Decoding the Magic Behind the World’s Simplest Brands

00;00;00;04 - 00;00;03;05 Ahmed Cheema Coming up on the Branding Deep Dive podcast.

00;00;03;06 - 00;00;32;06 Brian Rafferty One of the thing we've seen that makes the brands at the top of the scene the simplest sort of always be up there is that they promise something and then they deliver on it. So it's not like communication is somehow this sort of separate thing that's not tied to the experience. And that's why, you know, brands like Aldi and Lidl that and Costco that are pretty barebones, right, in terms of they're not like beautiful designed experiences when you go to the stores.

00;00;32;09 - 00;00;52;12 Brian Rafferty But that's the whole thing is they're promising you value. The actual store experience is making you think value because if they were, you know, if they were making fancy stores, you would go like, well, wait, that's really why this is more expensive. So spending money on the store is not on giving me the value.

00;00;52;15 - 00;01;19;22 Ahmed Cheema This is a consumer. And welcome to the Branding Deep Dive podcast. If you're new here, this is a podcast where we have in-depth discussions with founders, marketers and brand strategists on how to build a brand that people love. Today we're talking to Brian Rafferty. Brian is the global director of Business analytics and insights at SIEGEL and Gail. SIEGEL And Gail is a global brand experience firm, the partner with the world's leading corporations, nonprofits and government organizations to build brand experiences that are remarkably clear and unexpected to live fresh.

00;01;19;24 - 00;01;43;15 Ahmed Cheema In other words, simple. For ten years, they've released an annual report on the world's simplest brands. This year's report surveys over 15,000 consumers in nine countries across 25 industries, covering over 800 brands in total. In this episode, we dive deep into the world's simplest brands report why it's so important to keep your brand simple. How big corporations with multiple business units like Google and Amazon stay simple.

00;01;43;18 - 00;02;03;23 Ahmed Cheema Why Apple never really does well on the world's simplest brands Report How to strike a balance between digital experiences and human experiences and much, much more. If you feel like your brand is way too complicated for your consumers, you've come to the right place. Now here's Brian.

00;02;03;25 - 00;02;20;26 Ahmed Cheema I find the intersection between like branding and like data super interesting because there's not a lot of data that you can get because there's so many different signals and like, what do you actually include? So I want to jump right into it and really talk about this report. You guys just released the 10th edition of The World's Simplest Brand Report.

00;02;20;28 - 00;02;30;00 Ahmed Cheema How are you actually measuring which brands are the simplest in the world and what are the. What's the methodology you're using to actually determine the world simplest brands?

00;02;30;01 - 00;02;52;02 Brian Rafferty Yeah, sure. So, you know, it's a big, you know, primary research meeting, sort of, you know, a survey with a representative sample of consumers around the world. So, you know, over 15,000 people that we survey asking them what first, actually, you know, about the brands that they're familiar with and use. So it's a whole series of brands we have.

00;02;52;05 - 00;03;11;16 Brian Rafferty We customize the brand list each country to have the sort of top five brands in 25 categories. The brands that are typically, you know, brands that people encounter in their daily life but are not product brands. So like Coca Cola or like Heinz Ketchup isn't. And they're not because we're not interested in those is just that would sort of go exponential.

00;03;11;16 - 00;03;41;12 Brian Rafferty And so we were sort of focusing more obviously on the inner like services and other other things that that people encounter in that daily life. So they they any given respondent sees, you know, a set of brands and then says whether they're familiar with they use these brands and then for the ones that they're either familiar with and don't use or the ones that they use, we then actually ask them a relatively simple question, which is how much simpler or more complex is this brand in terms of its communications experiences, product services versus its peers?

00;03;41;12 - 00;04;03;16 Brian Rafferty And so, you know, they rate the brand and then we also have them rate the different categories on a whole number of dimensions that we know relate to simplicity that range from the like typically painful or non painful or interactions in that category. How useful do they find that category? How focused on on customers do they find that kind of innovative?

00;04;03;16 - 00;04;23;28 Brian Rafferty Do they see it? Because as you can imagine, you know, like the simplest brand in the in the sort of rester, all fast food or as they time it quick serve categories is not going to be the same as the simplest branded insurance right in the sense that obviously you kind of get a bump, if you will, in a in a similar industry, if you will.

00;04;23;29 - 00;04;27;18 Brian Rafferty And obviously you're going to get a bit of a negative if you're in a more complex industry.

00;04;27;19 - 00;04;46;05 Ahmed Cheema Now, I want to set the stage here a little bit for the audience. I know I had a chance to read through the report. And, you know, one of the things that you guys mentioned is that the simplest brands outperform the market by 1600 percent since 2009. And just for like a little bit more context, what's the impact of having a simple brand in general?

00;04;46;05 - 00;04;48;02 Ahmed Cheema Like why is it so important to have a simple brand?

00;04;48;03 - 00;05;12;04 Brian Rafferty So the shorthand for that is we say like simplicity pays. But what you just saw on the on the stock index. So what we've done since we started the study over you know, over actually 13 years ago, was to make a stock portfolio of the publicly traded brands that end up at the top, you know, which have been brands over the years like Google and Amazon has been in there.

00;05;12;06 - 00;05;36;26 Brian Rafferty Netflix was in there. Interestingly, Netflix dropped out, which actually helps our stock index because, you know, we got the benefit when when Netflix was see the simple it was in the stock index of the one of the drivers of it going up and actually that now they've been struggling and interestingly they also were seen as less simple but at that so basically we've you know always sort of looked at what is the financial impact, if you will, for brands of simplicity.

