BRANDING HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Brands need to consistently offer a distinctive, coherent and memorable customer experience and they need to accept that their customers will have no problems sharing both the good and the bad.

It is true that brands (and by extension branding) are often thought about in terms of identity and attribution to an owner. This is understandable: in earlier times brands were used primarily as a means of identification and authentication, delineating both provenance and quality. A visual identity, usually comprising a marque, a graphic system and a photographic style, is a visible asset often widely applied across the customer experience and purposefully designed to be both distinctive and memorable. (Note that ‘tangible’ means touchable, so is strictly used to refer to those assets you can actually touch – factories, inventory etc.) Ask people in the street in most developed countries to name some well-known brands and it is highly likely that they will reference ones such as Apple, BMW, Coca-Cola, Levi’s, Mercedes and Pepsi. It is also highly likely that as they prepare to respond to the question their minds will fill with a heady mix of iconic brand identities and a host of positive or negative associations. Ask most people to draw (from memory) the identities of these brands and it is highly likely that most will be able to make a passable attempt at the apple, the ‘propeller’, the script, the red label, the star and the circle. Billions have been spent establishing these associations in your mind, so it is not that surprising that when people are asked to think about brands or branding they naturally default straight to the visual identity. Yet, in spite of the fact that billions of dollars have been spent building up this valuable instantaneous recognition, it is really just the start of a much bigger story.

A brand is what a brand does

While recognition and attribution are fundamental to the process of brand building, what you actually think and feel about a brand is really the sum of all of the individual experiences you have had with that particular brand. In today’s world building successful brands (of any shape or size) is intimately connected to the orchestration of the customer experience. Branding across almost every imaginable sector has everything to do with the customer experience.

Let’s start with a powerful illustration of this point. Apple is a highly successful global technology brand that on any given day (stock market permitting) can accurately be described as the most valuable company in the world. This incredible ascendancy has been achieved in a remarkably short amount of time, first under the direction of founder Steve Jobs and more latterly under the aegis of his successor Tim Cook. In the past twenty years, Apple has become one of the most revered brands on the planet and it did so through a single and relentless focus on the quality of the customer experience. Steve Jobs always believed that the way to win in personal computing was to focus on the end-to-end experience. To provide stunningly designed devices that were intuitive, connected and pleasurable to hold and interact with. Jobs believed that computers (and later devices) were there to serve people and that as a consequence they should be simple and easy to use. That observation alone turned out to be visionary, but what really made Apple a global success was the extent to which Jobs ruthlessly implemented this belief across the totality of the customer experience. Jobs’ first act upon being reappointed interim CEO of Apple in 1997 was to cull a huge quantity of products and development projects in order to focus the company on the few products he believed would transform the company. Jobs and by extension Apple are the definitive example of the notion that less is more.

The importance of focus and attention to detail

The deeper that you delve into the Apple story the more you see this singularity in evidence. Jobs intuitively understood that devices didn’t need to be faceless boxes. He used design to create beautiful elegant minimalist devices that became coveted consumer items. He famously spent as much time designing the insides of his devices as he did the outside. He pushed his people to create powerful, innovative devices that worked seamlessly with proprietary operating systems. He integrated his devices into broader ecosystems, allowing Apple to manage the totality of the user experience while at the same time using technology to accelerate the disruption of entire industries. iTunes, for example, finished up changing the music industry forever. The same care and attention to detail was applied to packaging and what became the ritual of ‘unboxing’. He created iconic advertising and completely reinvented high street retailing. Apple stores became experience centres where customers could come and play with the products and resolve technical issues. The clean and uncluttered stores with hardly any products visible for sale finished up breaking all sales records.

The amazing thing about Apple is that with a few notable exceptions they were using technology and techniques that were available to everyone else, but it just chose to bring them together in a way that surprised and delighted the customer and they did it with a unique level of ruthless intentionality.

Experience matters for all types of brand

Apple serves to illustrate the importance of orchestrating a powerful customer experience, but it also shows just how many aspects of the experience need to be thought about. Granted some brands are in a better position than others to offer immersive and engaging experiences (airlines, restaurants, entertainment centres etc) but that doesn’t mean that experience is unimportant for all types of brand. In most service businesses the only way that a unique idea or business model can be brought to life is via the customer experience. Amazon, Dell, Metro Bank and Ikea would all be immeasurably weaker if they hadn’t chosen to manifest their purpose through key aspects of their customer experience.

Product brands are also realizing the power afforded by generating memorable experiences. Red Bull, the highly caffeinated soft drink, is a brand literally built upon the idea of memorable and stimulating experiences. It promotes and supports a whole variety of mainstream and niche extreme sports, from F1 through to air racing and even sky diving. Brands like Coca-Cola, Gillette, Heineken, O2 and Visa are using festivals as ways of building direct relationships with customers. They will seek to provide relevant and engaging ways of enhancing the festival-goers experience from virtual catwalks, through to charging centres and even the provision of miniaturized beer tents. Dollar Shave Club demonstrated how new technology can be used to completely reinvent the relationship we have with our razor. In doing so, it has become a brand that has completely disrupted the way we think about an established product category.

