PR agency rbb’s Breakout Brands Customer Insights study identifies brands that recognize the value of emotional attachment and have adopted strategies that perfectly align with today’s changing marketplace, delivering better services and/or products, elevating a category with new ideas and focusing on the customer not the competition.
Its Breakouts for 2012? The top five are Apple, Amazon.com, Chick-fil-A, Walmart and Costco. They are followed by Starbucks, Google, Zappos, Toyota and Ford. While these picks are not too surprising, the research around Breakout Brands contains nuggets that we think need illuminating.
One finding: a solid consumer connection will pay off. Some 83% of consumers would pay more for a product or service from a company they feel puts them first. What is more, almost 20% of the more than 2,000 respondents would pay 50% or more for a product or service if they felt the company put them first.
And earning Breakout status goes across sectors, although the study did find that certain industries have greater potential to benefit from Breakout Brand behaviors. Personal and proactive customer communication is far more important in the areas of healthcare, banking and professional services. In the beauty products or apparel sectors these behaviors are less impactful on growing market share (see the chart).
CONSUMERS FIRST
But how can organizations establish such a personal customer connection, putting consumers first? There’s no one formula, says Christine Barney, CEO and managing partner at rbb. “For Apple, it starts with cool products,” says Barney. Zappos, on the other hand, leads with superior customer service. And it isn’t brand awareness that leads to a Breakout Brand. The agency looked at the top 25 of Fortune Magazine’s most admired brands of 2012 and found only two of the companies, Apple and Amazon, were named by more than 50% of the respondents as a Breakout Brand.
Barney says an important strategy to reach Breakout status is to know your target customers inside and out. The best brands, like Southwest, do this. However, Southwest had limited Breakout status, according to survey respondents. “Brands also must be inventive, original and groundbreaking,” says Barney. Maybe next year, Southwest.
CUSTOMER ADVOCATES
They also must have advocates, says Rob Fuggetta, CEO and founder of social media marketing company Zuberance. PR firms invest a significant amount of time cultivating bloggers, news media and other influencers, yet they can make a more personal connection by nurturing customer advocates. “It’s customers, not the media, that have more influence,” says Fuggetta.
The Breakout Brands, he says, offer compelling experiences for customers—such an experience can be had with a robust customer advocate program. One Zuberance client, a software company, has 36,000 customer advocates. “That can move marketing,” says Fuggetta. “Nothing is more powerful than a recommendation.”
Fuggetta just may have something here. Barney says a Breakout Brand strategy puts the customer No. 1 and the organization is committed to a customer relationship based on rich feedback loops, not just one-way communication.
Keep that in mind when engineering your own brand’s Breakout.
CONTACT:
Christine Barney, [email protected]; Rob Fuggetta, [email protected].
Follow Scott Van Camp: @svancamp01