mass advertising. Here, the best that can be done is to select TV shows, magazines, and other vehicles that reach particular customer segments and deliver messages appropriate to those segments. If the audience is truly a cross-section of society—although it’s hard to think of an example; maybe skywriting?—then the message cannot be segment-specific. But it should still reflect the primary brand personality.