The Doorman. The Magic Starts Here. Brand Values and Hidden Messages.
My wife runs a bespoke uniform design company and she told me a story about a doorman at a five-star Hotel whose uniform was involved in a transformation.
The doorman, who had previously worn an old and crappy uniform, complained that no one noticed him, received a new tailored uniform, and was so deeply proud of it that he claimed it changed the way he behaved and transformed how he felt. He immediately felt, with the new uniform that he had “presence” and importance.
Now he was an essential and integral part of the whole hotel operation, an ambassador of something to be proud of, so much so that it not only changed his behavior, but also how people noticed him and behaved differently towards him.
It seems that how the uniform made him feel, perhaps the cut, the shape, the color, the structure and (most importantly, I think) the signals it sends out, and the associations it makes does matter, does make a difference and does change behavior.
Not only the doorman’s behavior, but the behavior of everyone who comes into contact with him, and (hoteliers take note) it enhances the message and signals that the hotel sends to arriving and leaving guests. When the message is consistent and congruent with the hotels aims, then a kind of magic happens and everyone understands and buys into the message.
Rory Sutherland in his book Alchemy has a similar story which he calls the “doorman fallacy”.
In Sutherland’s example he sets the doorman as an example of accountant and economist thinking against creative thinking (he calls it psycho-logic) or logic against non-logical thinking.
The economist and accountant’s strategy would be to look for “cost-saving efficiencies” by replacing the doorman with an automatic door, because that’s how they understand the functional role of a doorman. It’s logical. It finds a solution that is cost effective. I think it’s euphemistically called “value engineering”
But the reality is that the true value of the doorman lies in what is not immediately obvious, opening the door for guests, but lies with the “hidden values” of all the other functions and messages the doorman represents. The image or story that the hotel wishes the guest to see, he is the first contact of hotel and guest. The doorman (if it’s done right) signals the brand and the brand values.
If you define every function by the same narrow economic (and rational) viewpoint you end up with a function or facility that has no “soul”. The very essence of how we communicate is via these kinds of oblique messages. It’s a kind of magic that runs counter to logic, it’s non-logic.
But it’s an emotional and cultural (I think of it as a dark art) and that doesn’t fit into narrow rational and logical criteria. It’s more to do with intuition and psychology that with cost and measurability.
For instance, if you’re buying a second-hand car from someone dressed with a vicar’s collar you will probably feel that that person is trustworthy and that the car reflects that person’s trustworthiness and qualities. However, if you were buying the same car and were greeted by someone who was wearing a dirty vest and boxer shorts you might think again about buying the car from him.
This is interesting because it confirms my belief that clothes, and other things too, have the ability to transform how you feel and therefore change your behavior and your attitude.
When my son was small, he was convinced that if he wore a shirt that said “Eric Cantona’ at the back that some of Cantona’s skill would rub off on him. (Nothing much has changed since then, I buy trainers endorsed by Mo Farrah) Authority doesn’t just endorse a product, some of their fairy dust rubs off on us too. It’s illogical non-sense magic.
Imagine a similar scenario where you arrive in A&E and are greeted by a) a person in a white coat with a stethoscope around their neck or b) a person who has stained jeans, a T-shirt and a cigarette behind their ear (I’ll probably be in trouble here with stereotyping, but you get the point). So, who would want to treat you?
There is a lot of research and evidence to support this view.
In a very famous study, the Milgram experiment, by Professor Stanley Milgram of Yale University, students were asked to administer electric shocks of increasingly high voltage to a person on the other side of a screen (who was an actor) and screamed loader with each increased shocks. The student were told to administer the increasing shocks by a man in a white coat with a clipboard. What they found is that two-thirds, 66% of participants were prepared to deliver potentially fatal electric shocks to strangers, simply because they had been told to do so by a man in a white coat.
Continuity Probability Signalling (another word for trust) suggests that the prospect of repeat custom is something that keeps business honest. In other words, investment in things that may not make rational sense, but deliver perceived value to the guest / customer, make sense because they invest in a longer and deeper relationship with the guest or customer. Trust is what we buy into when we buy into a brand.
As an example, during the communist era in the Soviet Union, rivets were made by many different companies but were not “branded”, so no one knew who had produced them. The result was that some unscrupulous manufacturers lowered their quality (presumably to save cost) and eventually some of the ships sank. Because they hadn’t invested in their own brand (and reputation) or trust, it was a race to the bottom. No accountability. They thought they had nothing to lose by reducing their quality and their cost.
Once the authorities realized what was happening, they got the companies to stamp their names on the rivets, the companies had “skin in the game” and their reputation, and future orders, was on the line. Quality, and for that matter branding, is linked to accountability, trust and reputation.
The doorman’s uniform and his behavior send out a signal that tells us upfront that this hotel is acting on the basis of long-term self-interest rather than short term expediency.
I am very grateful to Alchemy by Rory Sutherland and to Fashionizer for much of the material used in this blog.