Does your marketing make your customers feel proud to be associated with your brand?
If it doesn’t, it should. Effective customer engagement is built on a brand foundation of shared values that create a sense of pride, and are brought to life through powerful program activations that create real, lasting value for customers and inspire them to advocate.
Here’s an excellent case in point: REI’s Opt Outside program and Subaru’s new Opt Outside “Make a Dog’s Day” activation. Two of my favorite brands and customer engagement marketers have partnered on something extraordinary.
REI raises the bar as a champion of the great outdoors.
Last year at this time REI launched its brilliant Opt Outside program, closing its stores on Black Friday while continuing to pay employees, and encouraging customers and others to go outside instead of shopping. The effort garnered 1.4 million active participants in 2015 according to the REI Co-op Journal blog, earned enormous amounts of fan engagement and media coverage, and went on to win the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes.
How do you top that? You continue to build it with like-minded partners. This year, more than 275 national and local organizations, including several major brands – Subaru, Google, and Meetup, among others – have officially teamed with REI to back the Opt Outside movement. Based on the program website, Opt Outside is up to nearly 2.4 million participants at the time of this writing. This program video demonstrates what it’s all about.
Not only is REI living its own values beautifully, now it’s actively leading other brands – and millions of people – to do the same. So while I’ve always been a proud REI member, with this program in play I’m more actively proud of and invigorated by the brand than ever. Millions of customers feel the same … whether or not they actually do Opt Outside on Black Friday.
Subaru hits dog owners right on the heartstrings.
My favorite 2016 Opt Outside partner activation by far is Subaru’s “Make A Dog’s Day” effort.
Subaru of America is inviting pet lovers everywhere to Opt Outside with their four-legged friends on Black Friday, and is providing a fleet of vehicles and drivers in New York City to get shelter dogs out of their cages and into nature for the day. The brand is also rewarding use of activation hashtags with donations to the ASPCA, one of its “pet” causes.
Taking dogs out of shelters for the day?!? Be still my little REI-shopping, Subaru-driving, rescued-dog-loving heart.
Subaru knows that a huge percentage of its owners are dog lovers and has a growing body of marketing work built on that shared interest, so this program is a smart and natural extension. Knowing that they’re committing this wonderful “branded act of kindness” makes me feel even more proud to be a Subaru owner. Millions of Subaru owners feel the same intense pride and brand love because of great products, strong shared values, and programs like “Make a Dog’s Day” and the brand’s other customer engagement programs.
What can you do to make your customers proud?
This is a smart question to ask yourself in strategic planning. Why? Because, as you probably know, it’s far less costly to keep a customer than to acquire a new one. And beyond that, because engaged customers are far more valuable than non-engaged customers.
According to Harvard Business Review in “The New Science of Customer Emotions,” “Fully connected customers are 52% more valuable, on average, than those who are just highly satisfied. In fact, their relative value is striking across a variety of metrics, such as purchases and frequency of use. The pathway is an important guide to where companies should invest – and it reveals that they often invest in the wrong places.”
Meanwhile, brands like REI and Subaru are giving their fully connected, emotionally engaged, fired-up customers something they can be truly proud of. It’s a standard to which we should all aspire.
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