The same is also happening in the business-to-business sector.

We like to think that in a business context we buy products and services on a purely rational basis but increasing amounts of new evidence point to the fact that we tend to buy emotionally and justify rationally, regardless of what we are buying. The truth is we value the quality of our interactions in business as much as we do in our personal lives. The big four advisory businesses have collectively invested millions of dollars in improving their customer experience. Manufacturing businesses like Rolls-Royce and GKN have invested billions in updating their systems and processes, allowing them to be efficient real-time partners to their customers. American Express has completely reinvented itself; it is no longer just a payment card but also a whole business expense ecosystem, a data business helping clients to keep control of their expenditure.

Be bad at the things your customers don’t care about

Businesses and brands are realizing that customer experience is intimately connected to the art and science of brand building and they are pursuing it with a renewed intentionality. Rather than attempting to make every aspect of their business perfect, the more enlightened brands have realized that in order to create memorable customer experiences they first have to prioritize. As the Harvard academic Francis Frei says: ‘In order to be good at something a business generally has to be bad at something else, it just needs to make sure that its customers don’t care about the thing it is bad at.’ In simple terms Frei is highlighting that it is not economically viable to simply address everything. If you have ever tried to speak to anyone in customer services at Apple, you will know that you generally can’t. Apple serves customers on its terms and because of everything else Apple has done well, its customers generally don’t seem to mind. Enlightened businesses are realizing that in order to bring their brands to life they must prioritize and adopt a set of distinctive product or service hallmarks. These hallmarks target the important moments of truth in the typical customer experience and are designed to either maximise pleasure or minimize pain.

The value of hallmarks

Virgin Atlantic does this very effectively. Every aspect of the customer experience has been carefully thought about and hallmarks are evident at key points of the experience, most notably at the start, middle and end of your journey. For example, Virgin Atlantic knows that for business customers (travelling in first class) getting to the airport is often a key pain point and so it provides these customers with an integrated app that enables them to check in remotely and monitor the status of their flight and limousines that take them from their destination to designated VIP check-in areas, making progress through the airport as simple and easy as possible. Virgin provides customers with great lounge experiences; inside a Virgin Clubhouse; customers can choose items from a complimentary à la carte menu, visit the games room or spa, or even take a shower before boarding. Once on board and inflight, the same customers benefit from comfortable seats that turn into beds and can enjoy a drink at the cocktail bar. Virgin Atlantic has done everything it can to make the middle part of the flight interesting and memorable – including providing first class customers on overnight flights with their own complimentary pyjamas. Once the aircraft reaches its final destination passengers are also offered the opportunity to take a shower and refresh at their Revival Lounge. Virgin Atlantic understands the fundamental importance of ‘fixing it or featuring it’. Virgin knows that it can’t do much about its customers having to sit in a pressurized metal tube at 30,000 feet for hours at a time, so it tries to make a virtue of the available time, making it as enjoyable and memorable as possible. Virgin Atlantic understands what matters to its most valuable customers and so it delivers a set of distinctive well-timed hallmarks that seek to differentiate it from the competition.

The rise of the experience economy

Back in 1999 in their book The Experience Economy, the economists Joseph Pine and James Gilmour announced that developed economies were about to enter a new economic age. They asserted that just as we had been through the agrarian economy, the industrial economy and the service economy, we were now entering the experience economy. The book was highly influential and while some of its predictions were (with the benefit of hindsight) a little exaggerated, it was nonetheless remarkably prescient. The central tenet of the book is the idea that as we all have increased (or increasing) access to more and more products and services, we will begin to place a higher value on things that offer a distinctive or unique experience, with the highest value of all being placed on those experiences that offer personal transformation. A quick glance at any number of the more popular social media sites would seem to bear this out – a huge proportion of social media activity involves the sharing of personal or collective experiences. We place significant value on what we experience and we have no hesitation celebrating the good and sharing the bad.

Virgin is a brand that intuitively understood the power of transformative experiences. It has built up an impressive portfolio of business interests by choosing to enter markets where customers have traditionally been poorly served. Sometimes on their own and often with other groups of investors, Virgin has helped set new standards in sectors such as airline travel, train travel, financial services, health care and even your local gym. Virgin looks for markets where it can change the game and offer customers a better customer experience. Virgin currently has over 29 different business interests operating under the Virgin brand and while not all of them are trailblazers, many have managed to transform service expectations. Richard Branson is currently working on being the first to offer customers practical and affordable space travel!

