So you launched an improvement and nobody came?

It took me almost two years to learn that the car dealer nearest my house had Saturday hours for repairs. I wanted Saturday hours, so I went to a dealer a long ways away. It was completely by chance that I found this out.

We are often so absorbed in our own category and our brand that we fail to connect with customers on fundamental benefits. Or we make a single announcement, and assume the message is out.

Ged Parton makes a similar point in this story by Aaron Barr of MediaPost's Marketing Daily: If Obama is Nokia then McCain is Diet Coke (25 Oct 08)

If one is a venerable brand whose only strategy has been to focus on yourself, there has to be something tangible for consumers to latch onto to change opinion. "If you want to change perceptions in people's minds, you have to demonstrate how you're going to change things," Parton says. "It's the tangibles that legitimize mind changes. Without the tangibles, you're only asserting."

Mr. Parton is referring to a Synovate study of the brand attributes of Obama and McCain. But of course this is true for brands generally.

You may think you have the best customer experience. You may have the surveys to show it. You may even be advertising those surveys. But none of this is going to help non-customers understand what is great about this experience unless you tell them.

Brand advertising is a good thing. But support points are good things, too. Find them and use them. Especially is you have something people might not know about.