A recent briefing from Trendwatching.com listed “Brand Butlers” as a trend to watch. This may be the time to consider ‘service as the new sales’ to provide more service and care to jaded, time-poor, pragmatic consumers. Brand Butlers can be defined as providing instant access to supporting services and tools to pragmatic, convenience-loving consumers. This is encouragement to focus on assisting consumers to make the most of their daily lives, versus the old model of selling them a lifestyle, if not identity.
Here’s why consumers are embracing these BRAND BUTLER-style services:
- For consumers, time, convenience, control and independence are the new currencies: this need requires B2C brands to turn many of their interactions with their customers into broader services. In short: a shift from ‘broadcasting’ to assisting.
- Relationships with brands are now more down to earth and less reverential. From individualism to eco-concerns to decreased spending power in developed economies: for consumers, the practical and pragmatic rule.
- Yet, in uncertain times, there’s also a consumer longing for institutions that truly ‘care‘, which is more about showing empathy and providing customers with a status fix than being purely practical. This too requires brands to master more service-oriented personae.
BRAND BUTLER services equal interaction, meaning they can provide brands with valuable feedback, metrics and other learning opportunities about what interests, drives and triggers customers.
BRAND BUTLER service categories:
- Transparency & ‘In the know’
- Saving money
- Finding
- Connectivity
- Health, nutrition & exercise
- Skills & advice
- Eco
- Tools & amenities
Examples:
- Since 2006, personal care brand Charmin has been offering New Yorkers access to clean and comfortable restrooms in Times Square. The brand opens the free facilities during the festive period each year.
- To launch Stove Top Quick Cups, Kraft Foods offered warmth and hot food samples at cold Chicago bus stops. In November 2008, Kraft began heating ten bus shelters to give consumers relief from the cold.
- 3M’s Airport Privacy Havens aim to create peaceful zones in major American airports, giving business travelers privacy during important phone calls, and hiding their computer screens from the eyes of passers-by.
BRAND BUTLERS is about turning marketing into a service, and thus it is one of the most important branding trends currently out there. A start would be to establish the themes your brand is about, and dream up an integrated ‘suite’ of BRAND BUTLER services. Use the eight categories above (Transparency and ‘In the know’, Saving money, Finding, Connectivity, Health, Nutrition & Exercise, Skills & Advice, Eco, and Tools & Amenities).
When plotting your BRAND BUTLER, your ideas may revolve around existing customers. However, there’s a huge win in services that are open to non-customers, too.
We hope you see these posts in the same light, we want to share knowledge, tips for saving money, ways to find the resources you need, ways to connect you with the people and services, new skills and tools.
Leave a Reply