Here’s a truth: many in the marketing industry today don’t really understand brands. They may think that “brand” and “customer experience” are different. But that kind of brand is a layer of communications. That is the stuff of blowhard manifestos — too high-minded to sell anything, and too lofty to be useful. Today, when there’s more of everything — more channels, more choice, more speed, more confusion — more noise and less signal, it’s fair to ask: What is a brand?
The Ways Customers Use Products Have Changed — but Brands Haven’t Kept Up
As a response to shifting consumer expectations, brands have had no choice but to hand over a certain amount of agency to consumers. Rather than the push of establishing symbolism and telling stories to consumers, brands have had to invite and pull consumers in to help craft their meaning. In short, brands began evolving from stories to systems. In a system, the brand and the consumer play equal roles in influencing the brand. Its definition encompasses the interdependent, reciprocal nature of the modern relationship between brands and people. The currency of this reciprocal nature is “data” — flows of information between the brand and the user which aim not to exploit, but to strengthen their relationship and deliver mutual benefits to both parties. It sounds obvious, but such an approach requires a fundamental reboot of the traditional marketing monologue, which was dominant during the “story” era defined by TV commercials and characterized by military terms like target, bombard, campaign, collateral, and guerrilla. In today’s “system” era, a brand’s meaning stems not just from how a company positions the brand, but also from how consumers experience it. In other words, the brand becomes the customer experience and the customer experience becomes the brand.