Author Archives: bchidley

Brand Experience versus Customer Experience: Twins Separated at Birth?


Natural Happy Girls

 

Is there a difference between Brand Experience and Customer Experience? The answer makes me think of stories about identical twins separated at birth and reunited many years later. Amazingly many have the same hair styles, similar jobs, and they like the same flavors of ice cream even though they never met. Why? Because they share the same DNA, which is more powerful than circumstance or environment.

 

BX…CX… What’s in a name?  In business today there is a lot of energy put toward managing either Brand Experience or Customer Experience. Based on my involvement with both I want to set the record straight on the key differences. Like identical twins they share the same DNA therefore they look and act similarly. With twins their differences are influenced by the families that raised them and may result from having different cultures and customs. Likewise Brand and Customer Experiences have different upbringing but their common DNA makes them overwhelmingly similar.

Regardless of nomenclature, experience management and innovation is strategically important to growth. What drives the difference between BX and CX are three things:

1. The Brand building versus customer service bias of the organization

2. How the differentiating and value adding aspects of the experience are inspired

3. How success of the experience is measured and tracked.

The initial difference is cultural bias. If the organization has a Brand driven culture, the bias is toward a Brand Experience mindset. If the organization has a customer service driven culture, the bias is toward a Customer Experience mindset. “Brand” is a complex idea that many organizations embrace but is not often codified, so in the absence of a clear Brand idea and proposition, strong customer-centric values are a fine substitute. Here either bias has a noble purpose. My client experience bears out that a great experience design can result from Brand or customer service scenarios.

 

Design inspiration comes next. Both BX and CX development processes involve journey mapping and seek to define touch-points and create value-adding and differentiating experiences. Both must bridge the digital and physical seamlessly, address a variety of segments, and accommodate different need states and occasions. They also seek to address problem resolution as a key opportunity to shine. Their DNA is the same. The difference is in inspiration. Brand Experiences look to actively and passively embed Brand-building into the experience whereas Customer Experiences do not have the same primary motive.

Brand-centric organizations have defined Brand attributes and an activation strategy (which should be based on data and customer insights). The experience design is an opportunity to leverage the power of the Brand strategy and build positive equity on specific attributes as intentional additions to the customer experience. This Brand building may not pay dividends immediately, but it is a longer-term investment that synchronizes with Brand messages in advertising and other Brand communications to build equity and brand salience. Alternatively, in the absence of a defined and pervasive Brand, Customer Experiences are focused more on delighting customers in the here and now. They must have core-tenants that are linked to strong customer-centric values. These have the net effect of a Brand, but they are not directly inspired by a defined Brand idea. It’s like getting to your destination using a map or by familiar landmarks. The important thing is that you arrived.

 

Success criteria is the ultimate differentiator of BX versus CX.  Brand Experience adds Brand-derived attribute tracking to the measurement. It all ladders up to the need to correlate attribute performance to business performance and see the effect over time on Brand sentiment. Ultimately both Customer Experience and Brand Experience measurement have “macro” metrics that inform Brand sentiment… like net promoter scores, defection rates, etc., but Customer Experience measurement may not include (or they just “throw in”) Brand related measures.

 

So the wrap-up is this: if you are asked to manage or execute an experience innovation initiative, don’t get hung up on semantics because the core DNA is the same. All Brand Experiences are inherently Customer Experiences, and all Customer Experiences result in a Brand Experience by default. Both put the customer at the center with insights and empathy as they seek to create proprietary experiences that foster enduring relationships versus mere transactions. The important thing is to be consistent or else the confusion could bog your organization down.

