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?
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 🙂
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. 🙂
“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.
You haven’t met a Parramatta fan then.
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.
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!”.
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.
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.