00;05;37;01 - 00;05;56;14 Brian Rafferty And so we've seen that stocks outperform the markets. We've seen that people are much more likely to recommend a brand that is simpler so they're more loyal to them and they're also much more willing to pay a premium. We've seen that actually brands leave a lot of money on the table, if you will, from from not providing similar experiences.

00;05;56;16 - 00;06;13;13 Brian Rafferty And where that's, I think, intuitive is, you know, when you think about it, simplicity is really about just being much more focused on making it easier on the customer rise in the easier in a way that actually is going to be not just super clear and easy for them, but is also going to delight them in the end.

00;06;13;20 - 00;06;23;11 Brian Rafferty If you're doing it well, you're going to do it in a way that's actually going to help you differentiate and, you know, be seen as as preferential to, you know, to your competitors.

00;06;23;14 - 00;06;48;13 Ahmed Cheema One of the things that struck me is that, you know, I work at Amazon, so and I worked at like different business units within Amazon until, like, each business unit is like, you know, multiple billions of dollars. So like, for example, I started in warehouse operations. And so basically that's like packaging, you can say. Then I moved to like supply chain planning for like the middleman network, which is basically like Amazon's own internal post office.

00;06;48;13 - 00;07;07;13 Ahmed Cheema So like it's Amazon's USPS, right? And then I moved into like an obvious role, which is, you know, in the service space was completely different business. You know, that's one of the things that is, you know, striking to me about this is like brands like Amazon, brands like Google that have multiple different like, you know, multiple billion dollar units within them.

00;07;07;13 - 00;07;27;17 Ahmed Cheema How are they able to have so much complexity on the internal side? Right. Like they have multiple different, you know, business lines are operating independently, all under the same umbrella, but somehow they're still perceived as very simple. Brands like Google has Gmail. They have, you know, all these other you know, they have a phone division. They have like, you know, a whole bunch of stuff.

00;07;27;17 - 00;07;31;01 Ahmed Cheema Like how are they able to pull this off? Right. Well, I mean, I think.

00;07;31;01 - 00;07;56;15 Brian Rafferty It's because they have been able to start with Google and Amazon. As I said. Yeah, I am really interested in sort of contrasting what we've seen on Amazon versus your experience with that. But when you think about Google and if consumers think about Google, they just think about that search, right? And sort of like how that's just and they've always been layers of compared to other search capacity has been like Yahoo back in the day and others anyway they always kept it.

00;07;56;17 - 00;08;14;07 Brian Rafferty Yeah, they started that way and they never deviated. They actually always had that interesting thing where there's always that, you know, where the logo changes depending on whatever the events of the day that you can click on to sort of see like if you want a little surprise, right? So there's always that also element. There's a super consistent element that you know exactly what you're going to get.

00;08;14;07 - 00;08;37;28 Brian Rafferty It's also super easy. You're not going to have to search around or anything. You're just going to to do anything. And, you know, I think the other thing that Google actually realized before anybody else did was the fact that that's how people are going to navigate the Internet. Right? They're not going to like bookmark things 25 times and create, you know, portals that if they have, you know, they're just going to go to the if you make it easy for them, they'll always go through, you know.

00;08;37;28 - 00;08;57;08 Brian Rafferty So I mean, and I think, you know, the one thing Google obviously now has to worry about is given that, you know, they could be displaced. So, you know, because in some ways, Chad's app is kind of a potentially even simpler search engine for them. Right. But anyway, Google is. So I think that's why consumers perceive Google as super simple.

00;08;57;09 - 00;09;15;06 Brian Rafferty So to your point, there's still an entirely can be super complex. So I think they did something interesting was that when they went to Alphabet where they definitely sort of carved out or at least made a difference between what is the Google business and what is, you know, all of the all the other innovative things and different things.

00;09;15;06 - 00;09;35;01 Brian Rafferty So so part of and same thing I see with Amazon. One of the things and that's one of the things we do, you know, as a firm is is helping clients with what we call brand architecture, which is really just, you know, how do they organize themselves from an externally facing standpoint? Because often what happens is people as opposed to sort of thinking about like what?

00;09;35;01 - 00;09;55;25 Brian Rafferty How are people going to understand what I do and what I'm offering them? They have a whole bunch of internal business units, and that's what you see externally, right? And no one can then navigate, you know, insanity. People might know the difference between these business units, but externally, people don't really have a clue. So I think that's what also, you know, Google and Amazon, for example, did really well with Amazon Web Services.

00;09;55;27 - 00;10;20;03 Brian Rafferty Is it really actually created a very strong and specific sub brand for that that made it actually clear you knew what was Amazon when you're going and shopping on Amazon and you know the difference at Amazon Web services is not Amazon, if you will, is not the Amazon shopping site and is actually, you know, the B2B offering. So I think that's that's one of the I think learnings that other brands and other businesses are going to have to sort of thinking about.

00;10;20;06 - 00;10;37;21 Brian Rafferty When you're thinking about what you're offering to people, it can actually really help to sort of take this outside view of sort of thinking, how am I going to make it as easy to navigate and figure out as possible for people so the people as quickly as possible get to what they want really? Right. That's the kind of fundamental principle behind it.

00;10;37;21 - 00;10;44;11 Brian Rafferty And and what you're not clouding it with your own internal structures and you know, the other pieces like that.

00;10;44;12 - 00;11;05;23 Ahmed Cheema Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up because, you know, when we work with smaller businesses, one of the things you see is that like, you know, the owner wears like a bunch of hats. They're able to do a lot of things. And so that's what you see. That's what they kind of put out there that, you know, when you tell them to, like, focus on one thing or, you know, at least in your messaging, keep it consistent to one thing, they're like, you know, but look at Amazon and Google.

