One month ago I found myself sitting in a room with about 50 attendees for Wharton’s 2nd Annual Customer Centricity Event and there was a panel discussing the purpose of the brand. It was moderated by Wharton’s Professor Peter Fader, author of Customer Centricity: Focus On The Right Customers For Strategic Advantage and co-director of the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative, and also featured Denise Lee Yohn, author of What Great Brands Do.
Someone brought up the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and there was a heated debate in the room. Many of the men in the room said the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty was not a successful campaign. Woman after woman in the audience raised her hand to explain the tangentially related benefits of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.
It was hard to follow every person’s barometer for success as they argued their stance. Perhaps this is because today not everyone agrees on the purpose of the brand. What is Dove’s purpose? Is it to sell soap?
The purpose of business–according to Peter Drucker one of the most popular management gurus of the 20th century–is to create a customer. But what about the purpose of a brand? How does this popular management quote apply to business today?
Customer Centricity Defined
After the Wharton event I called up Peter Fader, the Wharton Professor and host of the Customer Centricity event. I wanted to clarify the comments that were said regarding the Dove Campaign For Real Beauty. Why did so many people in the room disagree about this campaign? Fader told me after the event he thought the campaign was “overall positive,” but it was not a good example of what he calls “customer centricity.” According to Fader Customer centricity is when the brand identifies who the most valuable customers are and makes them more valuable. Fader recommends the brand surround customers with products and services and creates enough influence that the customer sees them as a trusted advisor. This creates a relationship more so than a transaction. During the Dove discussion at the Wharton event panelist Denise Lee Yohn argued that Dove was not trying to sell soap with its “Real Beauty” campaign. Not everyone felt that way. Fader said in our phone interview, “The purpose of a brand is about pushing a product.” He commented later that he believed his view to be extreme.
Credit: Forbes
