Guestpost by Christian Vatter (www.christianvatter.com)
„Marketers are rapidly losing ground“, Paul Polman said, CEO of Unilever, at the annual lecture of the British Marketing Society just a few days ago. Because consumers were often ahead of marketers, Polman promoted the solution to learn the language of the crowd in order to get back ahead of people. As an example, Polman states „provenance“ (origin) necessary as being added as one of the Ps of marketing.
(Bild P. Polman, Bildunterschrift: Paul Polman, CEO Unilever, at the British Marketing Society, April 30, 2012)
Personally, I think this won’t help companies practicing traditional marketing in the long term. Marketing needs to change more than just adjusting messages that are being pushed out. Why?
Firstly, marketing has lost it’s meaning to people. The number of messages per day is too high to comprehend, and and due to excessive sugar-coating of reality, people have lost their trust in marketing communications. Instead of invading space to place selling messages, it is important to add substantial value to people‘s lives.
Secondly, marketing is not about messages and communication anymore, it’s about direct experiences with brands. It became increasingly difficult to anticipate trends (fast-changing) and consumer needs (more demanding) to craft relevant, more targeted messages. Nowadays, it is vital to create meaning and relevance. More meaning by experiencing usefulness, usability and seamless flow in dealing with brands. And more relevance by having these experiences at very central brand encounters like products, analog or digital services, commercial environments, and of course employees.
Crafting such ideal user experiences dealing with brands needs to move more strongly into the focus of marketers. People trust experiences, whether their own, their friends‘, or even strangers‘ e.g. in online forums (http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/trust-in-advertising.png). Whenever we encounter a brand, we expect to be treated with good service, whether it is their website, employees or their actual products and services. If you had a good experience, you are very likely to come back. And a good experience makes it very likely that you recommend this brand.
Creating a unique and pleasant Brand UX at owned and highly relevant „channels“ helps not only to add more value to these touchpoints, but also adds value to the brand. And this in return helps the brand gaining necessary preference.
For more information on Brand UX please visit www.brand-ux.com
Viva la revolución!
Tags: brandUX, britisch marketing society, christian vatter, create meaning, Paul Polman
