TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

From the studios of Media Training Worldwide in New York City, this is Inside Communications.

And I'm your host, Mike Bago.

What's it like for you as a consumer to find a brand that you like and love? You're having a brand experience, and that's what today's guest, Jim Joseph has written about in the Experience Effect today on Inside Communications. We go inside with Jim to find out his thoughts on which brands make that strong connection with their consumers. Coming up next on Inside Communications.

Jim, thanks for joining us today on Inside Communications.

Thanks for having me.

In your book the Experience Effect, you talk about building a brand experience. I would think that that would be something that everyone would want to do. But obviously, if you have to go to great lengths to describe why brands should reach out and try to do that, why hasn't that been done for decades?

Well, I think there's all sorts of different theories when it comes to marketing. The truth though, is that in any given category, most of the products are pretty much the same. They offer pretty much the same functional benefits from one product to another. So almost everything is a product. But there are very few brands that excel out of being a product. And it's through the experience that you offer your consumers that makes you a brand, that builds that emotional connection that makes consumers want you as opposed to just need you.

Right. So let's get right into it. Who does it? Well, you mention it in your book, J. Crew does it. Well, why J. Crew as opposed to Gap or Macy's or something like that?

Again, it's all about the experience. And it's about the well rounded experience from every single touch point. You can read a J. Crew catalog. You can go to the J. Crew website, you can go to a J. Crew store, J. Crew social media. It's that same very consistent brand experience that you could strip off the logo and you still know you are at J.

Crew.

But it's a little bit different in every single one of those venues that folks that shop a catalog are looking for a different experience than folks that shop retail. And J. Crew knows that. They know that people are looking for different things in those venues. And they tailor the experience. Still always J. Crew, but they tailor the experience to those shoppers. And what they get you to do is, yeah, you might walk in thinking that you need to buy a pair of khakis and a shirt for work, but you walk out wanting J. Crew. Because the experience you just had, the customer service, the selection, the way it's merchandised, and that's done so consistently Every single time.

And they obviously know their customer. Tell us a little bit about how brands can understand their customers. And especially now with social media, where you can have that great interaction with them on Facebook and Twitter. How can a brand go out and understand their customer to build that experience?

I always say that really good marketing and a really great brand experience starts with understanding your consumer. You have to have a fundamental understanding of how he or she lives their lives, how you can add value to them, what they're looking for in a brand like yours. So I believe everything sort of begins and ends with the consumer. And there's lots of very traditional market research techniques that we all use that are very effective at helping us to understand the demographics of our consumers, you know, their ages and their incomes and where they live. I mean, there's lots of rich data there. It's the psychographics, though. It's their attitudes and their behaviors and the way they feel and what they worry about that really helps you to get a really good understanding of who your consumer is and how you can improve their lives. So I always tell our clients, spend a day with your consumers. I remember when I was at Johnson's Baby Products, I was a brand manager. I was 25 years old. Here I am in charge of Johnson's baby powder. I'd never held a baby in my entire life. So I spent a day with a new mom, and I helped her change diapers. I went to her pediatrician appointment, and I got such an unbelievable understanding of what she goes through, the psychographics, the attitudes and the fears and the worries and the interaction with her husband and. And the interaction with her baby and her other kids. Invaluable research, invaluable understanding of the consumer beyond anything I would have ever gotten from a market research deck.

And why haven't companies been doing that for generations now? Certain ones certainly have been doing it, and they are the successful ones. But why haven't more companies been doing that?

You know, I think it comes down to time and priority and resources. And I think that a lot of marketers think. Think that they understand their consumers a lot better than they do. They understand them demographically and they understand what their needs are, but they don't always understand their wants, their emotional wants. And I think it's what separates the really powerful brands from the other products in the categories. When you look at a J. Crew or even a Best Buy, I think they're a great example of rising above the electronics price game and offering really true customer service over social media. Really Helping people get over buyer's remorse by saying, hey, when you get home and you're trying to hang your $2,000 flat screen TV, here's a Twitter handle of someone who can help you when you're trying to put the blue cord into the blue slot. And they understood that the experience will help transcend just price, will help just transcend. I need a flat screen tv and help build a much bigger emotional connection.

