In brand, your customers view of the world and how your offer adds value to them is all important. Sometimes if you’re fortunate enough, your customers will actually even communicate their impressions of your brand, what it’s doing well and where it’s falling short for them. Social media provides brands with a sound-track of customer conversation which is a ready source of rich insight. But customer conversations are only valuable to a business when they have the mind-set to listen, interpret and act.
Dave Ansett, Brandamentalist
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Voyeur of Customer Brand Conversations
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This is very cheeky indeed. There is definitely more access for direct customer communication to business with the increase in use of social media. Do you think Yellow Pages is more likely to respond to this photo than lets say a letter in the mail?
Dave how right — businesses should embrace the reality checks customers can deliver.
Perception = assumption = hunch = danger and why would you invest thousands of $ on a hunch — when just being open to feedback is the cheapest research you can do.
Added to that they not only highlight what you are doing badly — but also what you are doing well!
Tim, I think if the photo starts to move through social media it is far more likely to gain a response than a letter would. What I particularly like is that this is a ‘brand comment’ rather than a ‘complaint’ — which changes the footing of the brand communication.
Malcolm, the great news for brand sis the days of running with hunches has moved to running with customer insights on which to base educated hunches — subtle but different. I’d love to get a grasp on the ratio of positive customer brand communications to negative. My uninformed hunch is there are probably more negative than positive.
Just read an interesting brand communication stat — more than 12% of all tweets mention a brand name. The question is — What are they saying about your brand, and what is the consumer saying about you?
I wonder why they keep printing yellow pages while we have all in front of eyes!
Funnily enough there are a stack of White Pages that we have been using as a door stop in my apartment block. I am really surprised that Yellow Pages didn’t listen to their customers a year ago and learn this lesson. If they were smart they could have turned this negative brand experience into a positive one.
This is something I have often thought of. I pick up the yellow pages and put it straight into the recycle bin. Times are changing. It is a lot of landfill to service a select few without the internet. I think it is time for Yellow Pages re-think how they remain relevant. By focusing on the idea they help us find things, rather than they print directories might be a good place to start.
EMMR, it seems a little like Yellow Pages is an analogue product that supports itself (sales of premium ads) through the size of it’s audience (distribution). If they only delivered the printed phone books to the people who wanted them — they probably wouldn’t have a business. Seems lioke a brand with a pretty mixed-up reason for being.
‘If they would have listened…’ seems like this may be a phrase we hear more and more as consumers expect brands to listen to them — Chenges the whole mid-set of brand communication.
Lachlan, it’d be an interesting project — how does Yellow ‘Pages’ continue to be of value in the ‘finding things’ process when we have search engines. That would appear to be their great challenge for brand relevance and value.