A positive customer experience is more important than brand story
Agencies need to focus more on improving the customer experience rather than emotional storytelling at scale, says Andrew Hardeman, because – despite what we may think – most consumers don’t care about having an emotional connection to brands.
Kevin Costner said in his 1989 film Field Of Dreams, “Build it and they will come”. Great in theory; difficult in practice, right?
In 21st Century markets, there is now increased competition, less tangible differentiators amongst category players, and more control in the hands of consumers.
To extend the analogy, just ‘building it’ isn’t cutting it anymore. A lack of rational differentiation in products has meant companies have had to rely heavily on creating emotionally distinctive brands as a way of defining a unique market position.
Cue the current buzz around ‘emotional storytelling’ – the process of building a positive emotional connection between brands and consumers over time with an evolving message.
A nod to Telstra’s new brand campaign.
I absolutely agree. Marketers need to understand that customers care more about themselves than they do about your brand.
Your brand story is still important in the mix, but not the most important aspect. Customer experience will always trump it.
Excellent piece Andrew, and well said. Life’s to short to care about a brand’s story. Too many marketers throw good money after bad, trying to overcome a ho-hum product and underwhelming experience.
I disagree.
Product quality and brand experiences are subjective. There’s little right or wrong, only different, which is why we rely on the brand to judge our subjective experience.
Saying “just make great products and be customer focused” suggests that’s not what every single business in this country tries to do every day. The only three examples proponents of this trendy view can come up with are still Uber, AirBnB and Tinder. The new outliers now that Apple has fallen out of favour.
The competitive advantage of Tinder’s innovation was sustained for about a day before others started copying it.
The reason for why AirBnB is successful is cultural, not functional: http://bit.ly/29IAmLZ
People want to be cool. These are cool brands. And cool does not come from functional utility. The fact that industry leaders think it does is kind of scary.
One problem is a simplistic understanding of “emotional branding”. Emotions in this context should be understood as social emotions (e.g. guilt, shame and pride), in other words the kind of emotions that help shape identity, status and group belonging/cohesion.
People are social beings and use brands to navigate their social lives. A strong brand helps people tell themselves and others the story of who they are and what they believe. This creates a favourable lens through which we perceive the actual experience: we are more likely to forgive weaknesses and judge it favourably.
Product experience is important, but it should be treated as a way of fulfilling a brand promise, not as an end in itself.
Here’s how we do exactly that: http://bit.ly/2atloIZ
Against Culture. For You.
UX is Airbnb’s priority. One look at their site and booking process is all you need to see clearly that UX is at the centre of it all.
Airbnb doesn’t really have a product, it’s a service. For people who want to secure their accommodation ASAP, they’ve got the Book Instantly feature. If you weren’t willing to travel too far from a specific destination, they’ve got the embedded map to show you convenient accommodation. If the place you stayed wasn’t up to scratch, every Airbnb user can hear about it on your review. Airbnb will also act as a mediator if it was required.
There are so many other features on it that just screams UX.
Sure there are cool apartments, tree-houses, and other unconventional accommodation that makes Airbnb more unique, however it is not up to Airbnb to track it down and make it available.
From working in the industry, we know to look further than the brand story. Savvy customers do too.
You spelled Avanade incorrectly.
Hi Tex,
Thanks for flagging we missed that, fixed up now.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella