Marketers should focus on experience over product as a consumer hook according to study
de Swaan Arons
Marketers need to move their focus away from their products and focus on the experience if they want to continue to attract attention and drive sales, according to a new study.
The 2020 Insights survey of marketers by Millward Brown revealed that successful marketers are continuing to move away from the traditional strategies of product benefits, instead embracing the total experience their brands are offering.
Presenting the research at the Australian Association of National Advertisers Reset Conference in Sydney, Marc de Swaan Arons said that marketers who were classed as leaders in the research were embracing experience as the hook for their brands.
“We need to be able to move beyond the product. It is now about focussing less on products and service and start thinking about total experience,” said Arons.
“As marketers we should be able to build a big value proposition.”
He said 10 key factors emerged as making a significant difference between “the winners and the losers”.
One of the keys was 80 per cent of brands deemed leaders described themselves as being purpose led.
“Are you organising your organisation around a clearly defined purpose? Of all the over-performers 80 per cent said yes. Purpose does not substitute for marketing, it acts as an umbrella,”
Leaders also focused on touch point consistency, data-driven customisation, developing a customer-centric model and making marketing a leadership priority.
“What over-performers are doing is they are leveraging the insights and analytics to create experiences beyond the product substantially more than under-performers,” he said.
He highlighted an insurance company in the UK which looks at the regular routes to work chosen by customers and contacts them to suggest routes that are less accident prone.
Another area that was common to winning brands was having customer centricity as a priority for the leadership team.
Experimentation and the willingness to take risks also defined over-performers – an area where he said Australia was lagging behind the rest of the world.
Globally 36 per cent of successful companies embraced taking risks and experimenting, however the figure was just 23 per cent in Australia.
Having a role for developing insight and awareness was another differentiator along with unlocking the power of data.
He said the combination of the 10 key factors was a key to driving successful businesses.
“The focus on the total experience is the new frontier for marketing,” he said.
Simon Canning
MB would say that. They have a warehouse full of Stengel’s book still to shift. Post hoc fallacy etc. All brands have a purpose.
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If the total experience of washing liquid is clean clothes, is that not the same as the product benefit? I mean what more total experience can I get?
Come on, what is this puff?
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I feel like the more sophisticated brands were taking this approach even as far back as the ’70s or ’80s, selling the ‘dream’ or higher purpose as opposed to product benefits. Is this new? Isn’t that what Just Do It is?
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