Today, Customer Experience (CX) Makes or Breaks Your Brand Promise

Content isn’t king. Customer experience is king.

What does this mean for marketers? Simple. When a brand’s primary advertising claims fail to play out in real life, the result is more cognitive dissonance and loss of trust. In other words, it’s exactly what no one wants.

In days gone by, a brand could make a questionable claim and more easily get away with it. In today’s information economy, there’s no getting away with anything. When your customers are all armed with miniature computers and an eagerness to use them, it’s truth-tellin’ time.

If your product or service is faulty, word will get out and the idea-virus will spread fast.

Are You Ready for Function Over Form?

Leonid Sudakov is head of a new startup in the pet care industry called Kinship. He wrote an essay for Adweek wherein he makes cogent points about the primacy of customer experience.

Much of the focus in the marketing industry has been centered around selling a better story, finding a breakthrough expression of the big brand beliefs or simply going for the biggest number of laughs. However, in the past few years, we’ve seen a new wave of disruption led by a range of simpler, more functional propositions focused on consumer experience: what a product does for consumers, how it helps them, the problems it solves.

I suppose he’s right that some people in the ad game just want to sell a better story. Thankfully, there are those who seek the truer story. The story that’s embedded in the company’s DNA.

Find Your Purpose, Then Define It

Kinship is a company with a clearly defined purpose. According to their website, the company is finding “new ways to realize the promise of digital health, data analytics, machine learning, and other transformational technologies to create a brighter future for pets around the world.”

Knowing who you are is essential when you want others to know too.

Make Ads That Ring True

Sudakov also wisely notes that ads are never enough to convert prospects into customers, no matter their quality:

If a product doesn’t offer a better alternative to the customer’s workaround, no snappy tagline, Oscar-worthy ad or Instagrammable stunt are going to make it a success.

I am in full agreement with the above sentiment. I am also in full agreement with this sentiment: A snappy tagline, Oscar-worthy ad or Instagrammable stunt are the costs of entry in today’s over-saturated, over-hyped market for any good and every service.

A staunch refusal to believe anyone and everyone’s claim is the default position for people overwhelmed with marketing messages. To get people to pay attention and then to care, you need an alluring story with a hook made just for them. It also takes a product or service that stands up to the brilliance of the ads.

David Ogilvy said, “Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.” So true. I’ll add that the product has to be worthy of one’s belief, or seeking the truer story is a waste of time and money.

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