Managing Marketing Past Lives

For the past nine years, my company, Brand Keys, has methodically examined consumers’ loyalty and engagement with brands in a study called the Customer Loyalty Index. Currently it examines 238 brands in 35 industry categories—from airlines to soft drinks, from wireless phone services to satellite radio.

All the research is done by telephone interviews, augmented by central-location intercepts of “cell phone only” respondents. Participants include nationally representative samples of men and women, 18-60 years of age. Emotional and rational assessments come together to identify the top four drivers of loyalty and engagement for the category being examined, and the drivers describe precisely how a customer will view the category, compare offerings within it, and ultimately become engaged and buy—and buy again.

The metrics not only paint a detailed picture of the drivers that engage and bond customers with their “ideal” brands, but they also identify, for each driver, the level of expectations customers hold for the category. As these expectations are psychologically derived, they are a critical marketing and engagement metric and identify what consumers really, really want.

The reason I mention all this is that expectations have increased in all categories since last year. This is not an anomaly; it is an ongoing pattern. Consumers want more, especially when what was once “delight” turns to current-day “expectation,” as it eventually does in most categories. On average, expectations are growing two times faster than brands are able to keep up. Not a good thing for marketers, to be sure.

But a journalist covering this trend raised some interesting questions: “How high was ‘up’? Was there an eventual ceiling that would be reached when it came to customer expectations? Did consumers eventually reach an expectation cul-de-sac?”

From our perspective, the answers would be as follows:

Consumers are sovereign when it comes to deciding how much or how soon or how (fill in the blank) they’ll accept as delight or regard as price-of-entry table stakes. Neither is there ceiling nor cul-de-sac when it comes to expectations, most of which are driven by emotional values and bonds, rather than rational and reasonable attributes.

Is this fair? Not from the old mid-20th-century marketing perspective of “it’s our product or service, and consumers should keep their marketing smarts to themselves!” But that was then. Welcome to the 21st century! Shake hands with the bionic consumer!

But can expectations be managed? That’s a different question, and one to which the answer is, happily, “yes.”

A good deal about expectations is governed by an archetype we’ve come to call “the marketing past life,” where both humor and wisdom can be found in the articulated version that sounds something like this: “When I was a boy it only cost one cent to mail a letter.” It’s the unarticulated, emotionally based part of the marketing past life that causes most of the problems. That’s because consumers don’t always dig down deep enough to understand why they feel the way they do and don’t really care to understand what will—or will not—better engage them. Why should they? That’s marketing’s job, after all. Sometimes managing expectations involves not only understanding the concept of the marketing past life but also placing things into context for the consumer.

Take the price of gasoline today. Most consumers would say, “The price of gasoline is way too high. More than $3.00 a gallon? Are you crazy? Of course it’s too high. I expect to pay less. Way less.” And from the rational, historic perspective that would all be true. But what about an alternative view? How does gas fare in comparison to gallons of the following?

Diet Snapple: 16 oz. costs $1.29, or $10.32 per gallon
Lipton Ice Tea: 16 oz costs $1.19, or $9.52 per gallon
Gatorade: 20 oz, costs $1.59, or $10.17 per gallon
Vick’s NyQuil: 6 oz. costs $8.35, or $178.13 per gallon
Pepto-Bismol: 4 oz. costs $3.85, or $123.20 per gallon

Begins to make gasoline seem reasonable, doesn’t it? Jonathan Swift noted that “blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”

But he was on the creative side of things, so what would you expect?

Robert Passikoff, Ph.D., is founder and president of New York-based marketing firm Brand Keys and writes a monthly column for CHIEF MARKETER.