A Clear Eye.

Hi Tom,

I wanted to follow up and let you know how much I enjoyed your talk the other night at NSIGHT. You were so thought provoking, I went home and spent another twenty minutes poking around your website. If "attention" is indeed the new currency, you were paid well the other night!

Anyway, I love your premise that a "brand" is short-hand for "expectation" and believe as you do that consumer dissonance strikes when the "expectation" of a product or service’s benefits aren’t “realized.” Brand loyalty is fueled when the gap between expectation and realization remains small. As consumers have more experience with a brand over time, and the gap remains minor, brand loyalty persists and even grows. The more brand loyalty, the likelier a consumer will be to “forgive” incidental “breaches” that widen the gap. It’s almost like companies need to build equity with customers for unexpected hardships (recalls, service lapses, product defects, quality control issues, etc.). How a company measures its “reserve customer equity” is another interesting topic.