Scott Saunders | It is in our nature to expect things. At the very core, it is our brain’s way of preparing for either fight or flight, or the pending emotional/psychological response of a pending situation. And based on our experience, those expectations are either high or low.
While our expectations can be shaped by the many social influences around us like family, friends, culture and the endless mass of information we are bombarded by each day, it is our past experiences that significantly influence our expectations. Over time, our minds tend to create patterns of expectations based on what we have experienced.
If you frequent the same restaurant to eat one of your favorite dishes, you have good or high expectations of your pending meal after you order. This is due mostly to the fact that you had a good experience in the past with this restaurant and the cook. In contrast, If you are involved in competitive sports and continually lose, you will most likely have bad or low expectations of winning. This is usually rooted in the desire to not get your hopes up, only to be disappointed (again).
But what about a new experience? Trying something new or engaging with something that you’ve never engaged with before? Without the reference of past experiences, our brains then reference the other influences like social spheres, culture and information that can shape what we think we can expect from that new experience. For example, take an artichoke. Now if you have never tried eating an artichoke, you may not visually desire to once you hook at the spiky leaves or even know how to go about eating one. If it is undercooked and the edible flesh of the bottom of the leaves is tough and the artichoke has no flavor, you may not have a great experience and therefore you will have a bad or low expectation next time you are offered an artichoke to eat. However, if the artichoke is properly cooked and perhaps grilled with butter and garlic with a wonderful aioli to accompany it, you have a good or great experience and have a good or high expectation the next time there is an opportunity to eat one.
That positive experience may even overwrite all of the other influences that might have setup your opinion of artichokes prior to having actually tried one. Ever have a bunch of friends tell you a movie wasn’t good until you see it and like it? Your enjoyment of it has a higher priority to it than all other influences. If you are the only person in a group that likes black licorice, it doesn’t matter how many people you know that tell you black licorice is terrible, that won’t have influence in your high expectation of satisfaction the next time to go to bite into that black licorice.
Brand Expectations
Now when it comes to a business attracting new customers, it uses its brand to signal a certain level of expectation to its audience of potential consumers. Through its messaging, visual identity, packaging, marketing endeavors, etc, it sets up some level of expectations. Now when that new customer choses to engage with the brand, it is now the transaction of business that determines the experience. Was the customer’s expectations met or did their experience with the brand exceed their expectations, or was it less then they expected? The answer to that experience helps alter their perception of the brand. Since the core of branding is perception, the expectations of the brand and its correlation to the experience of the business are paramount. To keep it simple, brand signals expectations and business dictates experience.
With this notion in mind, it is easy to see why the success of any brand doesn’t rest on simply looking good and sounding good. It doesn’t matter how good the logo and packaging look, or how slick the website is, or how professional the social media videos look… if the business’s offering isn’t good or its supporting service or customer engagement isn’t on par with the perception of the brand, that business will probably not survive. If a good brand is applied to a bad business, the consumer will simply have unmet expectations and will not return. The same goes with a bad brand applied to a bad business.
Now if you apply a bad or just average brand to a good business, the consumer will have low expectations but the business will overcome that with good experiences and the consumer will most likely return — even though the brand’s signals don’t match what the business experience is. Now that may seem like a solid argument for why a business doesn’t need to worry about its brand. But you are not accounting for this business’s poor or average brand having to maintaining a viable presence in the marketplace among good or great brands that are signaling great expectations. That business still needs to draw in the new consumers, and it will have a hard time doing that if its brand isn’t great. They will never get a chance to step up to the plate. No matter what market sector you are in, there are always going to be competitors vying for the same (new) business as you, and it will come down to who has the better brand. One that has clarity, is consistent throughout all forms of its messaging, and does so in a way that is creative and distinctive.
The best solution for any business is to have a great brand that signals the proper expectations and also focuses equally on the business side of things — what it offers, how it offers it, the value the offer has to the consumer, etc — to make sure the brand is signaling great expectations for a great business experience. When a consumer’s experiences match what they expected (or were even greater than they expected), that brand is on an upward trajectory as great experiences perpetuate great expectations and the brand, and business, will reap the success and growth in the marketplace.
