Definition: ‘Brand experience (BX) is a type of experiential marketing that incorporates a holistic set of conditions created by a company to influence the feeling a customer has about a particular product or company name.’
Definition: Brand experience (BX) : A brand-worthy, recognizable, distinctive and consistent sensory experience of people with the brand throughout the customer journey.
For example, at the simplest l
evel, a brand experience can be positive for one person and negative for another. It can also take shape in highly specific ways, typically in terms of the impression the individual takes from the sum of their brand experience e.g. “nerdy”, “passionate”, “environmentally responsible”
By focusing on brand experience, you make the customer experience you offer people truly brand-worthy. Recognizable and distinctive. In every channel and at every touchpoint. Externally and internally.
Why is there so much focus on brand experience? Customer experience, in a broad sense, is the power term used for activities of brands that should result in a personalized brand experience of individual customers or customer groups with similar characteristics. But actually, brands (read instead of brands also “companies” and “organizations”) strive for something else: brand experience. The way people experience a brand.
Creating distinctiveness is what brands are all about. Making sharp choices in positioning. Relative to customers, channels and competitors. Based on the DNA and brand values. Brands usually spend a lot of time and attention on this. Brand identity is therefore guarded tooth and nail. Especially in the more traditional channels. It is remarkable, to say the least, that brands settle for less in their efforts to win over customers in an omnichannel world.
The difference between customer experience and brand experience
For starters, let’s put these two power terms side by side. If you do a Google search for both, you’ll find a wide range of definitions. Customer experience (CX) is strongly associated with customer journey and transactions. Brand experience (BX) is primarily in the area of how people perceive a brand sensorially. It is perhaps best explained using the model below from Air.inc:
From the inside out:
User experience (UX) : The (digital) experience of people in the moment when interacting with the brand.
Customer experience (CX) : A unified, intuitive, omnichannel experience of people interacting with the brand throughout the customer journey.
Brand experience (BX) : A brand-worthy, recognizable, distinctive and consistent sensory experience of people with the brand throughout the customer journey.
CX en BX zijn dus niet twee verschillende krachttermen die duiding geven aan hetzelfde. BX voegt wel degelijk waarde toe aan wat de meeste merken nu doen: alle ballen op customer experience. Streven naar intuïtieve customer journeys.
What’s wrong with customer experience?
Well, actually nothing. Customer experience is about serving visitors and customers integrally throughout the customer journey. Personalized. No one will be against that. And it will certainly produce happy customers. With optimal CLV as a result of your efforts. Provided you provide an intuitive experience with attention to user experience, of course.
You could say that customer experience is strongly related to hygiene: service and support throughout the customer journey are taken for granted by people. On a short side note, given the attention in which the field of conversion rate optimization (CRO) is enjoying. Because that feels a bit like closing the well after the horse has bolted. Why spend all that time on tweaking and tuning the existing user experience (keep testing, of course!) if you can do it right the first time on a project basis? Could just save a lot of money.
If you offer a fine customer experience, you might still be half a step ahead of your competitors. But it is also relatively easy to copy. As a result, your competitive advantage disappears like snow in the sun.
“Digital sameness”
What’s going on? Until the financial crisis hit in 2008, truly brand-worthy campaigns were being created in the digital realm. Work with impact that contributed to brand image and activated at the same time. Axe with a scenario game, Mercedes that perfectly conveyed the luxury Mercedes feeling via a website and Suit Supply’s Pakman are still vividly in my mind.
After that, all-in-one platforms took off. From then on, companies invested heavily in solutions like Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, Microsoft and the like. The promise was that these martech environments would enable brands to offer individual customers a personalized brand experience based on artificial intelligence and machine learning.
They do indeed offer that potential. But practice is often more recalcitrant. If you continue to invest in new automated campaigns/journeys on the basis of a clear strategic and implementation roadmap, chances are that customers will experience the customer experience as increasingly positive. Because they are at their beck and call with content, offers, invitations and loyal customer promos tailored to their needs. But it is in the failure to invest that the problem lies. It does not happen by a long shot.
At the same time, the embrace of these martech platforms has also created a flattening in the way brands present themselves in the digital domain. A fancy term is digital sameness. Websites, mobile apps, emails. Put them of ten random brands side by side and you find that they are more or less interchangeable. They are not or not sufficiently brand-worthy.
External causes
How that comes about? It has two main causes:
- These martech platforms are developed based on standards. Not only technical, but also functional. Then it can happen that the platform puts limitations on what you as a brand want in user experience and visual design. Limitations that you will have to take into account in your corporate identity guide.
- The consulting firms and agencies that implement these types of martech platforms usually have their roots in technology. They mainly implement. Logical, then, that they focus on customer journeys and getting the automated campaigns and workflows that support these customer journeys working technically. With visual design templates, developed within the capabilities given to them.
But they have not been raised with brand thinking. And they lack knowledge and expertise in brand positioning, how to translate it into an omnichannel corporate identity guide and how it becomes visible in the behavior of a brand and the organization behind it.
