It is the epitome of brand recognition and loyalty when you can take icons of a business or product category and make them into a doll.

What more could the most passionately loyalist Applephiles crave more than their own personal Steve Jobs sitting next to them as they ponder the use of their new iPad or Macbook Air, looking over to see Steve watching with approval; what could be better?

Jobs symbolizes so much for people who use Apple products. He clearly represents a departure from the “corporate” mindset of technology, which is driven by the IBM’s, the HP’s, and Microsoft’s who are focused on selling faster, better chips and software designed by engineers who think like, well, engineers. Steve Jobs served as our personal advocate for the technology that worked for us; that supported what we as consumers loved. This sense of advocacy is what drove loyalty to Apple and made it the company that it is today.

Unfortunately the “powers that be” representing Apple and Steven Jobs don’t share the same evangelical view of allowing a “brand” like Mr. Jobs hitting the shelves by the thousands to coach us on to new glory with our iPads and iMacs. So the manufacturing company has promised to withdraw the product from the market. However, look for him on eBay while you can.

The latest location is in San Francisco’s Financial District, near Union Square, and it’s a radical departure from a traditional bank in its look. It’s more of an experience more than a functional location.

It’s a cafe, a hangout place, and really a place for the local community. Like Apple, ING gets that the “store” environment isn’t just about pushing product. It’s about letting you browse, connect, get conformable with who they are. Since ING only exists online, how do you create a positive storefront experience for the brand and promote confidence in banking with them? This experience becomes associated with trust, connection and hopefully promotes more visitors to become customers.

If marketers and retailers really understood more about inviting customers in and letting them play, hang out, and experience, they would open and build stronger relationships with their customers and forgr a stronger connection with their brand, not just sell products.

Now how the heck does Grand Central Station create what Fifth Avenue in New York or Union Square in San Francisco has going for it as a shopping mecca? The key is to understand buying behavior and shopping environments and how you define the and attract customers. It’s the goal of any retailer to be in the right place; where customers show up. High-end retail centers work very hard to identify what attracts customers by studying the demographics and travel patterns. They look at other stores already nearby and the real estate moguls try to sign key anchor stores to promote customer traffic and to bring in other major stores. The objective is to create the kind of synergy that will draw in similar types of customers. For example, the shoppers who go to Pottery Barn often will go into The Gap or Banana Republic as well. The idea is to get those same shoppers to behave in ways that will benefit all the similar retailers.

So how does Grand Central Station fit in? You have one of the busiest transportation terminals in the world with people all coming together, arriving or leaving with some time between trains. And we are not talking about just a few people but millions annually. And not just any old folks. You’re seeing professional people who live in the suburbs and who have more disposable income, and who also happen to have a little time to shop and look around before that next train. And when they do catch that train they may get on board with that new iPod or iPhone or Mac computer. Even if they don’t buy an Apple device then and there, they get to experience the products to see how the world of Apple and iTunes works. This begins the conversion of a potetnial customer to an Apple customer. I’m willing to bet that probably half the people who will go through this Grand Central location will end up buying at another Apple store. But what Apple brilliantly did was to provide that browsing experience - that moment to see and interact with the products. This is what buying a car is all about - seeing it, testing it and eventually buying it.

So, as the Apple store becomes part of the Grand Central Station commuter experience, I will be watching to see how other retailers will consider train stations, airports and other terminals as major opportunities to promote their own sales experience.

Is 4-1/2 stars good enough for me?

I have found this true in several areas. Shopping for an HDTV and for a telescope for my son, for example. By looking carefully at various brands of HDTV you can see who the leaders are, and what’s the most expensive, but you also should read all the 4 and 5 star reviews. You’ll suddenly see folks who are “dissecting” the details of features, reliability, angle of view and refresh rate (60 hz or 120 hz — who would know?). These all make a difference in how you use the product and also on the reliability of the brand. I ended up learning about the differences between VIZIO, Toshiba, Sony and TCL.

The best salespeople are other customers

By reviewing the comments I felt as though I had a personal experience with at least 15 to 20 people, each of whom shared his or her perspective both on the products and the brands. Did the brand help them with problems? Could they get more information on the product from the manufacturer? Did customer service actually even exist?

Getting educated changes your perspective on what you want

In buying a new telescope for my son, for example, I was constantly debating between which brand to buy, Celestron and Orion. Which is better? Why? What did the reviewers say that could really inform me about these brands? In this case, after reading probably 20 reviews and seeing someone say they are awesome at customer service, I actually called up Orion and got a real person onthe phone who explained what the reviewer’s comments meant and what I should look for.

I learned that the lens quality is everything, the diameter of the scope in combination with the lenses and the “equatorial mount” can determine if you can see a fuzzy object or a clear object. Even though Orion is more expensive, I realized why there was a difference in cost and because of the customer accolades and my personal talk with customer service, I had new knowledge and felt like I could make a better informed choice.

So, ultimately, the best thing for the shopper and the brand is understanding and using customer reviews, comments, and ratings as you beging to learn what a brand is about, who they are really making this product for, and what you need to know to discover the brand that will fill your needs.

Back on 5/10/11 of this year I already mentioned that these kind of blunders cost companies big time in terms of loss of brand equity, confusion by current customers and ultimately loss of sales – which motivated this change back. The internal “listening” that often guides customers to making decisions on how to lead their brand decisions in the market was also the disaster that let Netflix to the blunders they made in the summer of this year with doubling their price creating and the Quiwkster n killing.

