Brands are increasingly applying a user experience approach to marketing, and this is only set to accelerate in the coming 12 months, says Manisha Bhatia
There is a growing awareness that the brand experiences that matter aren’t about one-off events or isolated campaigns, but every single touch point a consumer has with a brand. From sales experiences at retail and online, to post-sales customer service experiences – and indeed to proprietary events and sponsorship activations – everything counts in building a relationship with the brand.
And as much as our lives are increasingly transforming into a ‘scrambled egg’ consistency whereby work and home-life intermingle, so too are the ways we look on how we interact with brands. We do not use single channels of media ourselves and we don’t view campaigns in isolation. Neither are we hung up on which technology we use or how we use it. I loved Ramsey Naja of JWT’s comment in this very publication: “Meanwhile, in the real world, digital is not so much a new territory as it is a reality that people live with, interact with and, frankly, take as much personal interest in as they do with the quality of their laundry.”
So, as marketers, we should not be silo-ing our efforts by channel and every experience consumers have with the brand must live up to their expectations. How a brand behaves is just as important as what it says.
With this phenomenal task for marketers in mind, and ahead of a year where the blurring of boundaries will only increase, what are the key trends that will matter for brand experience?
User experience thinking is a key trend that can directly benefit our quest for a holistic brand experience. It’s a term which originated on the web, but, as with all things digital, it has permeated our lives and is increasingly applied to our broader world. Brands are increasingly applying a user experience approach on a grander scale. This is evident in their rising interest in enlisting experience leaders, such as CXOs.
In Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine’s book on customer experience, they assert that in the near future “literally every company will compete on the basis of customer experience. In fact, they already do – most just don’t realise what that really means, what’s at stake, or how to do it well”. Better experience has been correlated to higher purchase intent, decreased customer churn and greater word-of-mouth awareness. In 2014, we can expect user experience to continue on its upward trajectory and it can only bring brands and consumers closer.
So what will influence the business context for creating a user-centred brand experiences in 2014?
Relevant Retail: With retail in the Middle East evolving and consequently a strong area for growth in many countries, the opportunities for growing brand-consumer relationships in this sector are great. Dubai, for example, has been ranked (according to property consultancy CBRE) only second to London as the most important retail destination globally, with most global brands established in the city. With so much competition, the key opportunity is in providing relevant retail – that is, giving customers what they want and can only get in a physical store setting. Expert staff, inspiring interactive technology and the chance to touch and feel products before making a purchase – it can only be done in person. It is not without its competition however. Ecommerce is also on the up in the Middle East.
The Twitter Takeover: Whilst Twitter’s popularity is growing in most of the world, it has been reported that Western Asia is one of the network’s fastest growing regions. And active Twitter user penetration, according to data published by GlobalWebIndex, is particularly high in the Middle East. It reported 51 per cent of internet users in Saudi Arabia were active Twitter users (making them the most engaged Twitter users in the world), and 34 per cent in the UAE. This means Twitter’s moves to become more advertising-friendly, such as buying Vine and reportedly rolling out new mobile ad products, have the potential to make a big impact in the Middle East, particularly if they enable more interactive, rather than passive ad products.
Twitter also has a large role to play in real-time marketing – a trend that pitches ‘marketers as journalists’. The principle that brands should adopt a newsroom like approach so that they can respond in real time to events as they happen. The real opportunity here is less about the timely comment that strikes a cultural chord (since these opportunities are as rare as hen’s teeth), and more about how the brand can make genuine and relevant comments on the things its consumer community cares about.
Big Data Gets Small: Brands have for some time grappled with big data to unearth trends and identify opportunities that will help grow the business. This is great for brands but tends to fill consumers with a creeping feeling of privacy invasion. However, with the advent of wearable tech, such as Google Glass, brands will have the opportunity to use big data to actually improve the experience of individual consumers. For example, retailers and service-driven brands like hotels, airlines and banks could use Google Glass to offer enhanced guidance to consumers. Brands will need to approach this with caution, however, and ensure they respect the consumer’s privacy in their use of data whilst still improving the service.
The Collaborative Economy: Whilst the most publicised success stories of collaborative enterprises are US-based, such as Zipcar and Airbnb, the concept is on the agenda in the Middle East. Amid these discussions, some commentators feel the region, with its particular tradition of sharing, has a cultural suitability to the business model. And it is true that the Middle East is extremely collaborative by nature and the strongest motive for the advancement of this concept in much of our region stems from the need to share thoughts, expressions and ideas. There is much for us all to gain from such a way of working.
Storytelling: With our blurred boundaries in both life and marketing channels, storytelling is the one quality that unites all these areas and it’s the one we will need in 2014 if we are to successfully cross marketing boundaries. As Steven Althaus of BMW said at Cannes: “I beg us as an industry to stop talking about traditional and non-traditional. Everything is just a way of telling a story. We’re all storytellers here.”
Manisha Bhatia is creative strategist, Middle East, at Jack Morton Worldwide