00;11;05;23 - 00;11;24;06 Ahmed Cheema And so I think it's really interesting that you brought up, you know, Google has stayed consistent with that search thing this entire time. Another thing I wanted to ask on this, you know, concept of consistency is your thoughts on the rebrand to X. I know you guys talk about this in the report and how, you know, X dropped, I think, to the last of the list.

00;11;24;06 - 00;11;40;17 Ahmed Cheema And so one of the things I was I was like, how much of an impact does time have? And, you know, touch points over time on the impact of these, you know, rankings that you have because, you know, looking at these, a lot of these companies have been around for like you don't see a lot of like startups on here where.

00;11;40;18 - 00;12;10;06 Brian Rafferty You did have Netflix, as I said, you know, in some states. But yes, I mean and and you know and there's been lists and you know, and list actually has done better than Uber typically that. But yeah, I mean you do see also because you're right it's also a lot of brands that have stood the test of time, if you will, and stood the test of time by making sure that they do, one, stand for something in people's minds and then consistently support that and don't, you know, deviate from that.

00;12;10;06 - 00;12;35;06 Brian Rafferty And and then, you know, when you think about sort of like the importance of it, it is time. I mean, there's some famous things, right, which is like, you know, for every ten positive experiences, one negative experience going to have like outsized impact because people talk about the negative experience and then they'll talk about the positive experience. I mean, I think that, you know, extends itself to brand.

00;12;35;06 - 00;12;52;12 Brian Rafferty If you sort of think about it is is you want to actually sort of deliver when you want to have a consistent message, but you also want to deliver a consistent experience. One of the things we've seen that makes the brands that are at the top of the, you know, the single simplest sort of always be up there is that they promise something and then they deliver on it.

00;12;52;15 - 00;13;23;13 Brian Rafferty So it's not, you know, like communication is somehow this sort of separate thing that's not tied to the experience. And that's why, you know, brands like Aldi and Lidl, the Costco that are pretty bare bones, right, in terms of they're not like beautiful designed experiences when you go to the stores. But that's the whole thing is they're promising you value the actual store experience is making you think value because if they were you know, if they were making fancy stores, you would go like, wait, wait, that's really why this is more expensive.

00;13;23;19 - 00;13;44;26 Brian Rafferty So spending money on the store is not on giving me the value, you know, So and then at the same time, they also do that principle of sort of surprise, right, where you find stuff that you wouldn't even expect to find there. And it's such a super good price. And and you know, and just like, ooh, I mean, I went there because I wanted whatever, you know, the five boxes of pasta for whatever super deal.

00;13;44;26 - 00;14;11;21 Brian Rafferty But then I actually found, you know, fancy chocolates some like it everything in this price that I can bring back. So I mean I think it's a lot of it's, it's promising something and then delivering on it in the experience and then staying focused on that in the sense of being consistent and having that consistency of experience. You know, one brand that famous for simplicity, but actually over time hasn't always done is equally well.

00;14;11;21 - 00;14;33;06 Brian Rafferty And that is Apple, when you think about it because Apple's always known as like simple and and technology stands for simple and obviously beautiful design but it's actually typically never done all that well in a study and sort of two reasons. One, it's like it's super polarizing so that the people who are either super, you know, Apple diehards, if you will, or they're people who are like, I don't want Apple anything.

00;14;33;06 - 00;14;53;02 Brian Rafferty You know, Apple's not for me and I don't really want Apple anything. And they're kind of anti Apple, much more so than, for example, Samsung. You know Samsung doesn't have inside Samsung people typically when Apple Disney has sort of anti Apple people. And then the other thing back to consistency and so it's because Apple does definitely stand for simplicity.

00;14;53;04 - 00;15;09;08 Brian Rafferty However over the years it hasn't always really especially more recently delivered on simplicity where there's like multiple models you don't really know. You know, back to the day when I was like Steve Jobs came back and said, There has to be one iMac. And, you know, I'm feeling all of this up and there's we're only offering one thing.

00;15;09;10 - 00;15;40;10 Brian Rafferty They've kind of gone in the opposite direction over time and there's like lots of you having to navigate well. Do I really need the new phone? How different is it from the old phone and that the pro model, not the pro model? And then, you know, the other thing I think that they've suffered from is and we saw it in the open ends is they get called, you know, the dongle company because it's like there's so many times on this switch the ports of their stuff that you're constantly having to like buy add on dongles to like you know even connect their own devices to themselves, which that again is not simple.

00;15;40;10 - 00;16;04;20 Brian Rafferty Yeah. So back to this idea of like you have to deliver on what you promise Apple's actually held to a higher standard because if they do say they were the simple technology brand, once they do things like needing five dongles you're like this You know this is not simple when let's say whatever and not, you know that say HP did that, they probably wouldn't be judged as harshly, if you will.

00;16;04;20 - 00;16;07;23 Brian Rafferty Just people aren't thinking that that's what they stand for.

00;16;07;25 - 00;16;26;28 Ahmed Cheema Yeah, that's not the promise. American coming to the rebrand of X or Twitter. I think one of the things that when I was looking into it, I can't think of an example of a brand with this much recognition doing a shift like this, like, you know, you can talk about like Facebook to meta, but like the platforms are still called the same thing, right?

00;16;26;28 - 00;16;44;19 Ahmed Cheema It's still Facebook, still Instagram, Google Alphabet. Like it's more again, more of a corporate rebrand. Like you still go to Google.com. And then there's like the examples of the companies that have, you know, evolved over time, like Blue Ribbon, the Nike. But that was before, you know, Nike was iconic. Like, imagine Nike changing now it's like ridiculous, right?

