Your Brand Is the Sum of Every Experience; Phil Gruszka of Gruszka Consulting Contributes

BAKERSFIELD, CA - Over the course of this series, Phil Gruszka has written about persistence and consistency, the danger of commoditization, the importance of storytelling, and why great produce alone isn’t always enough to win in today’s market. Most recently, he pointed out to me that there is a common thread running through all of them: How a company presents itself matters.

As the produce, marketing, and storytelling veteran dives into the latest aspect of presentation, experience, and how everything weaves together, this is the perfect week to examine why a brand is the sum of experiences.

Presentation Goes Far Beyond Advertising

Your brand is being built every time someone interacts with your company.

A buyer opens a sales presentation. A consumer picks up your package at retail. Someone visits your website for the first time. A potential customer sees one of your LinkedIn posts. A buyer calls with a problem. A consumer sends an email with a question.

Each interaction may seem small. Collectively, they become your brand.

That leads to a question I believe every company should ask periodically: Are you proud of every touchpoint a customer has with your company?

Think about it:

• Does your packaging represent the quality of the product inside?
• Do your sales materials and presentations represent your company the way you want them to?
• Does your website reflect the company you are today?
• Does your social media presence tell a consistent story about who you are?
• When a customer or consumer has a problem, does the response reinforce the kind of company you say you are?
• If someone knew nothing about your company and experienced these things for the first time, what impression would they walk away with?

None of this means every interaction needs to be perfect. It means those interactions should be intentional and, more importantly, consistent.

Small Deposits Add Up

In an earlier article, I wrote about the value of persistence and consistency in produce marketing and why companies should not necessarily judge awareness efforts by immediate sales results. The same principle applies to the entire customer experience.

Brand building is cumulative.

A customer may see one of your LinkedIn posts and do nothing. Then they see another. And another. They notice your booth at a trade show. A salesperson sends them a professional presentation. They visit your website.

They see your packaging at retail. Eventually, an opportunity arises to do business with you.

There may never be one moment when someone says, “That LinkedIn post convinced me to buy from this company.” That is not necessarily how marketing works.

Instead, each positive interaction makes a small deposit into what I think of as a confidence account. Over time, those deposits add up.

This connects directly to something else I have written about in this series: great produce can still fail in the marketplace.

Quality is essential, but quality by itself does not always differentiate one supplier from another. When several companies can offer great grapes, berries, citrus or vegetables, the difference increasingly becomes the confidence a buyer has in the company behind the product.

• Can I depend on them? 
• Will they communicate in good times and bad? 
• Do they understand my business? 
• Will they be there when something goes wrong?

Those questions are not answered by one advertisement or one sales call. They're answered through experience.

I have also written about the danger of commoditization in fresh produce. When companies allow their products to be viewed as interchangeable, the conversation naturally moves toward price.

A strong brand helps change that conversation. Your story matters. Your packaging matters. Your sales presentation matters. Your digital presence matters. Your service matters.

Each provides another reason for a customer to see something beyond the commodity itself.

That does not happen overnight. It happens through the persistence and consistency we have discussed throughout this series.

How The Customer Sees The Company

One of the challenges for any business is that we see our own company every day.

We know the people. We know the history. We know the quality of the product and the work that happens behind the scenes to deliver it.

A prospective customer does not know all of that. They see what we show them.

That is one area where an outside marketing perspective can be valuable. It is not about coming in and telling a company everything it has been doing is wrong. In many cases, quite the opposite is true. There may already be an exceptional story, strong customer relationships, and excellent marketing pieces in place.

Sometimes the opportunity is simply connecting those pieces and looking at them through the customer's eyes.

An outside perspective can look across the entire experience and ask whether the packaging, website, sales materials, social presence, trade-show presence, and customer communication are all reinforcing the same message.

Because ultimately a brand is not built by one advertisement, one great sales presentation, or one successful season.

Your brand is what customers experience consistently enough to believe. And every interaction is another opportunity to make a deposit in that confidence account.