When it comes to developing Love Capital*, creating lovable brand characteristics* and Friend Framing* (*see previous posts for definitions), there’s one clarification I need to make before you get started.
Focus internally first.
All customers are important but some are more important than others.
Without doubt, your most important customers are your internal customers… your employees and suppliers… your internal friends. You already know that if you don’t attract and keep the best internal friends for a long time, there’s an extremely high intangible cost to your business and your brand. This cost normally manifests itself in the form of re-training, poor service, customer dissatisfaction, lost sales and unrealized potential. Sometimes we forget this critical maxim.
So we need to subordinate all external Love Capital efforts to our efforts within. Only when we’re treating our internal friends with the same consideration and compassion we’d normally extend to our dearest personal friends, will we be in a position to develop a brand with truly lovable characteristics for our external friends (customers, prospects and the community).
Thanks for your patience.
It took a bit longer than planned, however I’ve now finished the manifesto I alluded to in my last post. I’ll upload it in sections over the coming weeks. It’s called… Love Cap.
Love Cap [luv kap] – Shortened form of Love Capital
Noun. Informal.
Definition… A form of wealth. A measure of the total love felt for a brand by its customers, prospects, shareholders and other stakeholders. In this definition, the word love represents any of the 35 odd positive (primary, secondary and tertiary) emotions humans are capable of feeling about a product, service or entity.
Love Capital is a newly defined asset class, the value of which can predict the future potential of your brand. It‘s the measure of the love felt for your brand by all stakeholders.
Consider your brand or the brand you represent. If your brand was a person, would you be instantly drawn to them? Would they have characteristics that are more appealing and magnetic than all the other people you know? Would they be the type of person you’d like to have as a dear friend?
In the vast majority of cases, the answer to these three questions is no.
Most brands (possibly your brand), have few characteristics that are significantly more attractive, more magnetic or more lovable than competing brands. Most brands are just brands with inadequate Love Capital.
Copyright © Brad Tonkin 2009