Smart Little Piggies use Bricks and Mortar

Three_little_pigs

With the latest report from A.T. Kearney on Recasting the Retail Store in Today’s Omnichannel World, I am seeing an acceleration of studies that confirm the importance of brick and mortar retail. The stats are clear and confirm more than surprise… 92% of retail sales still come from stores. Another popular form of evidence that retail is alive and well is that the pure-play online retailers are opening bricks and mortar locations or pop-up stores. Why are all of these articles striving to defend retail stores? As I read this report and others like it, why do I feel like they are telling me what the weather is like when I can just look out my window? We shop because stores meet needs that ecommerce cannot. If we could get all our nutrition from a magic pill wouldn’t we still enjoy eating?

In my view the problem with bricks and mortar retail isn’t the Internet, it’s the neglect of the asset.

Traditional retailers only have so much capital, and pressure from Wall Street to show growth is enormous. Stores as a point of distribution are costly. Stores are expensive to design, build, maintain, and staff. They also are expensive to refresh. For the past several years, IT, ecommerce, digital loyalty programs, and now omnichannel activity have won the battle for capital in the boardroom. Investors want to see retailers embracing the mobile/digital shopper and the ecommerce channel. And “digital” spending is propelled by its own arms race, and no retailer wants to be left behind. As retailers spend on these initiatives they become ongoing budget requirements that didn’t exist a decade ago. In many cases they do not generate the revenue to be self-sustaining, so they dilute the capital that used to be spent on stores. In other cases they are exciting innovations that keep a retailer relevant. Meanwhile the stores provide the majority of revenue.

Case in point: Near the end of the last decade I was involved in selling a major rebranding initiative to Sears. The goal was to give them a new reason for being, a new proposition, and a renewed relevancy that would ultimately impact the store experience. Understandably this is a perennial problem at Sears and Branding is only one aspect of the fix. We were convincing and won the business against formidable competition…but the project never started. It was determined by the C-Suite that the investment wasn’t worth it, and that their Shop-your-way loyalty program was the best way out of their troubles. Meanwhile the Sears stores continue to be stuck in the past and a festering burden on their relevance.

This spending on non-bricks and mortar initiatives is not wasteful; in fact it is transforming retail for the better if you are a shopper. But it is not good business to neglect the store experience, as indicated by the evidence presented in these A.T. Kearney style reports. Understanding the way consumers want to shop and being there for them is still central to great retail. The issue is that the spending on these healthy distractions has caused a neglect of the “traditional aspects” of the shopping experience that are delivered by the physical store. And the longer retailers take to invest in remodeling the more expensive it will be.

I like the A.T. Kearney report because it encourages retailers to re-evaluate the role of the physical store. At some point the seamless omnichannel experience will reach a plateau, or at least a consistent budget requirement, so that adequate innovation dollars will move back into bricks and mortar. Retailers would be wise to not wait too long. After all, remember that bricks and mortar are what gave the smart little piggy the power to keep out the big bad wolf.

Bill Chidley is a Partner and Co-Founder at ChangeUp. Creating Innovating Experiences that Drive Growth. http://www.changeupinc.com

Experience Inflation: Retail’s Fresh Challenge

Retail expectations are inflating

Retail expectations are inflating

 

Experience inflation? Hop from a 2004 car into a 2014 model and you will get what I mean. Driving a car is now a user experience that integrates your mobile devices as well as provides onboard technology that can help avoid collisions and keep you alert.  It is common now for car brands to exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show and In 2012 Cadillac even touted their new ATS as “a tablet on wheels”. They dub their technology as “CUE”, for Cadillac User Experience. This focus on creating experiential value is not just for premium cars either. The new Ford Focus and Dodge Dart both offer touch screen “infotainment”, and Bluetooth smartphone integration as key selling features. Soon oil changes will probably come with software upgrades.

 

Applebee's table top tablets

Applebee’s table top tablets

Applebee’s and Chili’s have already rolled out touch-screen ordering and payment on their tables. Airlines, Hotels, Insurance companies, healthcare providers are all investing in understanding and innovating the customer experience to win in the market. Just like our cars in 2004, we don’t yet know what we are missing, but things are definitely coming that will transform these experiences and set a new bar. The challenge for retailers is that customer experience “thrills” are not insulated within business sectors. These escalating experiences cross over and inflate expectations for all interactions including our shopping.

