Tim Ainsworth is Executive Director at McCann Experience, McCann Manchester and NDA’s new monthly columnist.
Espousing the work of Andrew Tindall in his most recent article for Marketing Week, the headline reads “Consistency is the top-class marketer’s secret weapon”, highlighting that “brands that score in the top 20% for consistency are more likely to generate awareness, differentiation, fame and attitude change”. The article goes on to talk at great length about this topic in the context of brand and creativity, largely in the sphere of advertising.
But, the article also touches fleetingly on positioning and that got me thinking more broadly about how brands chose to show up – consistently or otherwise – across the total customer experience. And, how we have been reduced to relatively binary decision making on what percentage a business should spend on brand versus performance (that old nutshell, again!). Some say 90:10, some say 70:30, some say 60:40. The reality is it always depends on the business: its category, life cycle, maturity, competitiveness etc.
So, what if we looked at things a little differently and asked ourselves a different question: how should our brand show up – in every mode of customer interaction. So, 100% of our investment is in brand; we just get smarter about every distinctive asset in the brand’s arsenal. This is important, not least because challengers – often unburdened by legacy infrastructures – might not be able to outspend their competitors, but they can outsmart on customer experience.
With it being CX (Customer Experience) Day in October, I sat down with Adam Gorton this month, one of our resident UX consultants, who is responsible for helping us to maximise total brand experience within the Brand Vibrancy Score we’ve created for clients, which unpicks the commercial value of every brand interaction.
And, it’s clearly a treasure trove of potential, according to Adam. Here’s some stats:
“Research shows that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience, companies that prioritise CX report on average 60% higher profits than those that don’t, 73% of consumers say that CX is an important factor in their purchasing decisions, brands that excel in CX grow their revenue by 4-8% above the market average and 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from companies that offer personalised experiences.
Importantly, personalisation also goes way beyond addressing customers by their names; it involves understanding their preferences, anticipating their needs, diversity, inclusion, accessibility and the delivery of tailored solutions. This level of engagement fosters a deeper connection and encourages repeat business.
Returning customers tend to spend 67% more than new customers. In contrast, poor customer experiences can be costly, with an estimated $75 billion lost each year due to bad customer experience, according to a study by PwC. Additionally, 32% of consumers say they would walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience.”
Any attempt to wrestle a brand’s behaviour across the total brand experience – across the full spectrum of paid, owned and earned assets and across the marketing Ps – is a challenge. Nesting components under 4 distinctive elements has enabled the brands we work with to both compartmentalise (as well as understand the drivers and cause/effect correlations of) disciplines.
Visibility evidences not only how often you are generating eyeballs on the brand, but also the quality of that experience; ranging from media exposure to the visual quality of your brand throughout your whole ecosystem.
Recall: refers to an audience’s ability to decode your brand’s message; everything from creative, copy and tone through to the consistency of your messaging and how that information is presented across multiple journeys.
Intent: indicates the level of (positive or negative) engagement being established according to audience need; everything from social media to every intricate detail of the checkout process.
Trust: signifies how much time or money audiences are willing to spend with you; acknowledging that how customers interact in critical moments of truth isn’t linear and can manifest in unexpected ways.
Surely, creating distinction in every facet of the brand’s behaviour is integral to overall marketing effectiveness and should be carefully modelled when considering the drivers of performance, attribution and forecasting; whether you’re looking to elicit an immediate response from in market audiences, establishing memorable cues for the future or optimising customer journeys through the buying cycle.
So, challenger brands, let’s make our investments 100% in brand and better acknowledge the nuance required in our planning across the total brand experience.
Sources: And.Digital, Forbes.com, PWC.com
