PSA Holland, the association of professional speakers in the Netherlands and Belgium, shows a testimonial of each speaker with the reason why the author thinks other speakers should be a member of the union. Each member has a special field for this on their account page. The home page and each deeper page show an example of the testimonials entered there. Giving a commitment to a brand in such a way and broadcasting it like this is something I've never seen before. An example every brand should follow.Each member chooses their own style. For example, Chris van Vleuten says:
Speaking is a trade skill and a trade can be taught. To learn you need teachers and good examples. Both of these can be found in the PSA Holland. The most important thing to be found in the PSA Holland as trade union: inspiration and involvement!
Chris takes an energetic angle; other speakers may choose a different one.
This isn’t about a huge brand, but it’s also not a non-committal community (membership costs 450 euros) in which you can just yell something. However, it does give an example to bigger brands. In my opinion it distinguishes itself by:
- Broadcasting commitment to a brand (a brand community or a brand culture) if you like, instead of to a product. It’s not just strong in attracting new members, but also keeping existing ones. From social psychology we know, after all, that when people publicly commit to a brand/culture/land/insight their future behavior will in all probability match this statement. People want to do what they say; that’s the bottom line. Whoever finds this interesting can read this report of my visit to a NIMA event with Robert Cialdini. Food for online marketers! So it’s about voicing commitment to a brand, or a brand culture, as I prefer to call it in this perspective. A product is replaced by a successor, but a brand stays. As brand-builder (and entrepreneur) you want emotional commitment for your brand. Connection, involvement.
- With name and last name. Instead of anonymous testimonials (male, 40, Dordrecht) with name and last name, clickable to profile that, in turn, is linked to LinkedIn. This transparency inspired trust. Anonymity is extremely illogical in a speaker’s society, but each brand can choose to add an additional box ‘make my testimonial anonymous’ (behind which you can add how you want to be called). At least it avoids anonymous testimonials that anyone can fill out. Each member, each customer or donator, can fill out exactly one testimonial.
- Integrated in member registration. It’s a standard procedure for maintaining personal data or the profile that’s shown on the website. A text box in which the speaker can enter their testimonial appears. Furthermore, after that all the testimonials of other members will appear so the member can change it. As a result almost every member has added a testimonial. Bigger brands would do right by making a connection to friends’ testimonials: ‘your friends say about this brand’
Nicely thought-out maybe, but the question is why? We can of course build-brands-new-style. But in fact it’s about the adaptation to the changing environment. We all know that it’s 5 times as expensive to get a new customer than it is to keep an old one. We also know the once clear media landscape is becoming more and more fragmented, seems to fall apart completely in which the consumer can and will keep more and more advertisements outside the door. This 5x factor will increase incredibly in my opinion. It’ll become more and more important to keep the current customers and use them to gain new members. Then it’ll be interesting to see how large brands accomplished this before the mass communication era. Back then churches were by far the most successful brands and are especially inspiring, but also student fraternities know exactly how to bind a person forever. To great pleasure of the members, by the by, because that’s how it works. It’s typically win-win. Social psychology isn’t new. Applying it to the virtual world is. Integration into brand-thinking is something I’ve never come across before.
Future Vision by Erwin Van Lun on this article
All brands, whether you’re called Google, Wehkamp, Xbox, Mexx, Albert Heijn, MarketingFacts or Postbank, can implement this tomorrow and expand step-by-step. Each brand that has a log-in function already has a basis. As soon as you know a little more about the customer you can make testimonials more specific immediately: ‘people from your home town, your gender (call it something else, of course), of your age say x about our brand’. And if you’re really smart: friends say. The Facebook application Beacon gave the first push in that direction (see here).
Controlling this will be the big challenge for large brands. What will people say about my brand? Does it fit our position? I won’t describe it here in detail, but the time of this thinking is slowly but steadily ending. Nevertheless we’re still dealing with the old thinking which is still deeply rooted in companies, governments and NGOs. By the by it’ll get even more exciting when you can react to testimonials. Or when people change their opinions after many years of fidelity. Perhaps you’ll need to make a change log for testimonials. And if you link that up with your CRM database, the party’s complete. Openness, openness, openness, that’s what it’s about in brands new style. Enough to do in this fun time.
I’m curious who’s next.