 

Customer experience innovation is additive to all the things that have required attention before. Car companies still need sexy styling, great performance, and dependability to be competitive.  And experience is also comprehensive. The cars are just a piece of the equation. The dealer experience for sales and service is just as critical.

 

Retailers still need to be great merchants, great with operations and distribution, and have beautiful store designs that engage and delight us. But just like the new car with the conspicuous touch screen in the dash and the fancy start up screen, how do customer experience innovations manifest in a store? How do retailers project an upgraded or innovative customer experience that isn’t contained to a bricks and mortar remodel?

 

This is undoubtedly new territory and requires new thinking and creative passion. Store design now has an additional demand from business to solve a strategic imperative- stay one step ahead with customer experience. Retailers have been on the right path in using design to clarify their brand idea and unify their brand in an omnichannel world, but what is next beyond refining the idea of what a store has been?  The answer is to invent what the experience could be and be brave enough to deliver it.

Bill Chidley is a Partner and Co-Founder at ChangeUp. Creating Innovating Experiences that Drive Growth. http://www.changeupinc.com

What Would You Pay to Shop at Your Favorite Store?

How much for your time?

How much for your time?

The thought of paying to shop is a ridiculous idea, but we all do it. We pay with our time not our cash. If we think about store experiences this way… as products people buy… it can change how we should innovate retail experiences.

The thought of paying for a retail experience came to me as an epiphany while I was on a panel discussion on ‘bricks and mortar retail in a digital world’ at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last year. The question from the panel leader was about the challenges retailers face creating loyalty. My response was “I pay $79 a year to be loyal to Amazon”. It’s true. If I am willing to pay to be an Amazon Prime customer I am going to certainly look there first for the merchandise I want so I can benefit from my membership. The enticement to become a member was ‘free shipping’, and the math seemed fair, but now by brain dilutes the cost over the entire Amazon experience and I feel value beyond the shipping savings. I can’t imagine NOT being a Prime member.

This pay-to-shop model is not new. It has been around at least since the dawn of warehouse clubs. Costco, Sam’s, and BJ’s are all acutely aware that they have to provide member value, and filter their decisions based on this foundation. They know if their members are not perceiving an annual savings AND a great experience they will bail. The issue with the club operators is that the added value is not “environmental” in the form of store design, but believe me when I say they put an equal amount of energy into the design of their  store experience via curated assortments, adjacency and operations, the treasure-hunt atmosphere, and exciting seasonal merchandising.

Amazon Prime and Club stores are monetary costs, but when they choose a retailer shoppers are still weighing the cost of their decision, but with the currency of time.

I have a client friend who ran dealer development for a major equipment manufacturer who once said to me “When someone asks me what a tractor costs I tell them it costs what we sell it to the dealer for. What they pay is that plus the value the dealer adds in the sales and service experience.”  Forget the Prime and Club models and think in terms of how your store, your department experience, and your category solutions deliver an experience that is worth 10 or 30 minutes versus 10 or 30 dollars. This can be a transformational way of thinking about innovation in retail.

A time/value framework can be a simple one for approaching both how a store delivers today and how it could be delivering more tomorrow.  For known value items like detergent and milk the assumption is that price parity or better must rule. But for other wants and needs that are not price sensitive, and certainly part of a “reason to visit” a retailer, ask how the experience of shopping before, during, and after the trip can be worth more than the “stuff”. How can it make the shopper feel smarter, more attractive, more hip, more…something. The goal is to have an emotional end-benefit that is constantly and consistently delivered in the experience and reinforced through communications. The result is the shopper driving…or clicking past competitive retailers to get to their preferred store.

Today the seamless store experience and the digital experience are the “how”. These are the vehicles, but like driving a car they are made up of smaller experiences like acceleration, cornering, and braking (and cupholders, and a great stereo, and power seats) that make the experience a joy. Try thinking about the value you are getting for your time the next time you shop. We all do it subconsciously already, just become aware. It just might lead you to a new way to innovate.

