Yesterday, I saw a great post called “The First Rule of Branding” from former Algonquin College colleague Lisa Haggis, who’s now on her own as a branding consultant. My two-sentence summary of her post: “Customers want to love you. Don’t turn them off.”
And then this morning, I was meeting with friend and colleague Meredith Luce, a local graphic designer (and, as a side note, one of my favorite performers in all the world), and we were talking about businesses and design, when she said, “Sometimes it’s like hearing a friend is going out on a hot date and you look at her and say, ‘You’re going out dressed like that?? At least invest in a mirror.‘”
I burst out laughing. But what she had said, and what Lisa had written, were stuck in my head enough that I needed to write this.
As a business, the “frilly stuff”, like graphic design or customer experience, might seem unnecessary. As Lisa wrote in her post,
“People will evaluate your brand as a whole, not as individual experiences… exceptions – that one off-topic blog post, cheap marketing collateral, or a contradictory offering – will throw off the whole experience.”
Whether it’s media relations, sales, graphic design, social media — when you’re in business, you’re always going out on dates. Hopefully, those dates develop into relationships (I’m not getting into polygamy or polyamory metaphors, please and thank you). You should be thinking:
But if you go out with your metaphorical fly unzipped or your pantyhose tucked into your skirt… you could end up like this:
Don’t leave a glaring hole in your customer experience. For that matter, don’t leave a subtle one either.
