I’ve just finished reading a heretical article about brand experience by Mark Di Somma of Brand Strategy Insider. It’s entitled “Is Brand Experience The New Sugar?” It took a couple of reads for me to get his thesis, perhaps because I’m somewhat hooked on the magic of brand experience. In a weird way, though. I can sit in front of the screen smiling like an idiot at those Clydesdale-and-lab-puppy commercials, feeling little twinges of joy when the big boys save the little girl from the wolf and yet never drink the beer, which a Texas friend has described as “bunny piss.” But I digress …
Mr. Di Somma asks “ … have brands simply made high-energy experiences the new must-add?” That is, do customers really want—or do they truly need—a sweet emotional experience to accompany each encounter with a brand. He points out that, quite often, we just want a product or service to do what it does, reliably and without much fanfare. As he puts it, “The increasing difficulty for marketers I think is to let something do what it does without adding some artificial level of enhancement.”
He also notes that by pampering (my word) consumers with a steady stream of experience-based marketing, marketers are turning them into narcissists who believe they are entitled to whatever is on offer “while at the same time failing to make any reciprocal commitment based on what they have been served up.” Now this is an interesting concept. What I think it’s saying is that the marketer is giving the classic 110% and the only thing the customer needs to do is buy the product, maybe without much loyalty attached. If we’re hooked on experience as on sugar or opioids, then when do we reach the point that yet another fails to deliver what we want or have been told that we want? In short, when do diminishing returns set in?
So, what to do? Mr. Di Somma suggests simplifying your branding—and he notes that more than 60 percent of consumers would pay more for brands that delivered greater simplicity and time savings. “The discipline now doesn’t lie in simply adding experiences per se but rather in being able to discern and filter when adding experiences is extraneous and will only serve to dilute what customers get.”
In my view, it’s hard to fault marketers for devoting ever-increasing percentages of their budgets to brand-experience marketing. After all, the reasoning goes, everyone’s doing it and arguing against FOMO may be futile. And hey, some brand experience marketing is truly enjoyable, such as seeing that big horse and that little pup together, while some falls disastrously flat—witness the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad.
On the other hand selling a product that delivers what buyers want without fanfare—“Gentlemen, there are times when a cigar is only a cigar!”—may be the best marketing strategy yet.
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Mark Di Somma says
Thanks for the write up and the neat summary Susan. I’m not suggesting that there should be no experiences, merely that I don’t think everyone needs to go experience-hunting for everything all the time. Best wishes, Mark Di Somma
Susan Monroe says
Thanks, Mark, for clarifying that. I probably went a bit overboard. I do enjoy reading your articles and look forward to sharing your thoughts again soon.