00;16;44;19 - 00;17;03;29 Ahmed Cheema So and it one of the things that you guys in your article you mentioned, you said the unsurprising fall was out of X. So you know, what I wanted to talk about here is that like number one, have you seen another brand do a switch like this? And then if you have like generally what are the impacts of rebrands, right?

00;17;04;00 - 00;17;24;05 Ahmed Cheema Like when you see I'm assuming like when you say unsurprisingly, that like when you do a rebrand, it'll confuse your customers. But have there been examples of companies that have done rebrand that are successful or I mean, like I think, you know, like updating branding, like, you know, the new Burger King or, you know, changing Dunkin from Dunkin Donuts to Duncan.

00;17;24;05 - 00;17;34;02 Ahmed Cheema I think that might be example of, you know, someone doing slight tweaks and getting it right. But like, you know, have you seen a big switch like this and pulled off effectively.

00;17;34;03 - 00;17;53;19 Brian Rafferty To what you were saying in terms of like alphabet and and, you know, frankly, to a lesser degree, massive because I think the issue with matter was this whole trying to be the matter anyway. It wasn't just the rebrand, but it was this idea of like owning the metaverse anyway that for the moment the stuff in already and the people people have interested in.

00;17;53;19 - 00;18;20;18 Brian Rafferty Yeah, but, but, but you know alphabet definitely I think you know is, is an example of a good rebranding to your point that was a corporate level. I think the idea of sort of completely switching out a if you will, consumer facing brand for an on the brand without switching out the offering or providing any sort of clarity as to what the real change or value add really is supposed to be doesn't usually happen because what is the point of doing that?

00;18;20;18 - 00;18;43;22 Brian Rafferty You know, I mean, in the sense that and because to your point, it's like you definitely are losing equity, you know, I mean, the reason why you would change a brand and whether you would change it completely or evolved it, the Dunkin is you do want ideally to have sort of people maybe if you if you are evolving your offering to be able to sort of reconsider you and go like, oh, this isn't the Twizzler.

00;18;43;22 - 00;19;05;18 Brian Rafferty I thought it was something new going on here. Check it out. Right. Sort of like to create a moment of reconsideration and then ideally per that, you want to be it for people to reconsider you, because either you know you've gotten better or you've gotten, you know, offering them more things or anyway, there's a change that you're trying to communicate through that.

00;19;05;20 - 00;19;30;22 Brian Rafferty Or in the case, you know, like what we did for CVS, where they went to CVS Health. And again, that didn't change like the CVS pharmacy brand. But in that case, you know, they wanted to not be seen as just like a convenience store pharmacy. They wanted to be seen as a health care company, that is and and things that they've acquired since like Aetna and then having the MinuteClinic anyway, you know, being seen as a diversified, if you will, healthcare company, a a category of one.

00;19;30;22 - 00;19;48;02 Brian Rafferty And that's why they changed their corporate brand from what was CVS Caremark to CVS Health and then back to the experience. Do this in a way that the pay it off where they took Cigarets out of the school store at the same time as the rebrand. So that made it believable, right? It's sort of like we're making this change.

00;19;48;02 - 00;20;23;14 Brian Rafferty We're focused on health, we're helping people on their path to better health, which is the purpose. And in order to do so is the rebrand. But we're taking Cigarets out of the store so people actually immediate the rebrands, practically not the news. The rebrand is sort of just a logical extension of the actions that net take in the case of who is an X, you know, outside of people just thinking it was a sort of hissy fit from Elon Musk or whatever, you know, there was very little like logic is, I mean he did talk about or in subsequent sort of post those the rebrand notions of what you are wanting to evolve towards also

00;20;23;14 - 00;21;00;14 Brian Rafferty being a paying platform and sort of bringing in obviously some of the experiences happens is, you know, previous things that it sounded like people and other things into what was tweezer and is now X, But I think, you know, none of this was transparent to people. No, actually relevant to the people who were using tweets. It was also happening at the time where he started like changing anyway, becoming both in some ways less trustworthy by opening up the content and putting less safeguards on the content and getting rid of all the people who were putting to things and and then at the same time wanting to charge people the, you know, either the check mark

00;21;00;14 - 00;21;17;23 Brian Rafferty or otherwise to anyway, you know, a lot of a lot of changes, which I can see, but that could be some business rationale for some or even all of them. But in the way they got rolled out and communicated. And then with the rebrand, none of this was a positive. This is all just like, oh, this is chaos, if you will.

00;21;17;23 - 00;21;48;12 Brian Rafferty And, and and then I think there was I mean, and the reason why it did so poorly in the study is, is a number of things that is some that are just social media and media in general which we've seen throughout. The reason years we've done the study have been dropping and dropping, you know, because of the whole fake news type concept, because of people not trusting, if you will, what they're seeing online or in in social media.

00;21;48;14 - 00;22;14;12 Brian Rafferty And and in some ways, I think X is sort of seen as is the worst of that, you know, in the sense of how can I trust what I'm seeing on this platform? Do I know if it's actually real information or not? And then, you know, given what's also in the other news, the fact that I know that it's less probably checked and verified than anything else that's going to make me like this, and that's one of the things we've also seen about simplicity.

00;22;14;16 - 00;22;39;08 Brian Rafferty Simplicity and trust are very tied together. Like people have simple experiences, straightforward. They, you know, they trust in backs and consistency and consistent these straightforward experiences. They're going to trust it because it's like, Oh, what? You promise me something, you deliver on it, you do it over and over again. You know, I trust you will. Conversely, if if they don't trust you and if they see complex experiences, they don't feel it's done on by accident.

00;22;39;08 - 00;23;04;28 Brian Rafferty They feel like it was someone's this brand or somehow I trying to get one over on me, if you will. So. So there's a big like relationship between trust and simplicity. And I think part of X's issue is, you know, it's not trust, you know, it's become becoming less and less trusted and in some ways less trusted by the people who consume the information online, but also they're less trusted by the people who post and, you know, who use it as a platform, if you will.

