In our bid to become frictionless, we’ve forgotten the importance of anticipation
Most brands strive to make their customer journey as frictionless as possible. But how does that explain why people queue for hours for a ride at Disneyland or wait weeks to see their football team suffer a crushing defeat? Interbrand's Davy Rennie explores the forgotten world of friction.
We live in a world of frictionless, seamless, mindless consumption of services and products. From ordering a movie on Google Play, paying for a beer, to getting onto a bus. We just tap, tap, consume.
We live in a world of non-occasions
Where has the magic of investing in a product gone? Like finally getting your hands on a physical DVD when it’s released months after you saw it at the cinema? Where has the human engagement with the people providing services gone?
The world has become a vending machine, where anything you want is accessible with a single tap.
From ordering groceries online, to buying a house or car. We have lost the sense of occasion.
There is no question that occasion is desired.
Just look at the ‘drop’ phenomenon – when brands release small quantities of product, driving massive engagement and creating queues around the block. You can’t skip the queue.
Customers still queue for the latest iPhone drop
Monday night football in the US is a birth right. It’s a ritual. It’s a sense of occasion that drives sociable engagement and conversation. You can’t binge the season to see the result.
Weekend markets, where local producers sell their wares, gather communities together. You have to invest your time and energy walking around and exploring.
Does the friction in these examples make the engagement more meaningful? Does the meaningful engagement create experience ‘love’?
Yes. I believe it does. I firmly believe you cannot love something that can be mindlessly consumed or acquired.
I believe friction creates the incredible. It’s why people queue up at Disneyland for hours to get 32 seconds of absolute exhilaration. It’s part of the experience, part of the occasion.
Seamless engagements can augment experiences, but shouldn’t create mindlessness. But how can we create this?
Signature moments that matter
The concept of ‘moments that matter’ isn’t new. They are significant moments on the customer journey. But brands must create their own signature moments.
These service moments will make you, you. Like the coffee shop in Melbourne that mandates a pallets cleanser before your coffee – super hipster, but it builds anticipation and a sense of occasion. And evokes brand love.
Don’t screen slap
The future of retail is not an environment with screens everywhere. It’s a considered experience that encourages human interaction. We consume digital content all day, everyday. Do we need more screens shouting at us, or environments that are beautifully designed to immerse us in the softer qualities of the brand?
Like the denim store in Tokyo that has a workshop in the middle of the store where you can watch a craftsman meticulously shape a pair of jeans, and chat to them. Beautiful.
Meaningful human conversations
“*Hi Bob*, *G’day Bob*, *Bob* we have the offer for you”. The typical website/email/sms “personalised offer message”. This isn’t meaningful or personal. It’s just the norm.
Actually understanding a customer is knowing the softer things that make them, them. Like how they prefer the cut of their jacket, the cut of beef or their haircut. We need to ‘really’ understand customer idiosyncrasies, not just their generic characteristics.
Friction builds anticipation.
Anticipation builds occasion.
Occasion builds signature moments that matter.
Being human in those moments creates love.
Davy Rennie is managing director of Interbrand Australia.
Hello,
good article, but I couldn’t help noticing that a ‘palate cleanser’ became a ‘pallets cleanser’ during the publishing process. Hipster cafes do participate a lot to the pallet economy (for their furniture), but in this case, it’s the palate that needs rinsing before enjoying a single-origin, hand-harvested, fair-trade coffee 🙂
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Hi,
Good response but I couldn’t help but notice that you missed a capital letter at the start of your comment, used a verb incorrectly in the phrase ‘participate a lot’ and generally overused commas in your sentence construction. 🙂
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“But how does that explain why people queue for hours for a ride at Disneyland or wait weeks to see their football team suffer a crushing defeat.”
I’ve yet to see people wait for weeks to see their football team suffer a crushing defeat.
They attend with hope and anticipation.
Sure the crushing defeat is deflating and a let down. Not dissimilar to reading this article, as ‘unpalletable’ as that conclusion may seem.
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Friction is often better for business too right? Lines for a restaurant maximise table occupancy. And Ikea sells more when you’re forced to walk through the whole store. A frictionless experience which doesn’t involve brand becomes a commodity.
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While I don’t disagree with the basics of the what Davy’s saying, it’s a pretty easy position to take without offering any real insight into how it can be applied to environments where frictionless experiences are actually really important.
Saying “people line up at Disney” is not an argument against reducing friction in eComm. At the end of one experience, you get a massive hit of adrenaline, bonding with the friends/family you went along with, and justification of the high price you paid to get through the gate. At the end of the other, you get those socks you needed because you wore a hole in the heel of the last pair.
Not only that, there’s only 1 Disneyland (at least near you when you decide you want to go) – there are 1000’s of other sock retailers vying to make it less of a PITA to cover your smelly hooves. In no world am I going to say “Bob’s socks made me click 3 extra buttons, switch devices, and enter every personal detail about myself to buy those socks – but I’ll keep coming back because it’s all part of the experience!”.
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Who said you need to come back to the site to continue the experience with the brand? Experiences aren’t just digital, even if the products are acquired digitally…
You immediately opted to go to an eComm purchase journey for socks. If you are buying plain black, run of the mill socks, you might want to skip right through that PITA journey. But, what about a snazzy pair of Happy Socks, personalised, on a subscription package. What if they were delivered each month on a certain date as a mystery box, is this a tiny touch of friction that creates anticipation and maybe a swift dopamine hit? “oh what will I get this month?”.
If we continue to jump to the assumption that we are talking about the mundane acquisition of products, then the acquisition of those will be mundane.
Live a little, it’s fun to think of something more than boring socks, covering your smelly hooves.
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You haven’t met a Parramatta fan then.
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Nothing in what you just described is friction. What you’re describing is an entirely different business model to the plain black sock retailer.
Developing an entirely different approach to selling a different product to a very specific demographic isn’t creating friction. That’s like saying SpaceX has created friction in the commercial airline industry.
The original point stands – while there’s some truth in what Davy says, he offers no practically useful insight.
Now, maybe I need to contract Interbrand for some of that special sauce – that would be completely fair enough – but without sauce this meal’s a little bland.
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