BRAND EXPERIENCE Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey

The following report is an abridged version from Chapter 6 of The Indispensable Brand by Mitch Duckler. The book provides a roadmap for crafting a brand strategy that rises above the noise and monotony in the marketplace… and for catapulting brands from indistinguishable to indispensable. Customer Experience

Before addressing the role of brand experience in brand strategy, it is important first to define the concept of customer experience. Customer experience is the sum of all interactions that occur between a company and its customers throughout their relationship. It is often thought about across three distinct phases—pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase.

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2 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com Pre-purchase touchpoints create familiarity with the brand. They include advertising, websites, public relations, sales collateral, and word of mouth. Such touchpoints serve to educate consumers, create a sense of interest, and lead to purchases for the brand’s products or services.

Purchase touchpoints vary widely by industry and transaction type. For consumer products, they may take place in a retail store and include point-of-purchase collateral and other merchandising vehicles. In B2B, purchase touchpoints could be sales meetings with customers to approve contracts. The goal is to ultimately facilitate a smooth transaction, reinforce the buyer’s choice, and pave the way for ongoing satisfaction.

Post-purchase touchpoints also vary by industry. These touchpoints involve customer support, repairs, warranties, ongoing maintenance and service, and follow-up communications. They seek to reinforce customers’ ongoing satisfaction with a purchase, encourage additional purchases, and generate favorable word-of-mouth marketing.

Customer experience is sometimes depicted through a customer journey map, serving as a visual tool that puts customers at the center of the organization’s conception of experience. When overlaid with the brand promise, these maps can highlight the potential gaps and shortcomings in the experience.

The customer experience touchpoint wheel and journey map are tools to guide the design and development of customer experience. Both are great options, but other alternatives are equally as effective.

Customer Experience in a World of Brand Monotony

The premise of the best-selling book, The Experience Economy—authored by B. Josey Phone II and James Gilmore—is that we have gradually evolved from an economy based on commodities to one based on goods, then services, then experiences, and ultimately transformation.1 This evolution has taken place over many decades. Each shift caused the offerings from the preceding era to become undifferentiated, while offerings from the new era created differentiation, value, and competitive advantages. The evolution also emphasized the importance of exceptional customer service over simply having high-quality goods and services.

Research performed by the Keller Fay Group shows that a good customer experience is three times more likely to spark conversation when compared to a traditional advertisement.2 That study also found that 50 percent of conversations caused by in-person experiences resulted in purchases. Interaction truly does matter.

3 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com The experience behind the brand is sometimes its primary source of differentiation and the basis for its positioning. The same study from the Keller Fay Group found that 58 percent of consumers gave high credibility to information heard by word of mouth, with 50 percent reporting that they were “very likely” to make a purchase as a result of a relevant conversation. Word of mouth drove more than 10 percent of sales volume, and great customer experiences primarily drive this form of advertising.

Introducing the Brand Experience

To overcome monotony, brands must design a customer experience consistent with their brand positioning. Marketers should strive to identify the unique customer experience that naturally comes from their brand’s positioning or promise. Market research proves that a customer experience is best when inspired by the brand itself. According to studies at McKinsey, brand experience accounts for 50 to 80 percent of word-of-mouth marketing in any given category.3

With the world growing increasingly fast-paced, technological improvements enable more companies to get the basics right. Copying is becoming easier, as the sameness of many products and services make differentiation more difficult. Brand-inspired customer experiences, however, can help mitigate such effects.

4 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com “Best of” Brand Experiences

Brand experiences are interactions that are impactful and uniquely identifiable to a particular company, essentially defining the brand in consumers’ minds and distinguishing it from competitors. Here are some examples across various categories and industries of brand-inspired experiences.

WHOLE FOODS MARKET

As the first US grocery store to be certified organic, Whole Foods is positioned as the best source for healthy, organic foods.4 Its products are from local and global producers and are manufactured without violating labor laws, human rights, or animal rights.