00;23;04;28 - 00;23;15;18 Brian Rafferty So anyway, it does seem I do think it has challenges anyway. I don't know how that is going to come out from the money standpoint. You know, I.

00;23;15;18 - 00;23;44;14 Ahmed Cheema Want to see the gears here a little bit. One of the things you guys have in the report is like these journey maps where you go through different touchpoints in the customer journey for different industries and kind of rank like the most difficult and most simplest part of the journey. And so I thought this was like, you know, really useful information for anyone in those industries because like, you know, if you look at it and you're in that industry, you know, exactly.

00;23;44;14 - 00;24;04;02 Ahmed Cheema We need to focus on where you can differentiate yourself and really deliver a world class customer experience. But for people that may not have access to this information, they want to map out their own, create a journey map for their own business or their own industry. How would you go about creating something like this and thinking through, you know, which touchpoints you should be focused on for like a smaller business, Right.

00;24;04;09 - 00;24;35;13 Brian Rafferty Well, I mean, so so one, it is just sort of thinking about sort of the touchpoints and I mean, just listing them out, you know, in some ways is the first step, which typically is just kind of having a putting a few smart people together and sort of taking and then taking a customer view. Right. It's always that's always in some ways, I think the challenge and really the kind of first principle of in some ways any good marketing but or definitely good branding, which is like you want to think about it from a customer's standpoint as opposed to from your standpoint.

00;24;35;16 - 00;24;51;22 Brian Rafferty You as a business might be wanting to sell X, Y, Z or to anyway make money this way, but you have to sort of think about, well, what's the customer going to want really? And then how do I match up my goals to what, you know, the ideal for the customer. So you want to think about all of the touchpoint.

00;24;51;22 - 00;25;19;19 Brian Rafferty And then what we've often found is what we call unheralded touchpoints. I mean, certain, you know, touchpoints that people don't always think about can often be some of the more important ones. And so, you know, when you think about it, for example, even when you're like a telecom brand, you know, like an AT&T or Verizon, in some ways, you know, the bill is one of your most important touchpoints and is often, frankly, one of the more complex ones because people get that.

00;25;19;19 - 00;25;38;05 Brian Rafferty You know, you've told them that they were going to pay whatever, 40 bucks a month and then they get the bill and it's like 70 bucks a month because there's like a huge list of supposedly transparency, surcharges. But I mean, it's not transparent at all because you have no understanding as to like, what is this, a list of these random surcharges that don't tell me about until I got the bill.

00;25;38;07 - 00;25;54;04 Brian Rafferty So if you think about it, you know, the bill is like a super important I mean, and in some ways it's sort of like this moment of relationship for those brands with somebody, because that's the thing you encounter the most. The only other times you're dealing with them is when your phone's not working properly or you're not going to go to Apple to somewhere else.

00;25;54;04 - 00;26;13;21 Brian Rafferty Right? So so it's and that's sort of what's hard. And same thing with like health insurance and others. Is there lots of categories where in some ways the touchpoint that ends up having the biggest impact is starting off maybe as a negative because no one wants to get a bill. I mean, it's like there's no joy in getting a bill that's always that's not a positive ever.

00;26;13;23 - 00;26;31;12 Brian Rafferty But if you think about that and you sort of think about, okay, well, how can I make actually, if the bill is this thing that actually people are going to you know, this is the moment that my brand is having with most of my consumers in the most frequent and also potentially in the one that's causing them the most, you know, unhappiness and or complexity.

00;26;31;12 - 00;26;51;21 Brian Rafferty What can I do to make that best, which a lot of times is sort of thinking again as opposed to what they seem to think actually car rental, which is another industry that's always at the bottom of our index, is like listing every charge is not making it more transparent and easier for people, right? Because they have no clue what these charges are.

00;26;51;21 - 00;27;16;27 Brian Rafferty They don't want more, particularly these charges. And so the idea of just like having a ton of detail and that's like, oh, well, we were being super transparent, we're telling you that. But it's like, well, no, because one, I don't understand what I'm looking at. And then to this isn't, you know, what would be more transparent is if you actually told me, including all these charges, that's how much I was going to have to be paying from the get this, When I got the bill, I wasn't surprised.

00;27;17;00 - 00;27;38;12 Brian Rafferty And you weren't giving all this justification for why? You know, what you told me is I actually know what you what you're building and stuff. At the time, I was not in your control. But anyway, you know, that type of thing. So. So I do think, you know, if you're if you have a business and a small business, you just have to sort of think about what all of those things, you know, like the thing if you if you like a coffee shop, obviously there are people paying in the cash register.

00;27;38;12 - 00;28;15;02 Brian Rafferty That's actually a moment. You know, some ordering is different than paying at the cash register. You could potentially have an innovation in how people can order that stuff or you could have an innovation in terms of how people can more easily pay or you could sort of do things, you know, which is what we saw with McDonald's and Burger King, actually, who've always done well but did particularly well this year in the study, is all of their like kiosks and and sort of preorder delivery, all of that type of stuff that's sort of, you know, given COVID need, they obviously focused in and invested on a lot of those things.

00;28;15;02 - 00;28;46;06 Brian Rafferty And that does pay off in the sense of people are finding it much simpler and and they're finding it much easier to to to order in and get food so that you know, is that that's part of why people are sort of still seeing them as a simple. But back to your question on sort of the journey, it is really just sort of thinking about all of those touchpoints and in some ways, you know, being kind of granular about them and then and then sort of thinking, okay, what are the what are the ones that I want?