It’s not about the brand, It’s the all about the customer (hasn’t it always been?)

Brands, businesses must think like customers and understand customers motivations. It’s not rocket science. It’s about understanding the top 5 reasons customers come to you, think of you and buy from you. This guides the consumers’ reality. Remember they live in an overwhelmeing world, bombarded by constant options to buy, contant marketing and advertising. What consumers want is trust, connection and a predictable experience and relationship.

Follow the Five Rules (my rules) of customer loyalty

So, to the online marketing place, large Fortune 1000 brands don’t go changing things without understanding how your customers think.

1) Find out why they buy from you - and reinforce this relationship

2) Connect to customers they way they know you - online/off, however it works for them

3) Go carefully with (and incentivize) change - and give a reason

4) Be consistant with your brand messaging - repeat till you’re bored stiffed

5) Ask what the customers want - kind of a good idea don’t ya think?

Netflix has learned a bitter lesson, a basic truth: if you diminish the brand  value your  loyal customers cherish, you are treading on the edge of a precipice. Your brand’s value is based on customer and public perception, not on internal financial assessments. Netflix follows in the footsteps of HP, Tropicana, Pyramid Breweries and many other companies that based decisions on an internal, myopic viewpoint and paid a steep price.

Ignore customer perceptions at your own risk.

How you brand a product, a retail environment or for that matter a restaurant, is all about who you want to attract and what make you unique. Building momentum and focusing on you core audience, customers, the value they seek, that’s going to make you or break you. The more generic you are,  the more you blend in. When you stand out, everyone remembers you. So when I saw this wonderful little place their name blew me away—Super Giant Breakfast Teriyaki!

In marketing and branding it’s all about the target audience and how you get your message across. Who will you attract? What will be the value they see? It’s not always easy when you have a place called Fred’s diner or Maria’s Taco Shop. When you put it out there like these guys did with their messaging, you communicate. They’ve done it all: super, giant–- you’re gonna get something really big, an excellent value for price; breakfast—well, we know what time of day they are targeting, this must be a breakfast food, right? And lastly, the mouth watering, tasty, I-can’t-wait-to-eat-it word: teriyaki – everyone loves this savory flavor. It’s migrated from Japan to Korea to Mexican. So now you have it a burrito that is the killer burrito, differentiated from all the rest, it’s not even saying burrito – it’s all about what the name of the shop says –

Super Giant Breakfast Teriyaki… Enjoy!

When I saw my nephew’s three-year-old daughter pick up an iPad and she used her finger to go to “her pictures,” browsing through them, picking ones she liked, giggling and making them large, I realized no other technology-based company thinks as simply and elegantly as Apple. This obsessive focus on user experience and how people really do things came directly from Steve Jobs, not the VP of engineering or the corporate board of directors. It was his obsession and focus that created a world of products that’s taken our expectations of functionality and ease-of-use to a whole level.

The amazing thing Apple did under Jobs was to establish a benchmark for a whole different experience for the consumer. He obsessed about this and knew that it was not the amount of RAM or speed you had, it was what things did and how they simplified your world. He clearly recognized that engineers may create things, machines, cars, computers, but they do not focus on the person who operates from their own way of thinking, in their own world. Thanks to Steve we’ve now evolved from the world of geekdom to world of humanized experience. For a three-year-old or a 90-year-old it’s now the same.

Farewell Steve Jobs.

Okay, tell your super-loyal customers that you are giving them two months notice, then you are doubling the price of the products they know and love. You get a choice to get streaming movies, which have a limited number of titles, or continue your DVD deliveries, which have just about everything. This is called a choice but it’s really a “take it or leave it” option. As we all know, this announcement during the summer caused an immediate uproar with the loyal followers and customers of Netflix. The result was thousands of negative emails and postings about the company, thousands of canceled accounts, and a drop in stock value for Netflix.

In my original blog back on July 14 – Don’t Mess with Customer Loyalty, Netflix! I stated that this is the one asset Netflix has that they should not mess with – passionate customer loyalty. No matter what “pricing model” or form of business they operate for financial reasons, they needed to keep the customers happy, loving them and eager for more. It’s branding 101. And with missteps like this you have very little margin to fix the messes you create. Now that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings attempting to backpeddle by posting a retraction and apology on September 18 (http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/explanation-and-some-reflections) – three months later – it’s a bit late in the game to save face for Netflix, having already broken the trust of customers.

In this blog entry by CEO Hastings, he introduces two models of video rental: the rollout of Qwikster to handle their brick and mortar DVD delivery business and the retention of Netflix for streaming. But why not introduce the future first way back in July, keep the pricing the same with some offers and incentives and then do the pricing changes later! What was the management thinking?  This is why you do not let CFOs run companies!Yes, Mr. Hastings, we realize these are two businesses but this branding bungle has cost Netflix customers and brand equity that they will be hard-pressed to recover. Why? Because there are numerous streaming competitors already taking the high ground from Netflix. Everyone from HuluPlus to Amazon Instant Video, which is FREE if you pay a once-a-year $79 Amazon Prime fee, are at their heels offering movies and TV shows. This is giving Netflix a run for their money. As a result, Netflix continues to lose ground and its brand continues to suffer, starting with its first bad move back in July.

The real question now is can they fix the damage they did with their new Qwikster launch, and what good deals can they offer to former customers and existing customers to  love and trust the brand once again? It is hard to say if they can pull this off. The one bit of brand equity you never want to lose is loyal customers.