Some will no doubt feel that we have already left the experience economy behind and are now entering a fifth age, a new era of enhanced technology and AI. While it is undeniable that technology is accelerating our capability and transforming lives, it appears very much as though technology will continue to be deployed (on the whole) to further enhance and improve the way we experience and interact with the world. Thus the experience economy is still very much in its infancy and technology will be used to serve up more relevant, more engaging and more immersive experiences. In a world of automated processes and artificial intelligence it seems likely that we will place an even higher value on human connections and memorable or unique experiences.

Technology is transforming our expectations

Aside from how technology will be used in the future, it is already radically influencing our current expectations of what good service looks like. Chief among these agents of change is Amazon. This business has revolutionized e-commerce and has fundamentally changed what customers see as a good service experience. When it is possible to get next-day delivery across a massive inventory of products with just a few simple clicks, customers’ expectations are changed forever. If Amazon can manage to do all of this quickly and accurately then why can’t a much smaller retailer manage the same thing? If Amazon can be price competitive and yet still offer seamless returns and accurate product tracking, why can’t others? Of course the fact that Amazon made a big bet on the nature of e-commerce and was ultimately proved right is not always understood; customers don’t necessarily care how it was achieved or how difficult it will be for others to catch up. The moment Amazon had developed this capability it quickly became the new norm. This is now the new standard for transactional service, the one by which all other businesses and brands are judged – and interestingly, just like Apple, it came from a profoundly customer-centric founder who believed in a new vision for retail.

Amazon is creating seismic shocks across retail. If Amazon can seemingly deliver any product within just a matter of days, how is it that my local car dealer takes six weeks to receive and fit a replacement part for my vehicle? If I decide I want a new bed or mattress delivered, why am I being asked to wait eight weeks before it will appear at my door? Customers don’t live in a vacuum; once they have experienced best in class they quickly expect to experience it everywhere else. Of course it is one thing for a digitally native business to disrupt a market but quite another for an established business to meet disruption head-on and completely reinvent itself, but some have managed it.

Some established brands have embraced the digital opportunity

Mainstream high street retailers like Argos and John Lewis have managed to either partly or wholly re-engineer their businesses to meet the challenges and opportunities of a digitally enabled world. Banks too have worked hard to ensure that they come as close as possible to offering their customers an ‘omni-channel’ experience. Customers are able to interact with all these businesses in any way they choose, via the store, via a plethora of web-enabled devices, via an app or even over the telephone. These brands will be storing your shopping and browsing history, allowing you to jump seamlessly between devices and serving you with relevant highly targeted content and incentives.

As e-commerce continues its inexorable rise, businesses are being forced to rethink what they do with their physical assets – their shops, their showrooms, their warehouses and their distribution networks. In the past physical assets often conferred a distinct advantage. They drove sales, they were the key to effective distribution and they helped raise barriers to entry. Now the picture is more complex. As more and more transactions occur online and customers are turning up at stores and dealerships already familiar with what’s on offer, brand owners are turning more of their stores into experience centres. Instead of simply ‘selling’ products or services, employees are being repositioned as hosts – representatives, guides and educators.

Many retailers offer a range of curated experiences. Nike’s flagship stores are in effect immersive brand centres where you enter a series of mini-worlds. The stores offer limited-edition garments and the opportunity to create personalized apparel and footwear. You can even choose to exercise with your local store. BMW has introduced ‘genius bars’ in some of its larger dealerships, where you can seek help and advice about any aspect of BMW’s product range.

It is also true that experiences have a half-life. Once you are recognized for having a distinctive brand experience, it is important that you are able to maintain the momentum. Brands like Nike constantly review the impact of what they are doing and recognize the insight, energy and creativity required to stay in front of the customer.

The changing nature of the retail experience

One well-known consumer electronics brand decided to stop asking its representatives to ‘sell’ and instead asked them to ‘explain’. The brand owner realized that customers were turning up already equipped with some product understanding. The role of the representative was to build on this knowledge and ensure that the customers were equipped with a full understanding of the complete range of products, enabling the customer and not the representative to make an informed decision on the model that was right for them.

Experiences create powerful connections

Experience is intimately connected to brand perception. Not only do our own experiences powerfully shape our perceptions but we in turn also have a large influence on the perception of others. Social media hugely amplifies this effect. Brands need to consistently offer a distinctive, coherent and memorable customer experience and they need to accept that their customers will have no problems sharing both the good and the bad. Brands need to make it easy for customers to share the good stuff and be agile and effective in response to the things that go wrong; to err is human, but to be contemptuous of your customers is a sin that won’t so easily be forgiven.

Although it is easy to think about brands in purely visual terms, their power comes from their ability to occupy a space in our minds. A brand is really the unique mix of emotional and rational associations that form as the consequence of all of our interactions with that brand. As customers have grown more sophisticated and experience more highly valued, so brands have sought to build a more distinctive edge to their experience. Technology is helping to accelerate this change, shifting expectations, disrupting established markets and helping brand owners to build new and more compelling experiences. Getting the customer experience right really matters.

Brands are everything to do with the customer experience.