Not only do I research any brand I’m about to deal with (Pepsi, Sprint, Dow, Cargill, or the USDA), it’s expected that when I join a project team leadership from both sides will combine efforts to ensure I am educated on their brand so I can immediately fold into the troops fighting for their market share. Anyone coming to work at Halfway Home Pet Adoptions (HHPA) or volunteer for them need the same indoctrination, "Here's our brand, this is who we are, now join us." This entails telling but also listening for the first things they see or question so you can tell immediately the difference between the brand you claim to be and the brand your coming across as.
Part of Brand Management is Brand Experience, this is what it means for you as a consumer to interact with their product, hopefully take it into your home, and then when you need that product again have had such a positive overall experience you no longer compare prices, sizes, or ingredients, you don't look for or use coupons, you just reach for their bottle and move on.
One thing to quickly clarify, is that you don’t need an MBA in telecommunications to understand basic business precepts of a telecommunications company – business schools don’t specialize in that way because business precepts are a constant. Your MBA will be good at Motorola, ING, Nissan, or Nabisco. But I don't need an MBA and I don’t need to have worked in kennels to evaluate them, no one does. Without any knowledge of an animal shelter, anyone can walk into a facility and look for the same basic business practices you’d see anywhere and judge your brand experience accordingly. What this means is that the consumers for an animal shelter - effectively every person that walks through the door even if they’d never been in one previously - will try to understand what they see and experience with the same thought process they’d judge any retail store or service provider, they may deal with in their lifetime. We might wish they knew more of the challenges to operating a facility like HHPA, but tough noogies, they won’t. They aren’t there to understand the kennel, they are only there to pick out a dog.
I’ve been thinking of the brand experience of our shelter considerably. Part of my research into the animal welfare industry in Kansas City has been to visit as many places and talk to as many people as possible. With my consultant hat on, my goal of working at this shelter is to stand behind the brand (as I would for any company I’d be on a project for) and extol the virtues to others. But when I talk about the brand of HHPA to our consumers, I realize they can just as easily go to or might have experience already in their Veterinarian’s office, Petco, Petland, Animal Haven, and Wayside Waifs.
Some of those are indirect competitors (Vets and Petco) but they still convey an idea to consumers of how animals should be treated and what a facility with animals in it should look like, some are direct competitors (Petland, Animal Haven and Wayside Waifs) because they are doing much the same mission as HHPA, trying to get animals into families. While all of us use the term ‘adopt’ it’s really selling a product; dogs.
There is the argument that we can’t compare all these because they aren’t all a municipal animal shelter, but that’s irrelevant because in the mind of the consumer they don’t see that. In fact, if they do have an awareness that this is a medium to high-kill municipal shelter, that should actually work to our advantage helping to push our products off the shelves and into their arms. But the fact is, someone bringing their kids in to pick out a new family dog is looking for a brand experience whether they are aware they’d be saving a dog from possible euthanasia or not, and if they know we might kill a dog that isn’t adopted, it actually holds us to a higher standard because the consumer will expect us to work harder than our competitors to get these dogs homes.
In 2009 the shelter management was privatized, this means we lost our identification as a city facility and aren’t a non-profit, to the consumer this means we can’t use that as a crutch and we have to compare with the same treatment they’d see for animals at their Vet office, because they are for profit, and for Petland and Petco, because the images they put forth impress the consumer with the idea all dogs should have blankets, soft beds, colorful toys, and a full bowl of food and water at their side. And by the way, we need that image too, that image is helping push these people into changing their lives forever and taking a dog into their homes.
As a brand experience we have to raise the bar and be at least comparable to our direct competition, which in the eyes of our consumers, is Animal Haven and Wayside Waifs. And here’s the rub, while price points do vary, we’re not the low cost leader*. To the consumer, we may ask $100 for a dog and they may ask $110 for the exact same type of dog, so the brand experience for these consumers can mean the difference between walking through our shelter, looking at and considering adopting our dogs, and going back outside driving across town and doing the same thing at their facilities. *Btw, we do not want to be the low cost leader because we can’t use that concept to our advantage like Wal-Mart, we can’t sell a dog for $15 because that same consumer will walk over and then buy a $200 dog.
With the busy Holiday Shopping Season already upon us, comparing our brand experience to Wayside Waifs, and there are easy things we can address that don’t cost money but do take a consistent process, leadership, and a unified effort to accomplish. As one of my business professors once said, “Look at the big brands, see what they do, and copy it!” It’s that simple.
