Discover, experience, enthuse

How the mar­ket­ing of the fu­ture fo­cus­es on dis­cov­er­ies and ex­pe­ri­ences, in or­der to of­fer cus­tomers ac­tu­al added val­ue. This is the on­ly way to sat­is­fy their needs and make these the fo­cus. Not the prod­ucts.

How did you make your last pur­chase? Did you en­ter a spe­cial­ist store com­plete­ly un­pre­pared or did you seek in­for­ma­tion in ad­vance from friends, Face­book or fo­rums, in or­der to shop on­line or via an app? The lat­ter is most like­ly the case. And that is com­plete­ly nor­mal, as today’s shop­ping be­hav­iour clear­ly points in this di­rec­tion; peo­ple buy from places where they have con­tact with the brand. The so-called “Con­nect­ed Con­sumer” gives lit­tle thought to how the brand or prod­uct is de­vel­oped; he or she no longer ex­pe­ri­ences the brand via fixed chan­nels or brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but rather as the re­sult of a com­pre­hen­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion and prod­uct ex­pe­ri­ence – the Cus­tomer Ex­pe­ri­ence, as de­scribed by Joachim Bad­er in his ar­ti­cle, Ex­pe­ri­ence is the new Mar­ket­ing. Di­a­logue with con­sumers and a tan­gi­ble brand ex­pe­ri­ence are there­fore at the fore­front.

The prod­uct is no longer the fo­cus, but cus­tomer needs

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is vi­tal for this new kind of mar­ket­ing, be­cause dig­i­tal fo­cus en­ables this kind of cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence in the first place. And this re­quires a seis­mic shift: today’s com­pa­nies suc­cess­ful­ly ap­ply­ing these new fac­tors to their mar­ket­ing are dis­rup­tors, such as AirBnB, Uber and Spo­ti­fy. Con­sumers and their needs should be at the cen­tre of every con­sid­er­a­tion and mar­ket­ing must cre­ate ex­pe­ri­ences for this; the mar­ket­ing fo­cus is there­fore shift­ing from the prod­uct to the cus­tomer. And to in­di­vid­ual cus­tomers, not to a tar­get group. Be­cause today’s cus­tomers ex­pect tai­lored prod­ucts and ser­vices.

Why ex­pe­ri­ences are more im­por­tant than sto­ries

Telling sto­ries that fol­low the tra­di­tion­al pat­tern of he­roes, in line with the clas­sic sto­ry­telling ap­proach, al­ways works well; we’ve heard them all be­fore and they’re deeply em­bed­ded in our sub­con­scious. Sim­ply think of David and Go­liath. But no mat­ter how ex­cit­ing, vivid and poignant a sto­ry may be, it can­not com­pete with a re­al-life ex­pe­ri­ence. An ac­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ence is much more mem­o­rable. This al­so ap­plies to a brand: ex­pe­ri­ences, not sto­ries. We must there­fore break away from the lin­ear nar­ra­tive struc­ture and cre­ate sto­ry sys­tems. Bad­er cites Har­ry Pot­ter as a good ex­am­ple of this: “Books, films and theme parks have been used to cre­ate a sto­ryscape that of­fers con­sumers – not just read­ers – a sense of ad­ven­ture.”

How lin­ear struc­tures are giv­ing way to a pur­chas­ing ma­trix

What ap­plies to the new di­a­logue forms of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is al­so be­com­ing cen­tral to the pur­chas­ing process: lin­ear struc­tures are start­ing to dis­ap­pear, to be re­placed by a ma­trix. Be­cause: “The Con­nect­ed Con­sumer no longer dis­tin­guish­es be­tween ex­pe­ri­ences and shop­ping. They in­stant­ly make a pur­chase wher­ev­er they come in­to con­tact with the brand; the com­bi­na­tion of con­tent, so­cial as­pects and com­merce is the man­i­fes­ta­tion of this trans­for­ma­tion”.

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is grad­u­al­ly per­me­at­ing all ar­eas of our lives; busi­ness has long em­braced it. In or­der to move with the times and be ahead of the game in fu­ture, we as a com­pa­ny or agency need to re­think, re­or­gan­ise and re­gard this trans­for­ma­tion as an op­por­tu­ni­ty.