blog

is customer disappointment hurting your brand?

Love, Trust and Line Extension

I love Banquet fried chicken. I love its flavor. I love its convenience. And I love the fact that it goes perfectly with hot sauce and cold beer. So, like most consumers, my love of the product creates a trust with the Banquet brand itself: I give the brand my trust because they earned it with their chicken. It’s a simple equation. And it’s the reason brands like Banquet can extend their brands and product lines in the first place. It’s also the reason that I decided to give one of their entrees a try.

Bait and Switch! (Calling it bait is being generous.)

Now, food dressing is a big part of the food business. Food has to look good if we expect to sell it. However, what we as marketers and business people should avoid at all costs is dressing up our product so much that what is represented in our marketing bears no resemblance to what our customers will experience after they’ve handed over their money.

As you can see, the vast divide between the restaurant-quality dish the photograph promises and the gruel the company delivered was, to put it mildly, unacceptable. To put it less mildly, it was like taking home Angelina Jolie and waking up with her grandmother. [Hey hey hey: Angelina Jolie's grandmother is hawt. Ed.] Again, unacceptable.

Truth Will Make Us Better

All of us have had similar underwhelming experiences. The problem for Banquet — and other brands that over-promise and under-deliver — is that they try to do too much, be too much and offer too much. The result is that they set up their customers for disappointment and themselves for failure. Because the simple truth is this: Our success isn’t dependent upon how good our product is or whether or not our company delivers great service. Dollar Tree and Tiffany both do well. No, whether we retain or lose our customers depends squarely on whether or not we deliver on our promises. It’s as simple as that.

In the end, what we have to do is concede that we can’t be all things to all people. But we can be some things to some people. And we can do those things well. It’s all in the choices we make and the promises we keep. Look around your company. Are there places where you could promise less and deliver more?

talk to us.