00;28;46;08 - 00;29;14;23 Brian Rafferty Either if you have the benefit of being able to do a survey of your of your customers, or if you don't, you know, you can sort of just extrapolate sort of thinking what it might be. But like which of these are the ones that are likely either causing pain or which are the ones that I could actually do something different from my competitors and and kind of create a moment of delight out of something that is either is the sort of moment of of indifference or is a moment of, you know, potentially not happiness.

00;29;14;23 - 00;29;34;29 Brian Rafferty And I can sort of transform that. And I think, you know, what a lot of you know, back to McDonald's, a lot of the focus in recent years, especially from businesses that started off, will continue to be more brick and mortar, was to kind of innovate on the digital side and use digital as a means to really sort of simplify and streamline things, which is great.

00;29;35;02 - 00;30;00;00 Brian Rafferty But I think one has to be I mean, that's why some pause and thinking about all the touchpoints is like digital isn't always the answer. You know, sometimes you do want to talk to somebody and and I actually say that I think a lot of brands and companies are practically gone. Sometimes the needle has gone too much the other way where, like banks have like, got rid of so many people, that is the tellers and everything is automatic, which is great if you don't have a problem.

00;30;00;00 - 00;30;23;19 Brian Rafferty But if you suddenly need a question answered, then that's, you know, to bother to actually get anybody was actually that was that would be my one gripe with Amazon is like Amazon is super easy to shop and get anything and you know and even is actually really I think good and has a very sort of Apple like policy also where if something's late they even tell you okay you know you get it for free type of thing.

00;30;23;19 - 00;30;45;03 Brian Rafferty I mean the sense of like there's I think a lot of sort of customer focus and effort to delight the customer in terms of that kind of basic experience. If you have an issue at Amazon, which I sadly, for example, what happened to me was someone hacked my account, it's super hard to get a result because you can't get anybody, you know, there's no one to talk to.

00;30;45;05 - 00;31;05;01 Brian Rafferty And if you're having some sort of issue that is not the kind of usual just product buying shipping issued by that, which I was surprised at because I was thinking I can't be the first person who's been hacked, you know, and had an Amazon hack, if you will. And it was a very weird hack where you know, people they didn't even like take money off me.

00;31;05;01 - 00;31;28;11 Brian Rafferty They use my account to like, buy some stuff. And it was very strange. Anyway, it was something where I could tell that was sort of like, there must be some sort of macro scam exactly going on. But it was. I couldn't even identify what the actual inner workings of that scam were that. But the thing that surprised me on the Amazon side is just that they didn't seem to be very good processes in place.

00;31;28;11 - 00;31;55;06 Brian Rafferty So anyway, you know, it was like actually really hard to try to solve what was going on. And to and I think that was because it was it was a touch point. If you it was an experience that was more of an outlier from the sort of general thing. And so once you in that type of outlier experience, when you're in these like super streamlined, hyper digital, you know, where experiences, if you will, it can actually get pretty hard to solve the thing, you know.

00;31;55;07 - 00;32;10;16 Brian Rafferty So, so that's why I do think there's still anyway that obviously in and what I would assume I don't know maybe AI is going to make all these chat bots a little better. But as you know, it's also when you get on the chat bot, it's like the chat bot is often not solving your problem.

00;32;10;16 - 00;32;35;08 Ahmed Cheema You just the first thing you usually put it in the sample is can you connect with that person? You know, it's interesting, you brought up the McDonald's kiosks and this kind of thing. I was actually, you know, one of the things I have in my notes here is in the actual report, one of the things you guys mentioned is, you know, in order to be simpler, invest in customer support and emphasize human interaction.

00;32;35;10 - 00;33;02;02 Ahmed Cheema We see, like you mentioned, a lot of brands actually going in the other direction where like, you know, now that there are these tools and technologies that allow you to have chat bots, you know, there's less and less human interaction, especially in points where you actually want human interaction or even example. One of the clients I was working with, they had an issue with their Etsy store and I was trying to help them figure it out and man, I could not find the number.

00;33;02;02 - 00;33;19;23 Ahmed Cheema I couldn't find like an email I cannot find like any way to contact them except for this like appeal process that they had and the appeal process like it would take them like three weeks just to like, review it. And like in the meantime, the customer's not getting any sales because their stores shut down. It's like I'm like, you know, like you guys need to have a person there.

00;33;19;23 - 00;33;31;12 Ahmed Cheema So the question I have for you is like, how do you actually think through like where to actually put humans in order to actually, you know, digitize the experience and automate and kind of reduce your cost there?

00;33;31;13 - 00;33;50;28 Brian Rafferty Right. Well, I mean, I think it's because what you were just saying right at the end that because it is typically the reason people have done gone the digital rather than the automation is to cut costs. So in some ways, the streamlined experience is not usually the top priority. You know, in the sense of it's a byproduct is to the the top priority.

00;33;50;28 - 00;34;09;21 Brian Rafferty So I would sort of say, you know, the one thing the businesses should do is just try to be customer first as opposed to I mean, in the sense of cost cutting. Yes, because that's great. I mean, this is when you streamline things and we found it, you know, in lots of projects we've done, including projects by health insurers.

00;34;09;21 - 00;34;41;02 Brian Rafferty I think when you simplify processes, there's huge amounts of cost savings because typically also, you know, simplicity on the complexity on the inside of companies is of course, costing the money usually, you know, in terms of to similar to your Etsy appeals process, you know, like claims processes by health insurers where if they can't actually get to processing the claim, they have to pay it because it's already out of their, you know, in the sense and that losing money by paying too many claims because they can't even manage the process them given the complexity of the process.

