Brands play a significant part in successfully leading companies into the future.
People experience brands through concrete encounters with the product, in advertising, on the internet, in editorial articles in the media, in conversations with friends and acquaintances, or simply through casual contact in our daily environment. The sum of all these encounters forms the brand experience.
Consciously we only perceive and explicitly process a fraction of this brand information. Nevertheless, all conscious and unconscious encounters with a brand shape our image of brands and significantly influence our preferences.
The brand experience is channel-specific, but also holistic due to the combined effect of content, signals and channels. This trinity is the strategic foundation for managing the brand experience and will be the lead currency in brand management in the digital and post-digital age.
The brands that come out on top are the ones that know how to measure the brand experience precisely, manage it creatively and effectively, and ultimately maximise it.
The primary goal of marketing must be to build and maintain long-term relationships between people and brands. There are three essential levers through which these (brand-human) relationships can be enabled, developed and shaped:
The focus in marketing must not be singular, that is, must not be placed on short-term KPIs such as conversion and sales. To create a sustainable preference among the target group, the long-term effective brand values, the holistic brand experience and the resulting trust must be taken into account.
Relevance of the touchpoints: Ranking of the touchpoints by importance.
Brand Experience Wheel: Performance of the brand at each touchpoint in terms of reach and quality.
Touchpoint performance: Identification of touchpoints whose function is not aligned with brand positioning.
Touchpoint strategy: Identify potential for increased reach; improved quality of experience; distinguish from competition; make recommendations to optimise brand experience at each touchpoint in the customer journey; offer strategies to link touchpoints with strong reach and impact.
Return on brand investment: Compare resources and brand experience to determine investment efficiency and derive recommendations for budget allocation.