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When retailer advertising and reality collide

Petco Ad

Petco’s new Ad campaign. Does it over-promise?

Petco has begun a new ad campaign aimed at pulling at the heartstrings of pet owners and building an emotional connection to their brand, but like any brand-building advertising, the commercials are writing checks that the store experience has to cash. I admit that the ads are a refreshing break from the sea of urgent offers and endless deals that we are exposed to continuously on our TVs. With the line “The power of together”, they are well written, well executed, and amplify our awareness of the connections we have with our dogs and cats. The “co” device links this notion of our lives being enriched by our pets with the otherwise emotionless Petco name. The ads may drive consideration for Petco, but what happens when shoppers give Petco a try?

Retailers need traffic, and ultimately the ads need to drive shoppers to change their behavior and switch from Walmart, PetSmart, or their grocery store and become Petco regulars. But there is a big risk in inflating this emotional balloon and setting expectations too high. Can the stores and the associates live up to the promise? The ads, in fact, are built around the out-of-store experience with your pet, but where is the role of the store in the brand promise since it is the primary brand touch point? I do shop at Petco and I believe the ads validate my choice, but I shop there because they are smaller stores and easier to get in and out quickly. That is a real benefit.

The root of the issue is that Petco is not a lifestyle brand, it is a brand that enables shoppers to find what they need to take care of their pets. Lifestyle brands (great examples are Harley-Davidson and Nike) need to create an emotional connection with their customers to create value and drive demand. They create products that are like empty vessels which they fill with the dreams and aspirations of their audience. The emotions fuel the “want”. Most retailers create value through providing access to needs and wants, not creating needs and wants, and they are easily substitutable by other stores or channels (with the exception of fashion specialty retailers). Being biased toward lifestyle, the Petco ads do a better job of selling the virtues of owning a pet than providing a reason to shop their stores. If anything they stimulate consumers to take better care of their pets, but that could just mean trading up to premium food brands at any store.

I have seen numerous retailers venture down the seductive path of over promising in advertising. These campaigns may give the audience goosebumps, but they don’t communicate a strong “why shop here” or deliver a commensurate emotional reward in the store. Don’t get me wrong… store experiences need an emotional component, but an advertising campaign alone is not the solution. Great experience strategy and design are the means to creating an emotionally rewarding store experience. So here is my message to retailers: when your agency pitches a highly emotional campaign, ask if it is selling any benefits provided by your actual store experience.

I do believe that there are retailers out there who are getting it right, and are able to reconcile what their brands are about while communicating a plausible promise their stores can and do deliver.

First is Radio Shack’s Superbowl ad, featuring the “80’s called and want their store back” idea. Radio Shack went right at their main problem- the perception of irrelevance. The quick transformation of the store in the ad to a new image and experience was celebrating the store like no ad I had ever seen. Whether they have converted their whole fleet to deliver on the promise I do not know, but the stores around me are refreshed, so it worked (I bought some batteries).

The second, and more prolific, is the “Corner of Happy and Healthy” campaign by GSD&M for Walgreens. This campaign is rooted in the accessibility of the store and the authority of Walgreens as a headquarters of good health. The tagline is also versatile enough to work for category specific messaging in weekly ads and in-store displays, so it becomes a piece of the experience itself.

For retailers, the store is the story. Lifestyle brands can use emotions to play a big role in driving demand and creating preference, but emotional brand messaging to drive traffic for a retailer is a slippery slope that can lead to dissatisfaction if the experience is not aligned in a reinforcing way. Play to your store’s strengths and how your brand creates value through the experience, then activate the emotional content in the store itself.