1) Cleanliness – proven research indicates consumers stay in a store longer if it’s clean and orderly. They increase their ‘shopping stare’ if they are looking at the products (dogs) and not the dust or dirt (dog feces / urine). So our ‘store’ has to be clean, and free from cobwebs, bugs, dirt on the windows, animal waste in the kennels, and grime on the doors. We’d get a significant advantage if we paint the walls a brighter color rather than the outdated aqua two-tone ‘facility paint job’ that’s been left there by the city*. The point is we want to keep consumers in our shelter longer so they’ll evaluate the dogs more, take time to look into the top and bottom kennels, and have a chance to talk to an adoption counselor so we have time to tell them all about Lilly, Wilma, or Ellis. The dogs are doing their parts, coming up to meet them, wagging tails, begging for their attention, we have to make certain we get a chance to give our sales pitch to help close the deal.
*I’ll wager a bet volunteers would be thrilled to help with a ‘Clean the Shelter’ day every six months to supplement the staff already responsible for cleaning duties. Afterall, volunteers will stay longer in a clean facility too. They might even know a way to get paint donated or help do some minor painting on doors with paint chipped, or wash windows so dusty you can'y see through them.
2) Smiles – as simple as that sounds, it’s also shown retail sales increase when associates smile around consumers. I don’t see many smiles at HHPA, likely because everyone is so crazy busy with running around trying to find paper towels that we don’t take much time to look at the people in the shelter let alone smile at them. Walking from one end of the shelter to another throughout a given day and I can usually count the number of smiles I’ll see on one hand. If we don’t look happy to be there, consumers certainly won’t look happy to be there. And if we aren’t smiling, they’re reading our face as ‘something is wrong or sad’ and they associate that to the place we’re in.
3) Marketing – when you walk down a grocery store aisle every product is telling a story. Let’s take the cereal aisle. Compare four different children’s cereals and you’ll see common themes on color choice used for the boxes, images (because kids cereals don’t need as many words as fiber ones do), and size of the product. Children’s cereal usually comes in larger sizes because it’s fun for kids to grab, easy for them to be drawn to, and parents see the value in the size, whereas bran cereals come in smaller boxes because no one gets excited about a pound of fiber in their shopping cart. So if cereal has to sell itself from the shelf, then dogs do too. We have to give consumers more information about these dogs to intrigue them, and start that journey to brand loyalty, i.e. adopting from a shelter.
Our kennel cards are half a sheet of paper, black ink on white. They convey basic information, but most the consumers I’ve approached can’t read them and don’t understand them. Our competition, they use pink paper for girls, blue paper for boys, and orange when two dogs came in together and they have to go out together. We can do that, or at least high-light the dog names in pink or blue. They also print the bios of the dogs and hang them on the kennels as part of the ‘selling process’ so the same experience consumers may have online looking for a dog is mirrored by their visit to our kennel where they actually meet the dogs. You’re managing your brand from online to in-store, and that’s what consumers expect.
There is some cost to this change because right now our kennels only have holders for this half-sheet of paper. But, it would be a one time capital investment to get holders for a full sheet of paper, and since we use half the sheet for the statistical information, it would be a matter of re-feeding the same paper through a printer to copy and paste the bios we already have out on the Internet. Maybe we don’t want to do this extra effort, but then since our competitors are doing it, maybe we have to find a way to do it.
And since I mentioned the Internet, we have to address that as well. Imagine a consumer perusing our own website, finding exactly what they’re searching for, contacting the shelter only to be told – adopted, rescued, euthanized – UNAVAILABLE! Well, how much would you trust that website again? So on the phone we often say, you need to come out and look. That would be great if our brand experience at the shelter was on target, but it’s not. So we’re giving them less convenience, bringing them to a facility that’s not always clean or smells good, is definitely loud and emotionally trying to be around. Basically, when we don’t keep our Internet listings current we’re taking two steps back. And we all know this; NO ONE is doing less with their websites, everyone is doing more. It’s not a matter of increasing the workload, but being more efficient with it. Bios start the day the dog comes into the facility, volunteers should build them up each time they walk a dog and data entry is adding one sentence to a paragraph to help sell that dog. It’s not hard work, but it takes organization and efficiency and has to be a basic business process.
4) Product Placement – For our own brand management we have to decide if we want to be a Specialty Store (Best Buy / Pet Stores), or a Used Goods Store (well, because we kinda are). If we act like a used goods store consumers expect discounted prices, and clearance. This means we’re targeting consumers that make a buying decision based primarily on cost – a low cost. This is NOT the types of consumers we want to send a product home to that has an average annual cost of $500 just for their food, not to mention their annual Vet bills ($100 to $500) and ancillary supplies ($30 to $1000). But if we act like a Specialty Store we have an opportunity to appeal to consumers who see the product value as outweighing the sticker price, and subsequent costs of maintenance.
