Knowing Your Target Market

I had a devastating encounter on Friday. I was at a corporate event and one of the individuals there made a couple discriminatory remarks and told inappropriate stories about women. He was, at the same time, courting my business. Of course, his behaviour completely turned me off and he lost an potential business from me. If he lacked social judgment how could I trust him to manage my business with thoughtful intelligence? He made quite an impression and has severely hurt his brand in my eyes.

We all know that a brand is owned by a customer, not the corporation. A brand is the manifestation of all the multiple experiences a customer has with your organization. It's a wide spectrum that affects a brand, some of which can be controlled and some things that can not.

Here are a few things business learnings that I take away from the situation:

1. Your customers are living in "today", which is almost "tomorrow". Ensure that your policies, procedures, marketing, customer service, products, services and all portion of your value chain reflect today's reality and start evolving them for tomorrow.

2. Required IQ + EQ. An organization needs to be both brainy intelligent but also emotionally intelligent. You need to intimately know your customer. What hits their emotional buttons, both good and bad. Often it is the EQ that means more than the IQ. If you treat them with respect and interact with them on a genuine caring level they will start to trust and value you.

3. What is appropriate for one audience is not always appropriate for another audience. Be aware of your messaging, your product offers, your marketing vehicles... Does it reach and speak to the people who your are targeting. The phone companies have recognized that they needed to launch a brand targeted to youth because their existing brand didn't have much street cred (e.g. Telus has recently launched Koodo, similarly to how Bell (Fido) and Rogers (Solo) have youth brands.)

What other things do you take away from this situation?