Creating brand experiences vs. "branding"
By Stacy Graiko
October 16, 2009
In the continued quest to find the marketing “silver bullet” in these recessionary times, there’s been a lot of talk about branding. And while marketers continue to discover that branding is not simply about logos, colors and visual cues, some pause at strategy and don’t get to the heart of the matter. The heart of course is the interaction people have with your brand; it’s interaction that creates the experience that makes emotional connections between brand and customer.
We were reminded of this recently at a panel discussion with several prominent CEOs in Boston. The topic was about web 2.0 community building and the CEOs are seriously down in the trenches with their customers, blogging, tweeting, and otherwise connecting with them online like CEOs never have before. Imagine tweeting a comment about a store you were just in and getting a private message back within hours from the CEO! I personally experienced something similar a few weeks ago when I tweeted about a positive experience at HomeDepot and their marketing director contacted me directly to thank me and to ask additional questions. Two emails later, my connection with HomeDepot was clinched, and now I consider myself a loyalist. What does this mean for my relationship with the brand? I won’t shop anywhere else for my home improvement supplies, but what’s more valuable for the brand is that I’ll tell people about my experience.
In our field – and I’m talking about marketing, advertising, PR, and the plethora of activities related to communicating products and services in order to get people to “buy” them – we have to help our clients create experiences. Nothing is off limits: all our disciplines are blending together anyway, so whether you’re in advertising, PR, or research, the best way to serve your clients is to think about their brand from a consumer perspective and with a goal of creating tangible connection points for the brand.
It’s not enough to tell consumers what the brand is about…you must show them by allowing them to experience it firsthand: not simply by experiencing the product but by experiencing the people, philosophies and ethos behind the product. Certainly, visual assets and strategy is a critical foundation on which to build, but once you’ve nailed that, get down to the business of creating experiences: this is the stuff that emotional connection is made of. Happy “branding”!
We were reminded of this recently at a panel discussion with several prominent CEOs in Boston. The topic was about web 2.0 community building and the CEOs are seriously down in the trenches with their customers, blogging, tweeting, and otherwise connecting with them online like CEOs never have before. Imagine tweeting a comment about a store you were just in and getting a private message back within hours from the CEO! I personally experienced something similar a few weeks ago when I tweeted about a positive experience at HomeDepot and their marketing director contacted me directly to thank me and to ask additional questions. Two emails later, my connection with HomeDepot was clinched, and now I consider myself a loyalist. What does this mean for my relationship with the brand? I won’t shop anywhere else for my home improvement supplies, but what’s more valuable for the brand is that I’ll tell people about my experience.
In our field – and I’m talking about marketing, advertising, PR, and the plethora of activities related to communicating products and services in order to get people to “buy” them – we have to help our clients create experiences. Nothing is off limits: all our disciplines are blending together anyway, so whether you’re in advertising, PR, or research, the best way to serve your clients is to think about their brand from a consumer perspective and with a goal of creating tangible connection points for the brand.
It’s not enough to tell consumers what the brand is about…you must show them by allowing them to experience it firsthand: not simply by experiencing the product but by experiencing the people, philosophies and ethos behind the product. Certainly, visual assets and strategy is a critical foundation on which to build, but once you’ve nailed that, get down to the business of creating experiences: this is the stuff that emotional connection is made of. Happy “branding”!
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