…and inter­faces are brands
The folks over at iA Blog do a great job describ­ing an ex-pat user expe­ri­ence at McDonald’s, more later about why this matters:

"16 columns sub­menu hor­i­zon­tal, I think, stand­ing at the counter at McDonald’s. I scroll left and right and put a sim­ple cheese­burger in my men­tal shop­ping bas­ket. 16 columns, yet so usable. “Cheezubaa­gaa kuda­sai” I hear myself say, and glanc­ing at the cashier dis­play and the French fry machine inter­face, I hold my breath: Wow. Why did I never real­ize? Being a for­eigner in Japan, I decide to go to McDonald’s because at McDonald’s I don’t need to deal with lan­guage. I could get much bet­ter food in a sim­i­lar price range if I were ready to think, read Kanji and explain myself. But I’m not, as I’m hungry."

The com­plete arti­cle, though a cou­ple years old is still extremely per­ti­nent for any­one devel­op­ing user expe­ri­ences and should be required read­ing for any ser­vice com­pany set­ting out on a brand­ing project. It also got me think­ing about lunch.
I have a favorite deli, “JB’s Place” where I get lunch reg­u­larly. I order the same thing every time. Smoked turkey and bacon, with ched­dar on Dutch Crunch, hold the onion. The folks who make the sand­wiches are cool and the own­ers work there every­day. The whole expe­ri­ence usu­ally takes about five or ten min­utes –from lock­ing up my bike to leav­ing with my sand­wich. They sell the news­pa­per so there is usu­ally a copy lying around. I’ll read a bit while I’m wait­ing if it’s busy.

I gen­er­ally take my sand­wich to go, but some­times I forgo the bag (small, white, paper) they offer me each day. I put the sand­wich (wrapped in butcher paper) on a plate, or some­times I use the bag as a plate. 75% of the time, I take the toma­toes off of the sand­wich, or at least, the two biggest slices. I eat at my desk.
For me, the expe­ri­ence just fits. I can count on it being pretty much the same each day and I tend to enjoy the lit­tle vari­a­tions. Some­times a moment to read the news­pa­per or an extra slice of tomato is just what I need.

My vision of the JB’s brand is not their logo, or any ad cam­paign they might do, or their rat­ing on Yelp. It’s the faces I see there, the chit chat, the smells, the sounds, the con­sis­tency. From a user expe­ri­ence stand­point, JB’s is just right for me and appar­ently many oth­ers –it’s con­sis­tently busy. I keep com­ing back and I tell my friends about how great JB’s is.
For a small deli, your ser­vice and your prod­uct is pretty much all you have to offer. Those two forces will make or break your busi­ness, regard­less of how “cut­ting edge” your ads are or how sexy your menu looks. Like McDonald’s, JB’s found a need they could meet (hun­gry peo­ple seek­ing good food made by pleas­ant peo­ple.) They deliv­ered on that need in a way that works for real peo­ple, and they do it consistently.

Amaz­ingly, some large busi­nesses com­pletely for­get about deliv­er­ing a con­sis­tent prod­uct with good ser­vice yet they spend small for­tunes on ridicu­lous ads talk­ing about how great they are. “Fly the friendly skies” –are you kid­ding me? My last flight on Amer­i­can Air­lines was like a ride in a beat up old sta­tion wagon. The flight was delayed for an hour because the cock­pit door wouldn’t close. Then another 20 min­utes because they for­got to get oxy­gen tanks or some­thing? Ser­vice staff had only slightly more charm than your aver­age park­ing meter atten­dant, but it wasn’t their fault. Their job is to fend off peo­ple who dis­like the air­lines decep­tive pric­ing and unde­liv­ered promises. If these orga­ni­za­tions put more effort into craft­ing how their expe­ri­ence feels and acts, rather than how it looks and talks, they might find them­selves actu­ally con­nect­ing with their customers.