During the Super Bowl I saw a couple of tweets which lamented that few of the ads “called for action” on part of the customer. Probably part of the brand nurturing investment I thought. Sometime in the near future, in competitive decisions, customers will likely reward their brands.
Brands can bring enormous customer loyalty. What is less studied is they also bring negative associations. Two recent examples from a TV session:
a) I saw a news item on Redbox and Verizon’s planned physical and streaming video service. As Blockbuster fades and NetFlix stumbles, it will be good to have other providers. But Verizon? All my negatives for that brand earned over decades of experience – creative fees, data throttling, slow technology rollout, poor customer service etc – jumped out. I actually felt sorry for Redbox.
b) Saw an ad for Quicken Loans where they promised a “rate drop” feature where they would absorb the “majority” of closing costs of any refinance. Quicken Loans is an entity separate from Intuit, but the negatives for Intuit from my past experiences with QuickBooks and other products came to mind. Frequent and expensive upgrades, irritating pop-ups for countless Intuit products like checks….Still curious I went to their web page. The rates were a full percent higher than what my current mortgage bank offers, and we have a similar rate drop feature for a defined fee of $ 495. Given my already wary state of mind why would I sign up for a rather vague “we will cover a majority of refinancing fees”?
Readers, is your company like Domino’s which used brutally honest customer feedback to engineer a “pizza turnaround”? Or does it ignore them or even fight negative customer vibes?