Digitally, offline and face-to-face. In marketing, communication and behavior. Both externally and internally. That in itself is understandable. The conclusion is that if you want to communicate in a brand-worthy way, you need people who can make this translation. And feed implementation parties with brand-worthy input.
Brand thinking doesn’t just touch Brand Communication
A comprehensive corporate identity guide should be something everyone in the organization begs for. However, what stands out – including in my recent job as Global Brand Communication Director – is that more often than not, it is sometimes seen as irritating and cumbersome. Which limits you in what you want when developing campaigns or journey automation. “The style guide, oh yes, that has to be from Brand Communication,” you’ll hear. You may also be familiar with the qualifier “corporate style police.
That says it all about perception. Brand Communication, of course, is not a silo within the organization. If a branded customer experience – brand experience – is what you want to provide, then the brand belongs to and is for everyone. Is your brand strategy and brand guide part of the onboarding process of new employees. So that they live the brand from their toes and fingertips from day 1. Internal branding.
Marketing affects the entire organization
Because since the customer journey is the purview of us marketers, marketing is not limited to the traditional domains of brand, marketing and communications. In fact, the marketing/BCX strategy translates to all business functions. And thus everyone plays their own role in that business function-transcending brand-worthy customer experience.
Just some examples, where brand experience, style and tone of voice – of course – ultimately depend on a brand and its specific brand values:
Finance is responsible for all communications around invoices and payments.
“This is a payment reminder. Your payment must be in by date x. If we have not received payment by that date, we will hand over collection of the outstanding amount, including dunning fees, to our collection agency.”
Comes in nicely, doesn’t it? It can also go like this:
“We noticed that you haven’t paid invoice x yet. Maybe you overlooked it. After all, we’re all busy! Please click the button below to still pay.”
Small effort, big fun.
Operations/supply chain is responsible for shipping and returns.
The single choice of home delivery and, when returning orders, being forced to print the labels and pay return charges yourself versus being able to choose between home delivery, pick from store or ship from store when ordering and, when returning, being able to give the package to the delivery service (after all, they are driving nearby for delivery anyway) because the return labels are already on the shipping package. The latter feels a lot nicer.
Customer services
You contact Customer Services with a question or complaint. First, a chatbot asks all your questions. Then you have to jump through hoops to get a real person on the line. After having been on hold for 45 minutes. Then you have to explain the whole story one more time. And again when the call is transferred. Situations that still occur too often. Why not just direct voice-to-voice contact as long as chatbots do not function optimally? And cash in on the fish: with a personal offer in case of a justified complaint. In the end, that makes everyone happy.
Sales
You invite a party to an introductory meeting because they have a solution you like. Proud of the product he sells, the Sales Manager flips open his laptop and shows you in a dizzying number of slides how fantastic his product is.
Really can’t do it anymore. Good salespeople are empathetic, put themselves in the position of a lead or customer. Listen to the needs and tailor the proposal accordingly. And more importantly: keep in touch and continue to show interest after signing the contract. Because precisely in the usage phase, it is essential to do what you promised earlier. You know, branded customer experience.
Waiting for the followers of Coolblue
When people ask what are great example cases of brands that have their brand experience completely in order, the first thing that comes up is silence. Then the answer is the obvious one: Coolblue. For years the ‘epitome of’. With the payoff “Everything for a smile,” which is meticulously carried through to all capillaries of the organization. From pretend emails to packaging. From paychecks to office décor. Internationally, Burberry was often cited. And, at least for the stage, a brand like Apple captures the imagination.
I can’t imagine there aren’t more brands in the low countries that have it right or are well on their way. But simply not yet known to the general public. Given the investments brands are making in improving the customer experience, you can expect them to have it right at least in some areas. I want to ask those brands especially to raise their finger. And next year to send in their case for the Effie Awards in the category Branded Customer Experience.
The essential role of brand in the customer experience
A razor-sharp brand key and its translation into a comprehensive corporate identity guide lived by everyone in the organization is the key to greater success. Its importance is nicely described in “How not to Plan: 66 ways to screw it up” by Sarah Carter and Les Binet. In it, they state the following:
“People have more important things to do than think and talk about brands. We often forget that the main reason people choose specific brands is to avoid thinking about them. Brands provide a mental shortcut that results in faster and easier buying decisions.” This was also demonstrated in a brain scan where a strong brand was presented next to a weaker brand. The results noticed that brain activity was significantly less with the strong brand. “Strong brands are literally no-brainers. That’s why they are strong.”
In other words, the brand acts as a lever and catalyst. So, is standing out from your competitors dear to your heart? And do you want optimal results? Then make sure your brand resonates uniformly and recognizably in marketing, communication and behavior. Not only in the traditional but also in the digital channels.
Studies by Forrester and publications like Qualtrics, among others, show that brands that make brand experience central can look forward to significant growth in sales, stronger brand perception and happier customers. Therefore, brand experience is the superlative of customer experience.
Author: Gerben Busch
Source: (Dutch) https://www.marketingfacts.nl/berichten/brand-experience-de-overtreffende-trap-van-customer-experience/
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