The Whole Foods brand experience embodies its brand positioning throughout multiple critical touchpoints. Consumers’ increased desire for diverse shopping options led many brands to adopt a multichannel approach, combining a variety of platforms. Modern customers can now shop online and through mobile apps for in-store pickup, curbside pickup, or home deliveries. Since being acquired by Amazon, Whole Foods has joined this trend. By doing so, it increased customer choice options to provide an enhanced grocery shopping experience for today’s consumers who want to buy anywhere at any time.

Whole Foods also keeps Millennials in mind by emphasizing wellness. It champions its commitment to environmentally friendly packaging and fair business practices. This “greener” lifestyle promotion even caused this brand to ditch plastic bags in 2008.5 Amazon also recognized the importance of integrating physical stores with e-commerce technology.6 The latest tools provided by Whole Foods includes an

5 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com “endless aisle” that integrates warehoused goods consumers can access online, in stores, and at pickup kiosks. The point here is to enhance the customer experience in a way that is consistent with the brand.

Whole Foods uses a mix of tech-savvy and traditional marketing and branding to embrace the reason people shop there (to find nutritious, wholesome food). By leveraging its website, the brand offers a new experience offline and online to share ideas and generate content that isn’t sales-driven. Whole Foods knows that its customers look for and respond to hosted events (like its proprietary app, blog publications, and partnership with Top Chef). It even embraced self-serve kiosks to merchandise specialty foods and ingredients to target the Millennial shoppers.

Amazon also extended its Amazon Prime subscription service to Whole Foods, giving consumers access to Amazon rewards while shopping at the grocery store. This partnership provides members-only deals on products and the ability to pick up Amazon online orders at lockers located within Whole Foods stores. Amazon Prime members living near a Whole Foods Market also gained access to free two-hour delivery for purchases over thirty-five dollars. Customers can shop online through the desktop or Prime Now app, and they will have access to both modern amenities and socially conscious Whole Foods products—an outstanding brand experience.

PELOTON

Peloton, the New York City-based fitness company, is another great example of brand experience. The marketing team at this company refused to focus on the obvious benefit of convenience as its primary point of difference. True, an at-home studio-like fitness experience is highly convenient, but Peloton rejected this uninspiring positioning. Through intensive customer research, it landed on a much more inspiring brand positioning: Peloton is a brand that makes you “show up.”

According to Peloton’s senior vice president of brand marketing, Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, “It’s all about how you show up…not just on the bike, but how you show up in the rest of your life.” 7

She continues by providing real, inspiring accounts that support this notion: “We hear many amazing stories of how Peloton helped someone deal with the loss of a parent, helped them keep going through

6 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com chemotherapy treatment, or gave them a sense of peace while going through a difficult divorce. It’s not just bad times, either. It also includes people who used it as motivation to look and feel their best for an upcoming wedding.”

This powerful and emotional positioning led Peloton to create a user experience to deliver such a brand promise credibly. By examining every aspect of the customer experience, it included central touchpoints—the bike itself, content (e.g., live sessions, on-demand videos), qualified and inspiring instructors, service and support teams, social media presence, and members that form its avid user and fan base. This impeccable attention to detail in the experience—along with the determination to remain true to the brand positioning—resulted in an experience that truly makes you “show up.”

According to Blodgett, “We have a big, beautiful HD tablet, and there’s also great sound quality. It’s all interconnected with metrics, which make you want to work harder to get better. There is the Leaderboard if you want to compete with others, or you can hide it and race against your personal record. This makes you constantly want to get back on the bike because you want to beat the score that you achieved the day before. These are the parts of our experience that are all in the name of making you want to show up.”

NOOSA YOGHURT

Traditional consumer packaged goods companies are arguably at a disadvantage when it comes to customer experience because many are sold exclusively through conventional retail channels. This places an intermediary between the company and consumer that affects whether or not a purchase experience is positive or negative. Noosa Yoghurt, however, has an amazing brand experience in spite of that challenge. It is a company that identified a differentiated and intriguing brand positioning and found ways to infuse it into multiple aspects of its experience. The essence of this company’s positioning is “irresistible indulgence,” with its website claiming that “ordinary is the enemy of awesome.”

According to Noosa Yoghurt vice president of marketing, Christine Dahm, the functional benefit of the brand is about providing a “taste revelation and an unexpected surprise.” The brand feels like something new, with even the inclusion of an “h” in the name being unexpected. Dahm states that this functional benefit creates a more emotional benefit of “a refreshing break from convention.” 8

7 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com Examples of how the brand essence is brought to life can be seen through its customer experience. It was one of the first brands to print on the package’s foil, with sayings like “udder brilliance” and “you look moo-villous,” referencing the brand’s signature cow icon. Even the cardboard for shipping is designed to amuse in-store stockers, encouraging the stockers to collect all six pieces in a set and put them together to form a cow.

Social media is a crucial touchpoint for the brand experience. This company even has a “chief of fan love,” whose job is to comb through social media looking for problems, opportunities, and reasons for outreach. Social media is used to fuel its fan club and give away free trips to see the company’s farm as well. According to Dahm, “Every lunch hour of every day, I spend time looking at the conversations happening around the brand over the past 24 hours. It’s my favorite part of the day. It’s that kind of intimacy that is such a powerful example of how dedicated we are to making sure we give consumers the absolute best experience.”

What’s most interesting is that the company thinks in terms of a broader value chain experience. As Dahm states, “With our retail consumers and all our vendors, we always want to be a first-choice partner. We want to deliver that same amazing experience a consumer gets from our products when a partner deals with us as a company. It’s been interesting to watch how this has essentially been a product… turning into a brand…turning into an experience…turning into a company value in recent years.”

CINÉPOLIS

Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas positions its chain of theaters as a first-class movie destination. According to Cinépolis CEO Alejandro Ramirez, this company’s brand strategy depends on its ability to stay relevant in a digitally-driven world. His company stresses innovation and developing new concepts. “Placing the customer experience at the center of our concerns is a part of our success,” he said. “We are always trying to innovate and enrich the moviegoing experience.” 9

This growth strategy is based on the premise that some consumers want a more high-end moviegoing experience. At twenty dollars a ticket, Cinépolis is eight to ten dollars more expensive than regular theaters. Still, such a price covers online reservations for seats, eliminating the need to wait in line or show up early.

8 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com Cinépolis also offers tiers of service for its theaters, including “luxury” or “premium” experiences that cannot be found in more traditional movie theaters. These luxury theaters have reserved seating, oversized reclining leather seats, and in-theater waitstaff that can take food and drink orders before the movie. More items can also be ordered with the push of a button, including everything from lobster rolls to specialty cocktails.

Large dining areas in the Cinépolis lobbies also have full bars where customers can spend time before and after movies, offering an overall more enriching experience for friends that can now avoid whispering in dark theaters. Lounge areas are comfortable and include large digital screens to relax and watch TV as well. Customers can also order food and drinks outside the theater, including luxury amenities like edamame and garden truffle flatbread pizzas.

The theater chain also recognizes families with young children, so the chain debuted Cinépolis Junior to offer a more family-friendly option with only G and PG films. Its unique spaces that combine theaters and playrooms allow children to play for twenty minutes before each film and fifteen minutes during intermissions.10

By fulfilling the brand promise, each of these brands creates a unique experience that differentiates the company to the target audience and broader market. Cinépolis promised luxury and stayed true to its word.

Marketers who wish to distinguish their brands from monotonous crowds can learn from the examples mentioned here.

9 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com Designing the Optimal Brand Experience

The best brand experiences are unique to the brands that design and inspire them. Designing an effective brand experience that fulfills your brand’s promise requires an understanding of the factors behind the best customer experiences and considering how those factors are best expressed through your brand.

The following core tenets will ensure that brand experiences are as impactful as they can be, inspiring customers to purchase from and remain loyal to a company’s brand.

1. BRAND FIRST, TRANSACT SECOND

Ideal customer experiences balance long-term equity building with near-term transaction driving. Contrary to how many companies think of the customer, many customer experiences don’t end in a transaction, especially for more complex or involved purchases.

Customer experiences build brands with individuals. This is so when they are ready to purchase, they will preferentially consider the brand behind the initial experience. As stated by Angela Ahrendts, former CEO of Burberry, regarding the Burberry in-store experience: “I don’t want to be sold to when I walk into a store. The job is to be a brilliant brand ambassador. Don’t sell! No! Because that’s a turnoff. Build an amazing brand experience, and then it will just naturally happen.” 11

Example: IKEA, the Scandinavian-based furniture retailer, is ranked twenty-fifth on Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2017 Rankings for focusing intensely on customer experience and value.12 This brand created an in-store experience that gets customers excited about design, while satisfying their need for self-expression. Customers can easily customize their interiors by picking from a variety of furnishing styles. IKEA stores provide consumers with two parts of inspiration and one part of sales—a good mix that balances brand and transaction.

10 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com 2. DISTINGUISH BETWEEN CUSTOMER SEGMENTS

Factors like smart analytics, technology, and big data enable high levels of personalization. Modern companies can now tailor experiences for different customers by grouping segments into experience categories; this guides a more strategic approach to brand experience design and management.

UK cosmetics retailer LUSH delivers a very personalized customer experience by training its workforce to recognize different customer types. LUSH employees can provide an enhanced, tailored customer experience by understanding customer behaviors and expectations.13

Example: LUSH found that assertive customers lean closer to speak with employees, expecting immediate customer service, and enough information to quickly make informed decisions. Analytical customers assess their options before deciding what to buy, tending to be more interested in personal touches and small details rather than basic product information. Amiable customers like to talk and expect employees to behave like friends, meaning that employees should remember their name and preferences. Because customers often develop long-term brand relationships when they feel understood, LUSH employees seek to make them feel welcome.

Such recognition of different customer types allows LUSH to have a deeper understanding of how their activities affect the customer journey and brand experience. When customers receive this friendly and personalized experience, they feel encouraged to visit more often and recommend LUSH to others.

3. PRIORITIZE DEFINING MOMENTS

Customer experience can be an overwhelming subject to model and manage. It is essential to break down the whole into its critical components to create solutions for such complex challenges. After that, the smaller pieces should be assessed to determine which ones to focus on to improve the overall effect. Any touchpoint can take up a lot of time, money, and human capital to get right, so the selection process is crucial.

Several points of interaction and the interchange among them is important. Still, careful analysis can reveal which touchpoints have the most significant impact on customers’ impressions of the business and other important metrics. These touchpoints are “defining moments” that seed the brand in customers’ minds and leave them with a positive or negative perception for future considerations.

11 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com Example: Nespresso’s Business Solutions provides coffee to hospitality companies and recently decided to improve its post-installation customer experience. Broken Nespresso coffee machines created bad experiences for would-be customers, no matter how quickly a service engineer arrived to solve the issue. Companies that relied on Nespresso for coffee were upset by the negative impact the issue had on their hospitality due to dissatisfied customers.14

To fix this issue, Nespresso implemented remote diagnostics to ensure every machine kept working as intended. This update allowed its machines to provide real-time information about factors like pressure and consumption rate, alerting service technicians of potential problems before they could occur. This preventative maintenance greatly improved Nespresso’s defining moments and client relationships.

4. MAKE PEOPLE FEEL SPECIAL

Making people feel special is one step past personalization. This creates an enduring bond with the target audience. Such unique, personal brands will become increasingly important as global brands continue to standardize high-quality experiences around the world.

Special touches can go a long way, even in processes that include mechanized or routine parts. Small touches evoke the feeling of humanity, allowing companies and brands to connect with people on a deeper level while still saving money, and providing convenience.

Example: Zappos, a Las Vegas-based online shoe and clothing company, views every customer engagement as a personalized experience. Tony Hsieh, the company’s CEO, ignores common customer service metrics like time per call. He doesn’t want his customer service agents to treat callers like numbers in a queue; he wants callers to be treated like real people whose issues deserve personal attention.

Hsieh believes that this continued reliance on human contact creates positive defining moments that trump even the best online experiences. He once said, “Too many companies think of their call centers as an expense to minimize. We believe that it’s a huge untapped opportunity for most companies, not only because it can result in word-of-mouth marketing, but because of its potential to increase the lifetime value of the customer.” 15

Zappos makes its customers feel special during customer service touchpoints, so those customers reward the company with their continued loyalty. Seventy-five percent of Zappos purchases come from repeat customers, and those customers order multiple times per year.

12 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com 5. MAINTAIN CONTINUITY ACROSS CHANNELS AND PLATFORMS

Today, there are a plethora of ways to gather information and experience brands. Television and print media still form their share of impressions, whereas digital channels, social sharing, and on-the-go mobile platforms are becoming increasingly impactful.

Harmonizing expressions and information-sharing across channels is important. The way a company interacts with customers through two-way means is also meaningful. Part of experiencing a company is getting to know the brand. It is in a company’s best interest to help customers get to know the brand as quickly as possible to establish it as their preferred choice. During this phase, inconsistencies, awkward transitions, and fragmented messages are incredibly disruptive and damaging to the company. They can discredit it and diminish consumer confidence, and ultimately erode valuable brand equity.

Example: Walgreens is an example of a brand that uses both mobile and social channels to drive loyalty and sales by connecting with consumers across web, mobile, and in-store platforms. Shoppers at Walgreens acquire and use points across channels, use mobile devices to upload photos for in- store printing and receive coupons that work both online and offline. Such efforts have been paying off; shoppers who shop both online and in stores spend three and a half times more than store-online customers, on average. 16

6. MEASURE, MANAGE AND MAKE CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENTS

Metrics and measurement are becoming increasingly important. To enable continuous improvement and optimization, companies are adding new capabilities to capture critical data along customers’ paths to purchase.

Assessing the customer experience begins with establishing many different baselines. Customer experience dashboards allow brands to highlight gaps and progress at regular intervals. They also provide useful tools to experiment with different elements, like advertising, demos, and sales processes. This extra visibility allows companies to determine which factors impact the experience the most.

Example: Zurich Insurance Group implemented a series of SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) metrics designed to measure performance tied to its customer experience. Zurich uses a TRI*M index to measure customer satisfaction in regional markets, allowing the company to understand how different components of the offer impact customer touchpoints. Its data is used to identify opportunities to create more meaningful experiences, empowering the executive team to create action plans for local teams.

13 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com 7. REMAIN FOCUSED ON OPERATIONS AND THE BOTTOM LINE

The intersection between brand positioning and customer experience is important, but internal factors can be equally so when designing a brand experience.

In a world of finite financial resources, the cost of implementing various experience alternatives cannot be ignored. Second to financial considerations are operational considerations. The brand experience can be affected by how well it is streamlined from an internal perspective to make implementation seamless. Technical factors must also be weighed. The brand experience should integrate well with any informational and technological systems in place.

Example: Hyatt Place provides a great example of how to account for internal considerations when designing the brand experience. Hyatt Place is somewhat of a B2B play, for it franchises its brand to large hotel ownership groups. This consideration is a significant factor for steering the company’s decisions when defining its brand experience.

According to Steven Dominguez, vice president of global brands at Hyatt Hotels Corporation, “Every step of the way, we’re constantly asking ourselves questions like, ‘How would our owners feel about this? Is this solution too costly? What’s the return on investment? Is there a more durable option? Is this easier to clean, and therefore a lower operational cost?” 17

Designing the brand experience requires companies to consider multiple factors. This process is standard for any business decision, allowing a company to arrive at a solution that combines the optimal brand experience with the practical limitations of reality.

A Truly Unique Brand Experience

Customer experience is arguably as central to the brand as the product and service offering. Experience has, in many ways, become a greater potential source of differentiation than either of those two components. Brand positioning offers better inspiration for designing customer experiences than industry best practices or successful competitors’ tactics. When positioning dictates customer experience, brands are able to create a truly differentiated experience.

14 Bring Positioning to Life Through Touchpoints and Journey www.fullsurge.com Notes

1. B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre and Every Business a Stage (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999). 2. Ed Keller and Brad Fay, “Word-of-Mouth Advocacy: A New Key to Advertising Effectiveness,” Journal of Advertising Research 52, no. 4 (December 2012): 459–64, https://doi.org/10.2501/JAR-52-4-459-464. 3. Jacques Bughin, Jonathan Doogan, and Ole Jorgen Vetvik, “A New Way to Measure Word-of-Mouth Marketing,” McKinsey Quarterly, April 2010, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/,marleting-and-sales/our-insights/a-new-way-to-measure-word-of-mouth-marketing. 4. Mounica Vennamaneni, “Whole Foods Market, Marketing Strategies, and Programs Analysis,” Medium, July 15, 2017, https://media.wholefoodsmarket.com/@@mounicav/whole-foods-market-marketing-strategies-and-programs-analysis-53d6f12b6055. 5. “Whole Foods Market to Sack Disposable Plastic Grocery Bags by Earth Day,” Whole Foods Market, January 22, 2008, https://media.wholefoodsmarket.com/news/whole-foods-market-to-sack-disposable-plastic-grocery-bags-by-earth-day. 6. Elliot Maras, “Amazon’s Whole Foods Market Acquisition Points to a Changing Role for Physical Stores; Millennials Hold the Key,” Retail Customer Experience, June 20, 2017, https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/blogs/amazons-whole-foods-big-points-to-a-changing-role-for- physical-stores-millenials-hold-the-key/. 7. Carolyn Tisch Blodgett (senior vice president of brand marketing, Peloton), in phone interview with the author, June 2018. 8. Christine Dahm (vice president of marketing, Noosa Yoghurt), in phone interview with the author, June 2018. 9. Javier Chavez Ruiz, “Branded Wallets Cinépolis: Connecting Real Solutions, to Real Problems, with Real Benefits,” LinkedIn, July 23, 2015, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/merchants-successful-apps-real-solutions-problems-javier-chavez-ruiz/. 10. Dani Levy, “Cinema Chain Builds Jungle Gyms in Theaters,” Variety, March 7, 2017, https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/cinepolis-junior-jungle-gym-theater-kids-1202003872/. 11. Jeff Chu, “Can Apple’s Angela Ahrendts Spark a Retail Revolution?” Fast Company, January 6, 2014, https://www.fastcompany.com/3023591/angela-ahrendts-a-new-season-at-apple. 12. Interbrand, “Best Global Brands 2017 Rankings,” 2017, https://www.interbrand.com/best-brands/best-global-brands/2017/ranking/ 13. CustomerExperience.io, “3 Top Lessons on How LUSH Employees Improve Customer Experience,” Medium, December 3, 2015, https://medium.com/@@_cxio/3-top-lessons-on-how-lush-employees-improve-customer-experience-6f2ab6db07bd. 14. Michael Million, “Perspectives on Orchestrating Customer Experience,” https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/858343/Articles/Perspectives-on-Orchestrating-Customer-Experience.pdf?t=1462290037021. 15. Million, “Orchestrating Customer Experience.” 16. Fiona Swerdlow, “The Walgreens Path to Omnichannel Success,” National Retail Federation, February 5, 2013, https://nrf.com/blog/mobile/the-walgreens-path-omnichannel-success. 17. Steven Dominguez (vice president of global brands, Hyatt Hotels Corporation), in phone interview with the author, March 2018.

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