Building customer loyalty

FIREBRANDS (Building Brand Loyalty In the Internet Age): Michael Moon and Doug Millison; Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. Ltd., 7, West Patel Nagar, New Delhi-110008. Rs. 375.

MICHAEL MOON of GISTICS Inc., an internationally renowned research and executive education firm who track key developments related to the interactive corporation and its four disciplines - electronic commerce, digital branding, smart media, and process management and who conduct workshops and web based seminars and who advise major international corporations on strategies for branding, e-Commerce and rapid market entry into technical markets along with Doug Millison, who helped shape the interactive media designer, have produced this well got up, moderately priced book for a knowledge worker in the Net economy who sits before a computer and starts scanning through the various websites (suggested by the two) to unveil the beginning- to-end strategies for strengthening a company's brand online and building customer loyalty.

They have identified and analysed some branding successes and failures and provide a road map for implementing effective brand building strategies in today's ever-changing digital environment. The work is based on two dozen case studies and the emerging overarching theory is simple - "Branding means telling stories that customers want to hear''. The authors in this book of 300 pages, divided into eight chapters, provide a clear, well-lit path into the future of e-Business planning and driving business brand into the e-World. The glossary will serve its purpose very well in this book of many jargons.

The emergence of trust networks means that businesses must re- engineer the core processes that they use to find and serve customers. In the past, companies could address brands and brand building as a set of communications activities that are parallel to the real work of the firm - designing, making and delivering products and services. In the Networked economy, these parallel tracks converge. Value creation and storytelling merge in firebranding, the term used by the authors for brand building in the Networked economy. The book clearly explains what happens to the relationship between buyer and seller in the Networked economy (the businesses that find and serve customers using the Internet and an array of related information technologies) and the impact these changes have on brands and brand building.

In the first chapter the authors introduce the notion of the brand estate, a new social class of activist customers and stakeholders who use their buying power to reward companies that deliver satisfactions that meet or exceed customer requirements and expectations for quality and value. Chapter two explains why traditional definitions of brands fail to meet the challenge of the Networked economy and show how buyers and sellers collaborate in the creation of a brand and discuss why the relationship between the buyer and the seller has become so important. The authors define a brand in terms of four interrelated elements - satisfaction, collaboration, relationship and story. Chapter three discusses how branding authority evolves (or devolves) through a corporate lifecycle highlighting the best practice of a CEO leading the branding process as a fiduciary responsibility meaning that the CEO uses effective brand management to bolster shareholder confidence and maintain share price.

The authors have also discussed the need for a crisp and focused positioning strategy that distills the one idea (desired or expected satisfaction) and imprints it in the minds and hearts of one customer segment. For a strong branding authority with worldwide focus, Moon finds that "the fastest, most effective way to clear the nuances of another culture results from studying the religious traditions that frame the moral and ethical context of a society and its legal system. "If you seek success in China for example, know the basic tenets of Taoism. Confucianism, Buddhism and Maoism". How true it is, is proved by Pepsi's name in China!

Chapter four discusses the important components of a firebrand and the firebrand's relationship with e-Mediaspace and stakeholders calling attention to the importance of harnessing the explosive brand potential of e-Supply through an interactive business design. The BMW case study is very interesting. A firebrand exploits the luminosity of a "digital campfire" - a computer screen - to bring into focus the stories that help create the brand. Applying a variety of multimedia brand resources including downloaded audio or video and streaming audio, video, animation and VRML files makes firebrand sizzles. Chapter five sets forth a road map for building a white-hot firebrand; a roadmap that constitutes nothing less than a wholesale revision of business and commercial activity.

The authors have tried to emphasise short-term tactical deployments of technologies and practices within a framework that reflects a vision of the Networked economy and what it takes to succeed in the coming era based on the best available information and painting as complete a picture as they can at the present moment. Chapter six offers a set of templates aimed to help thinking about how to develop a deep gravity well super site for the firm or operation. The authors also intend to develop these templates into fuller treatments and make them available as downloadable monographs in future. Chapter seven advocates viewing of Firebrands.com as a way of maintaining an evergreen presentation of this subject!

The "corner shop sentiments", predominant in Indian buyers, play a very vital role in the brand loyalty concept since successful brands always connect - like Volvo's promise of safety, Maruti's service, Dettol's bactericidal effect, Cross' writing pleasure - and India is yet to catch up with this concept. However, the successful firebranding team of the 21st century will create value, bring relevant offerings to market, serve and satisfy customers, and ultimately earn a profit for fundamentally different reasons. They will do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because it will bring higher profits or increased market share. But to get this benefit, brand managers must themselves undergo a near spiritual transformation; they must trust that customers will see true and authentic value in their offerings and willingly engage in a fair exchange of value. Moon's aim is that this book should serve as a manifesto to unite executives and staff in how they can engage and succeed in the Networked economy. This book is primarily for CEOs and Brand Database Managers.

N. RAMASWAMI

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