BRAND EXPERIENCE BUILDING BETTER BRAND EXPERIENCES IN THE TOUCHPOINT REVOLUTION
BRAND EXPERIENCE BUILDING BETTER BRAND EXPERIENCES IN THE TOUCHPOINT REVOLUTION
By Roz Calder
It ’ s increasingly said that today ’ s brands are the sum of consumer experiences – and that marketers are in the business of selling customer journeys rather than simply standalone products . The problem they face , though , is that very few people are interested in buying complete , off-the-shelf , pre-defined customer journeys .
In an era of personalisation , they want to assemble their own : using the touchpoints of their choosing for the purposes of their choosing and at the moments of their choosing .
But if brands are the sum of these autonomous experiences , to what extent can they still be planned , built and managed ?
How can marketers control experiences when they cannot predict in which context , through which touchpoint , and in what order , those experiences will happen ?
How touchpoints overturned planning
Digital technology is revolutionising the role of touchpoints in people ’ s lives by exploding the traditional path to purchase , in which a consumer would expect to go through several pre-determined steps before buying a product through an established channel , in an established way .
‘‘ Turning autonomous touchpoint experiences into a coherent journey with a brand requires marketers to focus on the element that defines people ’ s experiences : emotion . It is the emotional connection that brands are able to create consistently with their chosen audiences that gives them their power : an influence over both immediate , instinctive decision-making and more conscious rationalisation of choices .’’
This path to purchase helped to organise the marketing department itself , with brand , shopper and customer marketing all working through their own set of self-defined touchpoints that seemed exclusive to their part of the process .
But this ordered marketing reality has come to an end . Marketers are now surrounded by a swarm of rapidly multiplying touchpoints through which people can interact with their brands – and they can no longer predict which of those touchpoints will be used for which purpose .
18 MAL 15 / 16 ISSUE