A consistent brand experience across all touchpoints
As soon as a concrete brand experience has been devised and compacted into an experience strategy, it is essential to make it experienceable across all relevant touchpoints. Another step in brand experience design is therefore to evaluate the specific touchpoints which are strategically significant for the company and its goals and which help to reconcile these with the brand strategy. All of the selected touchpoints should create a positive experience only and thus successfully strengthen the brand message. Here, consistency is a key factor: the resulting brand experience should be designed so that it appears uniform across all touchpoints and isn’t contradictory in any way. We consider touchpoints to be all of the possible experiences and situations where customers and other market partners come into contact with the brand, enabling them to experience it. For example, a client encounters an employee of the brand when out shopping, subsequently visits the brand website and then finds a special offer for the brand on Facebook. Every contact a customer or prospective buyer has with a brand constitutes a concrete brand experience. These experiences are also had even when they have not been actively planned by the company. They influence a consumer’s knowledge of a brand and his or her attitude towards it. Brand touchpoints are the eye of the needle for every brand promise. As central “moments of truth” they have to fulfil the brand’s promise every single day. A uniform brand experience is therefore vital when it comes to giving the customer a consistent image of the brand. Ambitious touchpoint management therefore also makes sense for the sole reason that this is where companies have to display their uniqueness in order to clearly stand out from the competition. This protects them from becoming arbitrary and interchangeable – which is a risk on saturated markets especially.
People today buy experiences and emotions, not just products and services
At least they are prepared to spend more money on this than for the mere use of products and services. Those who manage to attach positive brand experiences to their product play in the champions league. Companies such as Airbnb, Uber, Amazon and Google delight their clients with outstanding brand experiences – a new way of experiencing simplicity, transparency, flexibility and emotions. An organic shop doesn’t sell organic vegetables, but a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, and BMW doesn’t sell cars, but driving pleasure. They are thus making a real contribution to their customers’ quality of life, filling them with enthusiasm. So even in times of big data, it takes a brilliant idea, a spark that can jump over to the customers, to ignite enthusiasm.
Pioneering questions when designing a brand experience
- What’s the driving force behind the brand or the company?
- Where is added value created and what is this?
- What do people think of what the brand does?
- Why should customers be interested in this what the brand does?
- How should people feel when they use products and services?
- What should customers then feel when they leave?
