A product should be able to keep the promises that it makes

In this day and age, an entire universe of information is only a Google search away.  As such, if a product or service can’t do what it promises to do, then people will find out – fast.  In fact, this phenomenon can be seen through the rise of vehicle history reporting services such as CARFAX or AutoCheck, and the subsequent downfall of aggressive car salesmen. This is not to say that the used car industry has disappeared altogether, but it is undeniable that the game has changed.

Despite this evidence, advertisers still go on making claims of astonishment and aggrandizement. For example, why does every single laundry detergent commercial seem to claim that it cleans clothes “a thousand times better than before!” and why do trucks in ads always seem to be breaking through walls?  Such ads are silly not only because their truthfulness is doubtful, but also because no one actually uses those products to that extent.  In the end, all the customer wants to know is what can this product really do for me?  This is where the Law of Credibility comes in.

The Law of Credibility states that a brand should be able to keep the promises that it makes.  For the majority of advertisers, this sounds like an easy task.  Don’t lie in commercials, got it.  However, while refraining from hyperbole or half-truths in advertising appears straightforward enough, following the Law of Credibility is not.  The heart of the law is to make a credible statement that matters to the consumer because even in the case that an ad is completely honest, if it fails to explain what the product will actually do, then the brand has lost the opportunity to make a connection.

For an example of a company whose ads do make good on their promise, let’s turn to Apple.  In Apple’s commercials, great claims are often made.  In their revolutionary iPhone ads featured a speaker who promised a device that could browse “not a watered-down version of the Internet.  Or the mobile version of the Internet. Or the kinda-sorta-looks-like-the-Internet Internet. [But] just the Internet … on your phone.” What makes this ad so compelling is not that it tells the truth, but rather that it tells a credible story that actually matters.  Apple could have just as easily said that the iPhone “holds 5x more music than our competitors,” but even if that were true, it just wouldn’t matter.

The lesson here is not necessarily to change all marketing messages that go out to the public.  Instead, the Law of Credibility shapes the brand by making the claim behind the message more credible. A scenario where this could play out might be customer service. Imagine a firm that just instituted a full-service helpdesk, and soon began advertising that it has “great customer service waiting for your call.” Now, think about how a customer feels when they call the hotline, go through a complicated phone tree, and wait ten minutes, just to talk to a live person. Without even touching the issue of outsourced call centers, this system and its associated message are already inherently flawed.

Therefore, an outcome of following the Law of Credibility could mean shifting marketing spend away from advertising and towards product development. Legendary ad man, Bill Bernbach, from DDB reasoned, “It’s always a mistake to make good advertising for a bad product.” Thus, as counterintuitive as it sounds, proper brand management sometimes means taking dollars away from branding campaigns. To understand this, is to understand the distinction between properly managing a brand versus simply broadcasting it. At this point, a good number of companies intuitively grasp this much of the Law of Credibility and already make every effort to create ads that are honest and meaningful.  However, there is one last twist to the story.

Beyond any one ad or campaign, the Law of Credibility also holds a purpose in guiding the actions of developing the brand as a whole. For example, imagine a company that positions its clothing line as premium apparel, but as the recession came around, it did not hesitate to cut prices.  Even without an economic collapse, many supposedly luxury brands are all too eager to slash prices at every conceivable holiday.  Either the products are worth the high price or they aren’t.  A brand can’t just switch back and forth at a whim.  That’s just not credible.

Law of Customer Experience: a great product is built through superior customer experiences and the satisfaction of consumer needs

Creating the “Wow” moment, generating a great user experience, utilizing design thinking, these are all various phrases ultimately driving at one goal – building superior customer experiences.  To see the importance of such a mindset, one needs to look no further than the world wide web.  As an increasingly commonplace presence in our lives, the Internet has transformed many traditional customer experiences while simultaneously leveling industries that failed to adapt to the new reality.  For example, ubiquitous access to the Internet has led to the explosion of email (Gmail), online shopping (eBay), and book shopping (Amazon) because these services offer a superior customer experience over other traditional counterparts.  As a result, these innovations have led to the downfall of the postal service (USPS), certain retail stores (K-Mart), and brick & mortar book stores (Borders), respectively.

