Espresso - Rory Sutherland - How to Create a Massive Brand-quake for Your Restuarant

0:00It should be possible as a really good waiter, bar person, or indeed telephone call centre operative, right, to earn six figures. I know that's going to play havoc with your business model. No, no at all. We have some. You have some? Yeah. Let me explain the logic behind this, which is, I think there's a company called something like Category Pirates, and they talk about a thing called a brand quake, which is a single... Brand quake. A brand quake is a single experience which just has a completely disproportionate effect. on your attitude going forwards towards whatever that entity is. I'll give you a very strange example of this.

0:35I love the way they've come up with a new word for it, rather than saying just a really successful thing. No, no, no, no, no. I suppose it usually means, but by giving it a name. So my weird experience is, OK, which I... So two stories about this which are relevant. One of which is Alex Batchelor, a wonderful guy who used to be the marketing director of Royal Mail. They did lots of advertising and marketing communication. They could never really make sense of what determined Royal Mail's brand perception until they had an idea and they researched it, discovered that the vast majority of anybody's attitude to Royal Mail was effectively driven by whether they liked their postman or postee, technically.

1:12I'll be gender neutral. If you liked your post person, you basically thought Royal Mail was great. The human, the person-to-person fundamentally trumps anything else in terms of a brand perception. It could be on the telephone, okay? Now, I'll give you a second example. I think Southern Water is a brilliant company. Cool. OK. I know absolutely nothing about them. I don't read about their financials in the Financial Times, OK? All that happened was my wife was walking through Teal, and suddenly there was this huge fountain of water coming out of the street. So she rings me and she says, look, I'm actually walking, but can you go and report this massive water leak on the corner of so-and-so and so-and-so?

1:52I'm at home. Go online. Find the Southern Water emergency number. It's a Sunday. somebody answers they're actually northern oddly maybe if you bring northern water you get someone from Cheltenham I don't know but she was just absolutely charming and brilliant and really really efficient she said actually you're the second person to report this um don't worry it's an emergency we will have someone there in two hours and then thanked me for letting them know in just a way that was just extraordinarily engaging and charming okay now literally 98 % of my, you know, I am a customer because I've got a little flattened deal, 98 % of my brand perception of that thing has been driven by that phone call.

2:36Consequently, you know, it's also true of car dealerships, estate agents, everything else. I mean, actually taking your philosophy to the property industry would be fascinating. How so? Well, one interesting thing, if you talk to people who know the psychology of house buying is the weird emotional shit plays an extraordinarily high part in what happens so one of the reasons i think estate agents try and keep buyers and sellers away from each other as long as they can is that if the buyer if the seller doesn't like the buyer or the buyer doesn't like the seller it's not happening it's not happening no it's totally irrelevant right the person is moving out you should not care at all who it is who's selling your house i would i would say of course you should care because that's going to affect exactly what you think of the property forever forever because you always remember the people who were there before and what they were and if they were horrid then you just don't want to live it seems obvious to me my parents-in-law are fanatical gardeners and if anybody wants to buy their house just mug up on gardening for about six months and go in and name the plants with their Latin names you'll get it at 200 ,000 off.

3:56If you came along and said oh we can put a helipad over there, right, and I'm thinking of having a carting track they won't sell to you at any price No, no. It's not really. You're right because how you... Maybe we are all... You've created a garden which is a legacy your garden is to some extent a legacy and therefore effectively you're pissing on someone's life, you know, an achievement of their life.