Forget the old school 360°— brand experiences in modern marketing.
Likely every agency on the planet has touted some form of their magical, mysterious, and proprietary Area 51 of intellectual capital. The fairy dust of which I speak? The 360° branding process.
Allow me put it like this — an audience member (you) is barraged on all sides by every conceivable communication vehicle all talking about how great a product or service or company is. You are surrounded. Isn’t that indeed the pure definition of 360°? Another way to look at it is that a brand surrounds itself with every marketing vehicle it can afford, and is subliminally (or not so much) saying “Look at me! Aren’t I great!?!?”
My contention has always been that taking a ‘me first’ approach to ANYTHING is the wrong answer. I’m confident that we can all agree that the audience is the first, and most important, point to consider in any brand communication. That is how we’ve done it since day one and remains to be our most distinctive benefit to our clients. In today’s cluttered marketing landscape audiences drive the engagement and are demanding more from every brand and agency if they are to be successful.
Brands, no longer having the luxury of just talking TO audiences, must embrace the ‘me-first’ mentality of today’s customers. Having become used to getting what they want, when they want, and in the way in which they want it, current-day (and future) consumers have changed forever the way in which we engage them. We have found and embraced three key ways in which audiences interact with brands for the most effective dialog.
Communications
Every day audiences are barraged with messages from every possible angle (hello 360) telling them about what they should buy, why they should buy, and from whom they should buy it. Everyone has to have a hobby I suppose. There is nothing inherently wrong with brand communications in their mass-market reach, but the fact that this is almost exclusively going to be one-way dialog and limited in it’s ability to make meaningful connections. That’s where the other modes come in.
Immersions
This latest marketing trend has been pushed through it’s infancy and into more commonly accepted practice. Tactics from branded experiences, in-store design, pop-up retail, and other new-ish methods have given a basis to make branding more tangible, more emotional, and more effective at communicating those things which are inherently more amorphous. Even events and other lesser-thought-of channels have been reinvigorated for their ability to immerse potential customers in what the brand stands for. Immersions not only make clear the intangible and emotional, but also give a platform from which to drive home the key selling points that were set up in the mass-market communications.
Interactions
Funny thing about the term interaction…it means pretty much everything. Interactions happen with ads, mobile devices, online, people (duh, I know), print, and everything else one could think of. The problem is not in the definition, but rather in the forgetting that interactions truly mean EVERYTHING.
But what about the product?
Let’s not forget that there is a loooooooong and important list that goes under ‘everything.’ This is where every interaction really counts and can make or break every effort carefully crafted thus far. Remember that brand interactions go from the product itself, to the sales, to operations/delivery, to customer service, and every other part of the organization. It’s the experience economy. Just like in the old days where a bad product isn’t going to get by on good marketing, a bad (or not-so-good) experience with the rest of the brand is going to seriously diminish your effectiveness and long-term relations with the audience.
At the end of the day, all communications channels are still on the table, as long as they add value and actually reach the desired audiences. We should set them aside in the toolbox and selectively pull each one out based on the their ability to do the job at hand, and support a frictionless customer experience.