For a product to succeed in the marketplace, it must provide a superior customer experience – that much is obvious.  What is much less clear is how this ambition might be achieved.  If one looked to examples above, we can see that one way is allowing the user to perform their tasks faster and more efficiently.  But improved user experiences aren’t limited to improvements in speed alone.  Building a superior customer experience is about satisfying consumer needs better than any competitor on either a functional, emotional or ideological level

Function

Great products must start by providing value through a substantial functional benefit, which are often found on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. For example, at it’s most basic level, a car should reliably take a person from one point to another (ie. Ford Focus). Similarly, a restaurant should serve food that satisfies hunger (i.e. DiGiorno), and a pair of shoes should provide the owner’s feet protection from the environment (i.e. Champion). With the days of the Industrial Revolution and Total Quality Management behind us, the vast majority of products today easily meet this requirement.

Sometimes, reaching just this level of competency is all that is needed for success. Generic brands such as Eating Right (Safeway), Great Value (Costco), and Up&Up (Target) are all million dollar brands that offer a no frills product coupled with low prices. What these businesses lose in premiums, they make up for in volume, allowing them to carve out significant portions of market share in their respective industries. Of course, most brands aspire to stand for something greater than the low-cost provider.

Emotion

To provide the next level of customer experience, a product must also satisfy a need emotional want. A car brand for example could stand for safety (i.e. Volvo), eco-friendliness (i.e. Prius), or excitement (i.e. Mazda). A restaurant could stand for convenience (i.e. Pizza Hut), freshness (i.e. Papa John’s), or speed (i.e. Domino’s). Finally, a shoe could stand for comfort (i.e. Crocs), fashion (i.e. DKNY), or fitness (i.e. Reebok). For all of these product categories, there are numerous more emotions not mentioned, which showcases the proliferation of opportunities in any given industry at the level of emotion.

A product’s ability to create an emotional connection with their customers can be judged by using a system called the Net Promoter Score. Using this method, products are assigned a certain score based on their percentage of Promoters, Passives, Detractors. Generally speaking, products that are more meaningful to their users lead to a higher likelihood for them to recommend it to others. This in turn leads to a higher Net Promoter Score. In the end though, the greatest brands go beyond just being liked by their customers.

Lifestyle

The world’s top brands come to represent their users and become an expression of their users’ personality and lifestyle. At the point that a consumer doesn’t quite live a certain lifestyle, the product represents that consumer’s inner desires and aspirations. Within the car category, a Lexus owner is trying to say that he or she is relentless about the pursuit of perfection. Going into any high-end restaurant, such as Zachary’s Pizza, customers are clearly paying just as much for the atmosphere as they are for the food itself. Finally, there is no shoe brand in the world that represents a user’s aspirations as much as Nike does. More than just helping the user jump higher (function) or making the user feel more athletic (emotion), wearing a pair of Nike Air Force 1′s means the user is communicating that they are straight-up baller (lifestyle).

At this level of customer experience, product relevance is elevated to connect with the user on multiple levels. As a result, an applicable framework for studying the ability of a brand to follow this law is to look at the Phases of Consumer Interaction. Essentially, a product must create wins on all customer touchpoints with the brand. This starts with Discovery, goes on to Exploration, then Purchase, Initial Use, Ongoing Usage, and finally Post-Sale.

Within the discovery phase, competencies such as advertising, public relations, and social media should be developed. In the Exploration phase, a brand needs to worry about having a great website and word-of-mouth. During the purchase phase, a brand should offer a great in-store experience while guiding the user to the point of purchase. In the Initial Use phase, issues such as packaging and first-time experience become paramount. Ongoing Usage is where the true quality and durability of a product are tested. Finally, Post-Sale includes topics like customer service, warranties, and user communities. Mastering all these areas is obviously very difficult, but it explains why so few products and brands enjoy the cachet of Apple, Nike, or Harley Davidson.

In conclusion, a exceptional product starts with providing a basic functional benefit, grows by creating an emotional connection, and reaches greatness by becoming an extension of their consumers’ lives. Most productivity apps live at the lower end of this spectrum, which means there is a ripe opportunity for awesome product manager to make a tremendous difference.