Is Your Brand Digitally Delinquent?
Most CMO’s have recognized the power of digital media to enhance the brand experience but company guidelines are often more restrictive than “promotive” of the brand and a great brand experience.
To survive and thrive, companies need to use digital as a cornerstone of their strategy to deliver a great brand experience to their customers and to maximize recommendations by customers to friends and family. Word of mouth will always be your best type of advertising but delivering it digitally as a dialogue instead of a monologue can help it explode.
Connecting the digital dots in a brand’s image is a lot more than coordinating and synchronizing the company’s digital efforts and wiping away its restrictive bent. It is a process of synchronizing the brand image with brand delivery and then looking for ways to first improve the experience and then the message before you improve the message delivery. It is an outstanding opportunity to carefully consider how digital will bring value to both the business and your consumers.
The First Role of Digital is to: Improve the Brand Experience
You may want to start by understanding how your customer receives the brand experience, so Step One is write down your definition of the brand experience. It is surprising how many CMO’s have not actually written down the customer brand experience. Let’s say you are Dyson. You have done outstandingly well in the home vacuum market with a significantly better product and you want to move into lawn mowers.
What is the full cycle of the brand experience today and what will it be in this new market?
How does the brand experience happen today and where can more digital interface bring a significant enhancement? Can you better catch the prospect after they have seen an ad or better still seen a demonstration? Could Dyson put a CMA on their vacuums or hire a group of kids to demonstrate the mower by offering a free lawn trim?
The key is to catch the customer when they are looking for more information no matter how fleeting the moment may be. How can digital help move the customer from discover to explore and respond to their information needs? Apple is a great example of a company that uses its web in the discovery and exploring stage and the entire movie industry have become masters at this stage. Both in their own way provide rich engaging product information and make it easy to answer needs and buy.
The Home Run is to Use Digital to: Reinterpret and Add Dimension, Depth, and Value to Your Brand
After you have reviewed the brand experience you have earned the right to have some real fun. Gather around you a small group of friends and customers and have a digital pizza party. The pizza is real and the topic is reinventing the brand relationship through digital.
How can digital reinterpret and add value to your brand?
McDonald’s Japan engages its loyal consumers with a personalized platform on their mobile phones. These loyal eaters get faster service and targeted menus and offers. Lego has redefined their company around digital toys that interact on the web. Similarly, M&M’s has used digital to invent a newly interactive relationship with consumers through direct sales. Customers of My M&M’s can transform the iconic candy with their own message or image. Twenty-six percent of My M&M’s sales are to repeat customers.(Forrester)
How will you reinterpret your brand through digital?
Follow @SchulichExecEd or email your thoughts and questions to editor@community.seec.schulich.yorku.ca to continue the conversation!
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