Research your new brand - for free!
Before you start (or even before you accept your new role) working for "your" new financial services brand, you'd like to get an objective, no holds barred view on how consumers experience it. Consumer-oriented information sites like CIAO are springing up everywhere.
Maybe you can't ask for the market research just yet, and you certainly haven't got £15,000 to spend on a survey....but fear not, just two clicks away you can get a semi-quantitative consumer perspective on most high street brands.
Or at least the perspective of what Malcom Gladwell would call the mavens.
So, imagine you have been offered a job with a well known banking brand, and want to get the unvarnished truth: try: banks for example and you will see 200+ consumer comments on your employer's products and services, for your brand and each of your competitors...
Aah. The power of the internet
Editor
Comments
Arguably, it's more than just Gladwell's "Mavens" creating and contributing to these word-of-mouth epidemics. It's regular customers. Type "I Hate 'BRAND X'" into Google and you'll see widespread debate - postive and negative - between advanced and novice brand users alike. All this adds credence to your observation. An excellent suggestion to leverage the power of this customer-generated information to create (and on an ongoing basis, preserve) a fresh, customer-centric perspective.
Posted by: Carl Nagle | January 6, 2006 9:04 AM