Where do companies go wrong in terms of doing this? Is there ever a danger of having too much information, of being. Having too much noise, cluttering out exactly what you're trying to do?

Oh, absolutely. There's analysis paralysis, certainly, where you have so much data, you can't get out of the data. And I think where a lot of people go wrong is they forget that there are people in there that these are real, live, breathing, living people that we're talking to, communicating with, trying to build a relationship with, and that they're more than just the numbers. So really trying to understand how they live their lives can help you break through, how to connect with them and how to have an emotional connection.

So in a way, it's almost the baseball manager that has too much statistics as opposed to just saying, you know what, this guy's riding a hot hand. Let me go with him. Almost the opposite of what we're seeing now with Moneyball and different things like that.

Absolutely. And I think that a lot of brands think that the functional benefits that they offer are enough. You see that a lot in health and wellness. In fact, they think that if you just offer claims and you say, well, this brand will help reduce cholesterol, that. That's enough to break through. But you need to build a much robust, much more robust experience. If you're going to get that consumer and get them sort of engaged in your brand, you need to offer them more than just the product alone. You know, healthy information, lifestyle tips, resources, ways to connect with other consumers, which is what. What we're seeing is so powerful about social media now is that brands are helping people find other people like them and helping them connect with them and learn from each other. Because consumers are finding that to be actually much more meaningful. If I can meet somebody who's going through the same thing I'm going through, and if a brand is what connects me there, then suddenly I have a much bigger impression of the brand building that community.

Exactly, exactly. So which companies are doing that? Well, certainly brand loyalty for something like Coca Cola. I was just down in the south and everyone there has a Story about their grandfather or their grandmother taking them out fishing, having a Coke. They have that brand identity with them.

They do.

How can companies foster that and build on that and build that legacy?

Well, Coca Cola is a great example. Pepsi is a great example. Two competitors who duke it out for who's got the bigger, better emotional connection with their consumers. And die hard consumers of either of those brands will defend those brands all the way down the pike. And that's ultimately what you want to get to. We have a client at Lippy Taylor who I think does an especially amazing job philosophy line of skin care products. Been around for quite some time, but certainly not a heritage brand relative to many brands in the beauty industry. A young brand, but has developed an unbelievable emotional connection with their consumers. Unbelievable love. And when you hear how consumers talk about that brand in social media, you just see all these emotions sort of pouring out about how the brand makes them feel and they give the brand as gifts and they can't wait to introduce their daughters and their friends to the brand. You hardly ever hear a functional benefit. The functional benefits are a given. Reduces wrinkles, washes my skin, moisturizes my skin, conditions my hair. Those are given. It's the emotions that come pouring out of the consumers even less so than from the brand. You want those emotions coming out from the consumers, not necessarily the brand. Powerful, powerful experience.

And much more powerful than say if you had a celebrity doing a 32nd or 60 second spot talking about how it reduces wrinkles or how it makes them camera ready. It's a lot different when a 30 year old woman is talking about how she wants her daughter to be wearing that makeup for years to come.

Absolutely, Absolutely. We've seen time and time again when you look at the research numbers, when you look at the data and, and you ask people who's the most influential for you? We're starting to see people like me rising to the top. Even in categories like healthcare where you're talking to consumers who are dealing with cancer and diabetes and high blood pressure, they will tell you that yes, they trust what their doctor tells them. That has not gone away. Their influence has come down though, as finding other people that are going through the same thing I'm going through, who are also diabetic or newly diagnosed with cancer or dealing with high blood pressure. I want to hear what they have to say and what they've gone through and what they've done to sort of improve their life. And as I mentioned before, if a brand is the one that's helped me connect with Those folks, then suddenly I feel better about the brand as well.

Building that community. Now that we have the Internet and all sorts of technology, how important is it for companies to have that forum on their website, good or bad, positive experience, negative experience, but to have that forum where people can go to get that unvarnished opinion. Sue from Wisconsin giving the same experience as Tom from Miami, how important is that?

