It was September, and I was in the town’s grocery store. After purchasing all too many products there, I was asked by a cashier if I wanted to collect stickers.

Really, stickers? Who needs them? I certainly wasn’t a type of sticker collector, but this was about to change.

I remember when I was a child, I was a sticker collector. My favourite ones were the puffy ones with animals and googly eyes. The thing is that during my times, I couldn’t do anything with them. I could leaf through the album, or if I was lucky, I could trade them with my friend.  Stickers were just pieces of paper.

Believe it or not, I have recently become a “born-again’ collector thanks to my seven years old twins and their whining and begging for these small visuals of tiny animals.

Now, whenever I go shopping, I will choose that diabolic grocery and often will throw some more groceries to my basket so that I could avail more stickers for my twins.

I will dutifully ask the cashier not to forget to give out my hard-earned stickers, so I won’t disappoint my kids who are eagerly waiting to stick these babies down until the page of their collector book is filled.

Interesting enough, my twins are no longer interested in lush toys from the toy shop. Instead, they are happily involved in a game of collecting so that they can gain relatively cheap stuffed mascot as a reward.

With all the above, I come to understand why I fell for it, and how smart marketing campaigns can be very useful tools for marketing.

Commitment is the key

You don’t need to a PhD in psychology to understand that psychology can be used in marketing. For many years now, successful marketers applied psychological principles of commitment in their marketing tactics.

“Once we have made a choice or a promise, we will face personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment”.

Sticker marketing was a perfect fit for the grocery marketing campaign. Once the marketers got my kids attention with colourful animals placed all over the entry door and inside the shop, I could no longer ignore this sticker collection at the cashiers.

We as parents are not in a ‘collecting stickers’ mood but once we make a promise to our kids that we will do it for them because they love it – it’s enough to change our resistance.

Smart marketers know that the best way to earn the loyalty of customers and prospects is to make them commit to something. It remains one of the most powerful marketing tactics used to influence our purchasing decisions and to leverage sales.

Once upon a time…TV, radio, newspapers and magazines dominated the world of mass marketing and mass produced products for mass markets.

And then the world has changed. The age of mass marketing has ended.

Internet has become the largest medium, but also the most focused one, because it gives the opportunity to millions of small voices to be heard.

Internet allows people with various interests and lifestyles to share their beliefs in the virtual communities.  And these communities, or if you prefer- TRIBES are united by a common denominator such as education, interests, political beliefs etc.

In today’s world, it’s important for marketers to figure out who your tribes are and what makes their members tick. It’s only when we really know who our customers are that we can start customizing the offerings for them.

Let’s consider Seth Godin’s words of wisdom in the context of a tribal marketing.

“Everyone is not your customer”- Your product should have its own customers, not everyone will like it or use it.

In the hospitality business, customers are different. Many individuals belong to different tribes depending upon their trip, the reason why they’re travelling and who they are travelling with. Some customers want extremely high level of personalization; others will think of it as an unnecessary experience. Some guests will want to have luxury services, while others will prefer close contact with nature.

While Tribal Marketing is not a new term, there are not many marketers doing it.  Finding a genuine brand’s followers is difficult and hard to achieve.

Identifying your brand’s tribe takes more than breaking down your brand’s target market through traditional demographic, behaviours and geographies. We need to re-evaluate our marketing strategy, and have a fresh look at how we categorize our customers.

It is time to think outside the box and dig deeper into psychographic categories. Our customers, target audience, or our Tribes, should be identified based on a shared group of activities, collective values and interests.

Amadeus Future Traveller Tribes 2030 suggests six new tribes of travelers that will travel in 2030- Obligation Meeters, Ethical Travellers, Cultural Purists, Simplicity Searchers, Reward Hunters, Social Capital Seekers.

As a marketer, we should look away from the product and get closer to our customers. When designing our marketing strategy, we must adopt more ‘psychographic’ approach and consider new sets of travellers united by similar outlooks on expectations.

When I think of my favourite brand, the first thing that comes to my mind is not a logo itself, but a certain feeling I have towards this brand.

Logos on their own actually say nothing. While they can be a symbolic representation of a brand and its narrative story built into an organization over time, they can’t tell your customers who you really are unless you build meaning into them.

Think about Rolls- Royce- for me it’s the promise of the status and respect. I don’t care that the two “R’s are enclosed in the rectangular shape, or that its design is inspired by classic Greek and Egyptian art.
What’s more important to me is the promise of an experience that the brand offers to its customers.

Starbucks is a promise about belonging to a community of people with a certain set of values about time, money, ethical sourcing, environment and empowerment.
I don’t admire Starbucks logo, but a brand behind it that stands up to my expectations keeps its promise and delivers it in every interaction.

In a crowded and distracted world, with so many skilful design experts or online $100 per logo designs, the process of creating the identity design has changed.

Every year the design experts are telling us what’s trending and what’s not in the logo design trends. They are setting new standards from straightforward minimalism, more generic to vector shapes instead of images, etc.). As it happens, I come to a simple conclusion.

It’s not so much about ideal pixels involved in creating a logo, but much more about the experience your customers have when they interact with your brand.

If a brand is a promise of an experience your customers have, then a logo acts as a reminder of the brand’s commitment to the customer.

This said, I believe that we still need logos, but they should not be the foundation of a brand.

So next time you’re designing your brand, your logo should be the last thing you’ll do. Focus on delivering great customer experience, not a fancy logo design, so that after you remove your logo from your product, website your customers will still know it’s you.