It’s often been said that brands live in the mind of the customer — that they’re not really owned or managed by the company that developed them. That all we can hope to do is influence the customer’s perception of the brand by fulfilling our promise to them.

Word of mouth is a fantastic way to influence customer perception, if you can get it. A story about your brand that engages the imagination or stirs the emotions can spread almost at the speed of light, and suddenly it’s everywhere. I can’t help but think that if cats were a brand, they’d be sitting very pretty right about now, thanks to Oscar the cat.

Who hasn’t seen the story about Oscar the cat? Last night he was in the editorial section of my local newspaper, and this morning I saw him twice online — once in the news on my browser, and once on WebMD when I was researching a friend’s symptoms. This evening he was on national news. This week, cats reign — at least Oscar does.

Oscar was adopted by the staff of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, and grew up roaming the halls with the medical staff. After about six months, the staff noticed that Oscar seemed to be able to predict when the nursing home patients were going to die by curling up next to them during their final hours. After observing his accuracy with 25 deaths at the facility, Dr. David Dosa wrote about the phenomenon in The New England Journal of Medicine. The rest, as they say, is history.

After the story appeared on NBC, viewers started giving feedback, showing that perceptions about cats had been altered by the story. Comments included a viewer who, despite having always been a “dog person,” now was considering getting a cat, and others who were surprised and pleased to know that cats could have that kind of talent.

One story about a cat can change perceptions in people’s minds. That’s pretty powerful. Does it give you any ideas?

[tags]brands, perceptions, Oscar the cat, engaging stories, emotional branding[/tags]

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Authentic Brands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.