500 Days of Summer and Branding: Expectations vs. Reality
The most accurate definition of Branding Ive heard is: Brand is what happens in the mind of the consumers. So how can we influence that concept positively? A simple answer is: creating great products/services, while that answer is great and is right, it doesn’t help us figure out how to execute this succesfully.
Expectations Reality(perception of it) = Satisfaction
This reminds me of the movie 500 Days of Summer (spoiler alert!) and how the guy was so disappointed because his expectations were these extremely corny and romantic moments, and in reality the girl was very indifferent towards him. If his expectations had been more in line with reality, the disappointment would have been much less. I am sure we ve all heard people saying: I liked that show/deodorant/restaurant/movie, but I was disappointed because the ads/reviews had made it sound much better; high quality is not enough, your product or service has to live up to expectations created by planned and unplanned marketing. Marketing and Strategy generate EXPECTATIONS: They have to do a great job at promoting the benefits of the product/service, but at the same time they have to be realistic in order to avoid disappointment.
Your execution generates REALITY or PERCEPTIONS, this has to be flawless and live up to the promise that your Marketing generated and the Strategy you planned.
How to make sure that you’re doing this process right? Figuring out what matters from the beggining of your planning process and then measuring it. First measure what’s important for the consumer, design your strategy around that and then make sure that you execute that strategy in the most aligned way, then measure again, rinse and repeat.