00;34;41;05 - 00;34;57;06 Brian Rafferty But I think, you know, back to the sort of like human versus digital, I mean, one maybe or maybe we should start a business, which is all just about hooking digital by hooking digital companies up, or ones that have gone full digital with the set of people who can actually do.

00;34;57;09 - 00;34;57;27 Dr. Aaron Ahuvia Those.

00;34;57;29 - 00;35;35;17 Brian Rafferty Thing. You know, it is more it's one it's obviously more expensive. You have to train people. People have to have the information. You know, it's not it's not an easy thing. I mean, in some ways when you think about the promises and I know obviously all that fear that air generates for people, but you could see a potentially I mean, like a part of that, let's say a company specializing in actually human to human services, but leveraging AI to make the human service providers, if you will, smarter, quicker, faster on anything where they can actually, you know, basically not just rely on aid, we can use A.I. so that they can help solve the problem,

00;35;35;17 - 00;36;02;26 Brian Rafferty if you will. But sometimes I mean, I think the reason you need people and not just chat bots and even super smart A.I. is you often, you know, when you think about sort of some of the moments are going to make customers most loyal to a brand or a company. It is when the company's going to go above and beyond and manage to sort of understand them and understand that problem and solve that problem, you know, in a way that felt like, Wow, this is amazing.

00;36;02;26 - 00;36;23;00 Brian Rafferty I never expected it to be that easy. And I think Apple did a great job, has done great jobs on that with the Genius Bar and the other some of those because they've leveraged people to sort of interesting when you think about Apple, actually Apple hasn't got you know, Apple that was the first to sort of go like, oh, what we're going to actually also do brick and mortar and actually have a bunch of people to help you.

00;36;23;00 - 00;36;46;25 Brian Rafferty But the people experience is going to seem, you know, much more streamlined and magical than whatever. You are not going to have the the thing which sometimes work sometimes doesn't completely work depending on how busy that genius bar is. But but I think anyway, it's important to have both. I don't think you can. I don't think you can only sort of think about like digital is the only means to do is to do everything.

00;36;46;25 - 00;37;09;11 Brian Rafferty And then you have to sort of think about the experience, not just in terms of how can I make it as efficient and cheap as possible in terms of the op standpoint, but also just like, how am I? Because ideally the experience and what we see, even with simplicity, you know what I was telling you at the start of my chat is like people are going to pay more if they feel that, you know, they're going to be happy to pay a premium.

00;37;09;13 - 00;37;27;19 Brian Rafferty They're going to they're going to be much more likely to come back to you. So there's a lot of business benefits that you will get, meaning added revenue that you will get from providing a much more delightful, simple experience to people. So you shouldn't just think people should just think about it in terms of like efficiency and cost cutting.

00;37;27;19 - 00;37;51;12 Brian Rafferty It's, you know, it really should be sort of seen as this is a tool to actually make more money. And if that's the case, then that's actually really sort of think about, well, what could be the ideal experience that people could have and then figure out what we need to spend where in order to make that happen. Opposed to just sort of thinking about it as an efficiency play, if you will, you know, which I think is what is happened a lot in recent years.

00;37;51;15 - 00;38;10;17 Ahmed Cheema In the McDonald's example. Like it is nice not to have to talk to someone. It's actually like if you're in my generation, like you don't necessarily want to talk to people when you don't need to, but then when you do, when you do have a problem, you want to talk to someone. It's like, I want someone to be helping me with the problem, not just like, you know, going into this queue of tickets that I don't know is ever going to get seen.

00;38;10;17 - 00;38;23;28 Ahmed Cheema On your bio. It says you're an expert in uncovering key facts of drive brand strategy. Just wanted to get your thoughts on what you mean by this. If you just riff on that a little bit, like how do you uncover key facts and how does that play into brand strategy?

00;38;24;00 - 00;38;48;08 Brian Rafferty Well, I mean, there's a number of things. I mean, because, you know, the simplest brand study is sort of a thought leadership study. But obviously for clients, we do a lot of more custom research. And some of the the things we do most often is sort of to follows a methodology we call eye Opener, but it's something that gets at not just like what are the equities and perceptions of brands, but really like which perceptions are going to most drive markets.

00;38;48;14 - 00;39;07;19 Brian Rafferty You know, most make people likely to back you versus someone else. And you can't actually ask people. That is if you just ask them like what's most important, though, often tell you something that's not completely true, not because they want to lie, but because, you know, they'll say it's price and quality, but they're not buying the cheapest thing or they're not often not even buying the high quality things.

00;39;07;22 - 00;39;32;06 Brian Rafferty Yeah, it's more of an unconscious sort of perceptual thing that's playing. So. So it's like a derived way of really getting out what's what perceptions are going to most sort of drive drive share towards you versus competitors, whether it's useful for brand strategy is back to the idea that you want to stand for something consistently and you also want to stand for something simple or be something you understand or you can't stand for.

00;39;32;09 - 00;40;08;05 Brian Rafferty 12 things like reduce down and have a ideally a clear, simple idea as to like this is what you stand for, your brand stands for. So that sort of really helps to kind of know like upfront what these are the right things to be building the brand around, right? If it's about giving people peace of or if it's about giving people a sense of control or if it's about delivering a specific type of benefit, for example, you know, I mean, like in the case of CVS, it's it was about it was sort of showing that they actually did have this opportunity, if they could be seen as a source for helping people to be healthier.

00;40;08;05 - 00;40;40;06 Brian Rafferty That was actually going to drive differentI Asian preference towards them versus Walgreens and the others. So I think so that's one of the things we do. And then back to what you were saying on the sort of touchpoint, another using similar kind of like modeling data modeling type analytics, we also then look at sort of within customers of the brand which touchpoints the one that actually could drive either your net promoter score or your share of wallet, which touchpoint is going to actually potentially have the biggest impact.