The website is certainly important, but the website is no longer the end all, be all. I think 15 years ago, clients said, I want the biggest, most robust website I can have. It was all about being sticky and all about getting people to stay on my website and never go anywhere else. The world has changed. And now what consumers want, what. What folks on the web want is they want multiple touch points. They want to be able to go to a lot of different places and get information. So if your brand can develop what we call at Lippy Tailor, an ecosystem where you're in all the right places at all the right time and the consumers just keep stumbling upon you, then you're in a much more influential position. Rather than just being the website that's just pouring out information about your brand, what you want to do is be a member of the community and be where they are, when they are, when they're looking for information and finding each other. So it's not just about the website anymore. It's about social media, Facebook and Twitter and partnerships on other relevant websites. And yes, a banner ad here and there where it makes sense to get a click through. It's about developing that ecosystem where you're out and about everywhere, really.

And your ecosystem, your personal ecosystem, books, working with Libby Taylor, doing different media, but also your blog. One of the things that you say on your blog is that marketing is a spectator sport.

Spectator sport.

Tell us a little bit about that. Tell us a little bit about the blog, what you aim to do with the blog, how your opinions on the blog may differ or be different than what you have in the book.

Sure. Well, I am a big believer that marketing is a spectator sport. And what I mean by that is that we can learn from each other. I learn a tremendous amount and I've been around for a little while now, but you can still teach an old dog new tricks. I learned a tremendous amount by watching what other brands are doing in the marketplace, what they're doing well, what they're doing not so well. And that blog, my blog is really a vehicle for sharing ideas. And I just talk about observations that I'm seeing in the marketplace that we can all learn from. And then I get comments back from readers and I learn back from them, which is really great. It's a labor of love. Great example of this is just last week Raghu ran a video series on their website featuring relatively well known mommy bloggers talking about preparing dinner and talked about the tips they would do and things they would do when preparing dinner and how important the family dinner is. And in one of the video segments they talked about dads and dad's role in dinner and they kind of weren't too complimentary. They brought up some stereotypes about dad being sort of bumbly and fumbly in the kitchen. And of course consumers and bloggers and daddy bloggers went wild. And I wrote about it in my blog and I said marketing is a spectator sport. Let's learn from this. Let's learn that adopting the same old stereotypes aren't going to necessarily resonate. And let's learn the power of these bloggers and the power of the consumer voice and the fact that consumers reacted so quickly and so negatively. We should all learn from that. Let's not trash the brand for doing it. They're not necessarily wrong. Let's all learn from it. So that's sort of the purpose of the blog.

And what other functions does the blog serve? I noticed just recently something as simple as a focus group skit on Saturday Night Live getting a couple paragraph commentary from you. It's important just to keep that intellectual dialogue flowing, whether it be a longer form narrative like the book, or just putting out three or four paragraphs on something that you see on tv.

Yeah, the spirit of my blog actually is just a quick little hit. I write it every single morning. It's sort of part of my daily routine. I get up and I start writing. And it's meant to be a quick little hit, a quick little observation in the marketing space. I have guest bloggers come on every now and again to get a different point of view. So yes, today I wrote about the SNL skit about the professional focus group person with Melissa McCarthy. And people have been reading it and commenting on it already. Just random stuff sometimes and sometimes always related back to marketing.

And it's related back to marketing, but it also gets your name out there. So people that might not be familiar with your work with Lippi Taylor or even with the book see you in that arena as well.

Yeah, well, it's nice to have a voice in the industry. There are a number of people in the industry that have tremendous voices and they stay their opinions and they have a role in shaping the future of the industry. And that's where I want to be also, and where I want the agency to be. We're a team of thought leaders at the agency, actually, in communications and in marketing and digital marketing and creativity. So I want to have our voice out there, and I want to be leading the industry and doing the best marketing that we possibly can and advancing the industry to be a place that clients are happy to be a part of, that new folks want to bring their talent into the industry. I believe it's all part of the same thing.

Well, Jim, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us and going Inside Communications with us.

Thank you. Thanks.