Bill Chidley is a Partner and Co-Founder at ChangeUp. Creating Innovating Experiences that Drive Growth. http://www.changeupinc.com

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Color Coding and the Shopper Experience

traffic-lightUsing color-coding as a means of assisting the shopper in the aisle seems like a logical idea, but is it? In my experience it deserves the classic “yes and no” answer: sometimes it is a good solution and sometimes it just adds noise.

 

I was inspired to write about this when I came upon a men’s grooming area within the personal care department of a newly remodeled Rite Aid last week. The solution looked good overall in terms of merchandising, adjacencies, and masculine theme, and was likely authored by a major CPG company for this retail account using sound shopper insights and a compelling business case. What caught my attention was an area on the endcap dedicated to helping shoppers navigate the categories within the men’s grooming sub-department with color-coding. Below the “Men’s Grooming” message was a stack of 5 basic colors with corresponding words intended to act as a color-key to the shopping experience. The colors extended to blade signs along the fixture that served as destination markers or “brackets” for each category (yellow=deodorant, orange=shaving, etc.).

 

Rite Aid Men's Grooming

Rite Aid Men’s Grooming

 

This is a great example of color-coding not adding value to the experience. The presumption is that the shopper will take time to associate colors with categories, commit them to memory, use them to navigate as they go around the two-sided fixture, and even possibly build a multi-item basket by shopping every color. This is unrealistic behavior in this category and many others because It doesn’t pass the “would YOU do that?” test. Yellow, blue, red, orange, and green color-coding might have some utility if they were shopping for fruit-flavored candy (because of sensory associations), but have no association with this merchandise… and neither would another set of colors. In this case color-coding is not appropriate whereas literal photographic or illustrative solutions would be more effective communicating categories. Additionally, a more visually compelling  solution would illicit a positive emotional response which could stop more shoppers.

 

The reason color-coding can be a miss is because colors have meaning and the brain seeks meanings that make sense.  Colors can be strongly related to the category (as I have referenced for flavors), potentially have strong brand associations (like orange for Tide detergent), or have a cultural/social currency (like green for environmentally responsible). Colors out of context are at best noise and at worst confusing. Our brains will spend a small amount of time unconsciously trying to rectify the colors with the circumstance, but quickly abandon the job if it is not immediately clicking. In the Rite Aid example shoppers’ brains likely dismiss them as junk communications. They can adequately rely on product packaging and product forms on the shelves to identify the categories. The type on the blade signs provide clear communications of what merchandise is out of view and where categories begin and end. In this case the color does not provide value and becomes mere decoration.

 

Hardware aisle

Hardware fastener aisle

In contrast, an appropriate use of color-coding is when the nature of the merchandise itself does not signal key category breaks or product applications, as often seen in hardware. In an example of an aisle of screws and nuts, invisible details like thread type and hex heads versus slotted heads are important to the shopper. Here the shopper is willing to invest in understanding the color-coding on the fixtures because it saves them time and frustration. The packaging (from a single vendor in this case) corresponds to the fixture color so it is an integrated solution. The actual colors are inconsequential, and another retailer or vendor may successfully use different colors, as long as they provide the same organizing utility. There is also little or no impulse or emotional element in shopping for nuts and bolts, so the color-coding is enough to provide a great experience.

These are admittedly “man-centric” examples, but you will find similar good and bad examples across all categories, including women’s skincare. Here is a cosmetics display that uses the warm/neutral/cool color-coding system to organize shades. In this situation, even though the packaging shows the true colors, the visual differences of the products are not adequate to build purchase confidence for the shopper. The color-coding helps shoppers stay within shade groups based on their unique needs.

Cosmetic display with effective color coding

Cosmetic display with effective color coding

 

Before venturing down a path to color-coding as a navigation tool for your shopper experience, think about the following checklist.

