Design Kompany | Brand Marketing by Graphic Design studio in Seattle

Today me and 149 or so other people attended a talk called “The New Realities of Brand Loyalty.”

This was an informal lecture by an ad agency director, a guest speaker at the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s program “Marketing Mondays.”

Design Kompany stopped by to see what speaker Ken Etheridge of K-E-A.com would say about things DK is very interested in, but from the perspective of someone who has been in the industry far longer, and worked for huge companies like General Mills and stuff like that.

Would there be some continuity in his ideas and ours? Before editorializing here, I want to report the story straight.

Here’s some of the things he said:

• Your brand is your image when you’re not there.
• Ask your customers what they think. About you. Your services. Your company’s products, and your people. “You may think you know,” Ken Etheridge said, “but you need to hear it in their words.”
• Do focus groups. Etheridge advised us to gather 10 people for one hour each, for these three kinds of focus groups: potential customers, existing customers, and customers whom you’ve lost. Gather them, buy lunch, and facilitate as they respond to your survey questions. Your questionnaire is a list of 5 to 10 questions. Ask them. See if people agree. See if they disagree. Facilitate, don’t intervene. In sum: As a business owner, focus groups are the best way to gather up what’s on the minds of people who buy from you. [This is the one point that the person I sat next to said was the 1-hour talk’s most useful take-away.]
• 90% of retail purchases are impulse.
• Schmooze. Find out what your clients are passionate about. Take your clients out for beer and baseball games. Golf with them. Take them sailing and have all the best wine and food on board. “It’s about relationships.”
• Referrals come only when you are passionate about what you do, and it shows, and people know it right away. If you’re not passionate, they won’t buy. Also, if a customer has a bad experience, she’ll tell 20 people. If she has a good experience, she’ll tell two.
• Study. Look at competitors to see where opportunities lie.

Here comes the small bit of editorializing–I don’t want to go into too much now because it’s 12:14am.

This last bit about looking at customer’s competitors reminds me of the book I’m just wrapping up, The Book of Five Rings for Executives by Donald Krause. It’s a derivation of the original how-to guide to winning by samurai Miyamoto Musashi .

What do you think? Have you been a part of a focus group, or led one? Was it useful?

Does schmoozing work? Is brand loyalty really dead?