At a used goods store, I don’t care if a shirt is missing a button, I don’t mind if a sweater has pills on it, I’m getting it for the low cost and can put a button back on or use that sweater shaver thing we all got Christmas 97’. But if we are a Specialty Store carrying specific breeds, shapes, sizes, if we capitalize on the very variety that comes naturally to our doors, we instantly expand the product choices from ‘Dog’ to Rhodesian Ridgeback Mix, or Chow Chow Mix. Then, give the selling points for a Rhodesian Ridgeback (bravery and used to help athletes train) or the Chow (blue-black/purple tongue and extremely loyal to its family and will bond tightly to its master) and help consumers understand what they might be getting, even if we have to caveat it with ‘We don’t know the mix exactly, so these are just possible qualities of this dog.’
This will be an initial effort, but even if we only use Wikipedia to gather fast facts about dogs, we create a file and re-use that information over and over again. How many times do you think KitchenAid® re-writes descriptions for their blenders? Not often. And you can bet anywhere you see a KitchenAid® they make sure their description is there to help sell.
There’s two steps to product placement as it applies to the shelter; Brand Recognition for the dog we have, and Brand Ideal for the potential this dog has to be. To recognize what we’ve already got, it all starts with the data the dog is entered into the system. We have to go deeper into identifying the breed, the gender and if we’ve noticed whether it’s been altered previously (a good sign this dog was once cared for) to explain their breed type and personality, their coat and expectations for grooming, their age and energy level, and give the dog a story. We have to create the brand awareness for potential consumers tying an energetic active dog to marathon runners or busy professionals who need a dog to get them into Penn Valley at the end of their hectic day.
Connecting a short coat with minimal grooming but an ‘oh-so-amazing to be petted feeling’ like what Corinthian leather did for Chrysler. This is where Brand Recognition ties back to cleanliness, we have to bathe every dog which comes into HHPA at least once before they are put on the shelves, we have to remove the fleas, trim the nails, cut out the matts, and give them a better smell. Even used clothing stores won’t put soiled shirts on their racks, so we can’t put dogs covered in dust or burrs out for the public to see.
No we can’t professionally groom all the Poodle mixes we get, but we can tell the story of how good this little Pierre will look once that professional grooming is done by the new parents, we’re creating the Brand Ideal for the potential this dog has to be. This won’t cost us money, but this will take a process in place to see that it’s done for every dog. Maybe it’s using Community Service, maybe it’s organizing a SWAT team of volunteers, maybe it’s hiring someone for $9 an hour and making it their responsibility. Minimal cost, extreme payoff.
5) Close the Deal – The last thing I see as an opportunity for improvement is closing the deal with the consumer, getting them to the register and getting the dogs out of the shelter. To make this process go smoother we need to change our front office area and adoption office area and smarten up the paperwork we shuffle around. We have to use words like ‘pet parents’, and ‘if you adopt’, and ‘if you’re approved’, and treat this exchange more like what it is; changing the lives of the people and the dogs forever. As hard as it may seem, it also means we have to avoid buyers regret or indecision by forcing potential adopters to wait longer for the dogs, we have to insist everyone in the family meet the dogs before they are approved, we have to send new parents on their way with clear marketing pieces to tell them what to do next, what to expect, and what to do if there is an issue. We have to equip them with the right resources to enable a successful and permanent transition and most importantly, to increase repeat business. It’s commonly known it takes more effort to earn a consumer than keep one, so if we don’t keep them, we’re only making our own jobs harder. But if we make our process more professional, we’ll attract better consumers, and better consumers will be better to work with in the long run.
I’m new to animal welfare in Kansas City, but not new to consulting. I’ve been doing the same types of projects for over 10 years for completely different industries because the business processes do not change despite the fact products vary significantly. Consumers all want the same thing, they want a brand experience they will enjoy, will help them buy (or they wouldn’t have come to the shelter in the first place), and will help them feel good about their purchase. For those with more experience in animal welfare, the next thing they should do after reading this is go to see the competition! See what you like and what you don’t, look for what they do as part of the brand management and adopt it for ours, and talk to others you volunteer with, work with, and get on the same page. We each have to be leaders in changing the brand of HHPA so we can all see more dogs get adopted, it’s that simple.
No comments:
Post a Comment