Color coding is a great shopper tool when:

  • The product variations are not immediately evident by product or packaging form or  other high-priority packaging communications. (Nuts and Bolts, Light bulbs, batteries, etc.)
  • Cultural or social color associations exist in the categories that may be stronger than the dominant brand colors or product/packaging signals on the shelf. (Orange for de-caffeinated coffee, green for eco-friendly, pink for little girls/blue for little boys, etc.)
  • The understanding of compatible products is important to enable shopping for system components (Smartphone or game console accessories, and the cosmetic example above).

If your categories or departments do not have any of these three challenges, you are probably going to find color-coding less effective and should look for other ways to manage navigation. Color is powerful and if you don’t need to use it for navigation, seek to use it for another purpose that evokes a mood, creates disruption, or projects an attitude.

 

Bill Chidley is a Branding and Experience Design Consultant with over 29 years of experience.

Connected Objects: The New Frontier for Brand Building

 

Mother sensors from Sen.se

Mother sensors from Sen.se

 

Did your elderly parents take their medications? Did you remember to feed the cat? Did the kids get picked up by the bus after school? Is your car getting the best gas mileage it can achieve? These and thousands of similar questions migrate in and out of our conscious thoughts all the time.  Now welcome to a new world where common anxiety is first heightened, and then overcome by constant connectivity to smart objects and sensors embedded in our lives. Get ready to have the words “monitor” and “notification” be two of the most common terms in our lexicon as smart objects become increasingly part of our daily experiences. The smartphones we now can’t live without are at the cusp of being extensions of our consciousness and tools for coping with our complex personal lives. Interpersonal communication and access to information was just the tip of the mobile-digital iceberg.

Our phones are fast becoming remote controls for our lives with objects as ordinary as our lamps at home already becoming controllable from anywhere. But according to Trendwatching.com http://trendwatching.com/trends/internet-of-caring-things/ , the internet is evolving to be about connected objects, or caring things, that we interact with via our iPhones and Android phones that will monitor and alert us to everything from the mundane to life threatening. Today’s breaking headlines and weather alerts will be augmented with notifications that we aren’t drinking enough water or that our floor needs to be vacuumed. How we consume, what we consume, and what triggers our actions will be transformed from passive to active. How should Brands think about this imminent reality? They certainly should not watch from the sidelines as connecting technologies like Nest https://nest.com/ and Mother https://sen.se/ potentially become trusted advisors in consumers’ lives regarding prioritizing their needs and suggesting their behaviors.

The imminent invasion of connected devices will give our homes, cars, and workplaces their own kind of consciousness that will further dilute our involvement with traditional media and change the way consumers will want to learn about and engage with brands. Retail and consumer brands who integrate into this consciousness will build strong relationships with their customers. The omni-channel centric fixation we need today is just the foundation for this future. Digital strategy will need to evolve to truly integrate seamlessly into the consumer’s world of notifications, indications, “settings” and required solutions that will be manifest in this new virtual “third hemisphere” of our brain that extends our awareness via our mobile devices.

How might this look? First think how your brand can be relevant to this expanded consciousness of connected devices. This may be easier to achieve for retailers and consumer products brands that provide life’s needs versus wants, but social anxiety is real and can also be an aperture in which to engage. What notifications can a brand provide that are not immediately linked to replenishment but seek to forge a necessary relationship? Next think of digital innovation differently, evolving from addressing need states to overcoming anxiety states. How can your brand intervene in a moment of potential distress or, better yet, be a proactive partner and get credit for avoiding distress? What products or services could you provide that uniquely support your brand’s purpose and mission and can be monetized and delivered via notifications? What potential partnerships exist between your Brand and the emerging world of smart, connected objects?

The need for brand strategies to maximize the potential of connected objects and the apps that enable them will be new territory and require experimentation with new roles for retailers and consumer brands alike.  The potential is a completely new medium with which to engage and create value. It will be fascinating to see how we expand the notion of relevance and innovation in the future as the boundary between us and our “things” blurs, and our values shift from consuming to connecting with Brands as extensions of our senses.

 

Bill Chidley is a Branding and Experience Design Consultant with over 29 years of experience at Interbrand.