Golden Expectations

I've been thinking a lot about expectations recently. Must have been brought on by the dearth of gold for Australia and the subsequent sense of crushing disappointment that pervaded our nation. Well, our media outlets, anyway. Granted, we were beaten by Korea (13) and Italy and Hungary (8 each), which you hardly can imagine had the same budgets as Australia. But still, it is not the position (10th) on the Gold Medal Podium that is the problem, it is that we expected to have done better. It suddenly occurred to me that "expectation" pervades every part of our lives. How many relationships stumble because expectations are not being met? And of course, brands really are just a sum of "expectations". We set up those expectations in our communication activities and we work hard to make sure the brand can deliver on those expectations. Well, I hope we do, anyway. And we should, because a brand is not just the communication we thrust at people. Every time we interact with that brand, our expectations are either met or not, and our opinion of that brand adjusts accordingly. Brands are not, no matter how much we may wish they were, entities in their own right, created and maintained in the sterile environment of an advertising agency. They are living, breathing relationships. And like all relationships, when expectations aren't met, they begin to founder. The very concept of "value" is also entirely dependent on expectation. In the modern marketing environment, the economical model of setting price based purely on supply and demand has long been superseded by the idea that the ideal price is set based on what people would expect to pay. Value for money is determined by the difference between what people expect and what they get. When their experience with the brand is better than they expected, you get perceptions of excellent value. Conversely, when the brand experience is worse than they expected it is considered poor value. And in both these cases, this is regardless of the price people pay in the first place. Managing brands, then, must surely be a matter of managing expectations? When we take time to understand the gap between our consumer's expectation (which of course can be vastly different from our own) and their experience with our product, we may well be able to better deliver brands that people love to keep on using.