00;40;40;06 - 00;41;01;17 Brian Rafferty We'll touch points can potentially have the the biggest impact for you. And and the reason why that's important is that that can sort of help to, you know, what some of your earliest earlier questions like know where to invest right because especially when you think about big brands like CVS for example who we did this for, also, you know, they have tons of stores.

00;41;01;17 - 00;41;33;08 Brian Rafferty Like changing stores is super expensive. You know, like they kind of they kind of just change everything in one fell swoop because that sort of completely unaffordable anyway, impossible to budget for. So so it was sort of really for them like figuring out what, what which touchpoints. Right you're going to drive then loyalty from an experience standpoint for us, And this is actually where they realized, you know, with the work we were doing with them, that the MinuteClinic, which in the end is super intuitive, but since they were managing them, you know, back to the idea of silos and different businesses, the MinuteClinic business is completely separate from the pharmacy business, which is completely separate

00;41;33;08 - 00;41;56;05 Brian Rafferty from what they call the front of store, which is, you know, we all think of it as just one place, all these different businesses that are inside the store, if you will. And it sort of they realize that actually the clinic touchpoint and when I tell you this, you're going to get like that's kind of obvious. But just since they weren't really like looking at it that way, that people who had a great experience of the clinic were way more likely to go to the pharmacy.

00;41;56;08 - 00;42;23;28 Brian Rafferty You know, and become loyal to the pharmacy. So it something made them realize, oh, the clinic I actually drive because the pharmacy is the most profitable piece of the business in the the prescriptions are the most profitable thing. So that suddenly made them realize that, oh, instead of just looking at the MinuteClinic as this sort of standalone thing, actually MinuteClinic can make a ton of money for the pharmacy, which is and then in the end, when you think about it, it's obvious like you go to the place, you have a good experience.

00;42;23;28 - 00;42;41;01 Brian Rafferty It's like, why are you going to go shop elsewhere to try and get the prescriptions as prescribed, you know, But they were just not looking at it that way, you know, because they were looking at it as these siloed business mean they would just manage separately. They weren't sort of really thinking about that kind of holistic experience sort of inside the store.

00;42;41;04 - 00;42;56;22 Brian Rafferty So so I think that's, you know, that's the other thing we do is we are looking at sort of helping to sort of figure out which touchpoint is actually going to really move the needle where like if you invested in this, this is actually going to do something for you.

00;42;56;25 - 00;43;09;21 Ahmed Cheema Now, Brian, where can people find you? And if they want to read the report, where they find that, how can they get in touch if they want to? They need to improve services. They want to simplify their brand. How can they get in touch?

00;43;09;24 - 00;43;37;08 Brian Rafferty I'm sure. I mean, they can find me at Seagle and Gail at Glendale dot com, but they they can also find a study we have a separate if you will sub cycle world simplest brands dot com. That is where you can actually not just find the the results from the study but back to your point on all those like journey maps which we haven't you know which we don't do every year where this is actually we've done them in the past a number of years back but this is sort of the first year we've done them in a while.

00;43;37;08 - 00;44;02;26 Brian Rafferty And there's a lot of detail actually that you can find on the website in terms of the different touchpoints that are more so than in the report. So across all, you know, different set of categories. So hopefully that's something that's actually, you know, valuable to people just because they're the pretty cat, you know, looking at people like health care experience, looking at people's financial experience, so hopefully applicable to a whole set of businesses.

00;44;02;28 - 00;44;06;09 Ahmed Cheema I'll leave the links in the show notes. Thank you so much, Brian. It's been a pleasure.

00;44;06;11 - 00;44;12;20 Brian Rafferty Thank you. It's been fun.

00;44;12;22 - 00;44;25;19 Ahmed Cheema Now, as always, I have my key takeaways from this episode. But before we get into that, I want to share a clip with you from our discussion with Doctor Erin Olivia on why we fall in love with brands.

00;44;25;22 - 00;44;51;06 Dr. Aaron Ahuvia So if you want people to love your brand, it's not enough to make it good, because if you make it good or you make it even excellent, well, you're going to get is higher levels of instrumental value, which is good. That's a good thing. You want that, but it's not enough for love. For love, you have to have that plus, you have to get them to start thinking about your product or your brand using the same thought processes that they use for people.

00;44;51;09 - 00;45;23;29 Dr. Aaron Ahuvia So just like there's objectification and where you look at a person, but you think about them as if they were an object, there is personification where you look at an object and you think about it as if it was a person. So that can happen and it does happen. And every time people really love a product or brand, it's because they are at some unconscious level doing that personification or taking this thing and they're thinking about it as if it was.

00;45;24;02 - 00;45;44;21 Ahmed Cheema If you enjoyed this discussion with Brian, I'm sure you'll also enjoy the episode with Doctor Who. Ahuja Check it out. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, it is episode number 64, and here are my key takeaways. Number one, Simplicity pays. Since 2009, a stock portfolio of the publicly traded simplest brands in the global top ten has outperformed major indexes by 1600 percent.

00;45;44;23 - 00;46;03;24 Ahmed Cheema Number two, you don't need fancy. Designed to be simple. You need to make it easy for your consumers to understand what your promise is and then to over deliver on that promise. The reason Apple doesn't rank highly on this report is because people have high expectations of simplicity from Apple, because it's part of their messaging. They don't always live up to that promise.

00;46;03;27 - 00;46;18;13 Ahmed Cheema And that is all for this episode. If you enjoyed this discussion, the easiest way to help out is to go to YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We're really pushing to grow the channel right now. We have shorter case study videos and it doesn't cost a thing to subscribe. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next episode.