When the importance of employees to brand marketing is ignored, the cost is huge. The name of the game for any brand manager today is romancing the customer with a view to establishing a long-term relationship. Relationship, not product, is key.
Relationships bind, have duration, foster loyalty, create repeat sales.
The sum total of millions of relationships is a priceless asset that never appears on the brand balance sheet, but given the tremendous cost of customer acquisition, it is a foundation of profitability. These are all critical factors, but marketing orthodoxy is myopic, for reasons that are often lodged right in the structure and culture of corporations. Specifically, I mean the people who actually deal with the customer during any part of the transaction. The delivery of the brand promise often happens by human agency at the point of sale and proceeds through service, complaint and resale. In part it s because this Fifth P manifests itself far from marketing headquarters, and a corporation s customer-facing employees are not often the responsibility of brand managers but are instead relegated to what is usually called human resources.