Funny Faces and Valentines Wishes

My latest post is up at Marketing Profs Daily Fix. What do funny face pancakes and IHOP waitresses have to do with your marketing? It's all about the face your organization shows in its interactions with the people you are trying to reach:

On Sunday morning I treated my kids to a funny face pancake at IHOP (the International House of Pancakes, for those of you who are actually "international" and therefore wouldn't know)....

While there, I was struck by the fact that every one of the waitresses -- a much more apt descriptor than "servers" in this case -- was a matronly woman in her 50s or 60s, quite comfortable calling her customers "hon," and looked like she would fit in anywhere in middle America. This is not to put them down in the least -- they all seemed to be friendly, knowledgeable and efficient.

More importantly, they also were the personification of the IHOP brand. As the primary face of the company to its customers, these women engage in the main interaction that IHOP diners experience and remember. The waitresses represent an old-fashioned family meal with reliable comfort food. The pancakes and coffee may not be fancy, but you'll always get a scoop of whipped butter and 4 different kinds of syrup to choose from. The uniform blue A-frame buildings just add to the familiarity and comfort.

I don't know if IHOP hired the waitstaff with this in mind, or if this is just who happened to apply for the jobs at my local restaurant. But the experience would have been much different if the server had been a 20-something with multiple piercings and an attitude.

Think about what the face of your organization or business looks like to your audience. Does your frontline staff embody the image that you want to project to the world? This is not just physical characteristics (which are not necessarily important), but personality and attitude as well. And while your campaign may have a spokesperson who also needs to project the right persona, the real people whom your customers come in contact with are the most critical for the impression people will take away.

The necessary characteristics of your staff will vary depending upon the nature of your business. IHOP's matronly waitresses might not fit into the image of Starbuck's young hip baristas or Google's elite technorati or the impeccably dressed clerks at a Rodeo Drive boutique. I'm not saying they could not perform those jobs, assuming they had the skills, but they would probably not have the attitude nor appearance to fit the brand expectations of the customers of those businesses.

For someone providing frontline services through a government-funded program, the challenge comes in flouting the expected image of an uninterested bureaucrat. In this case, the staff can put a new, more attractive face on a service that may have looked pretty ugly before. Social marketing programs may hire outreach staff who are similar to the target audiences they are trying to reach to show that the staff understands them, even if the managers higher up in the project do not come from the same group.

Marketers often compile a composite picture and description of one person who represents the target audience so that they have a more concrete image in their minds of who they need to reach. So, too, you need to think about what kind of person best represents your company or organization to your audience, and make sure that the face of your company matches its heart. And for the romantics among you, who like to find inspiration in the little things, here is a Valentines Day treat: