Brand Experience Deserves More Love

Let me paint a picture for you. 

You are looking for love. Like most in this era, you create the perfect dating profile — you've got a flattering selfie, and a perfectly witty bio (thanks, ChatGPT), all designed to attract the right attention. That's your brand strategy. 

But then comes the date when all that promise gets tested, and you either sink or swim, make a connection, or leave them wondering why they swiped right in the first place. That's brand experience. 

In the world of marketing and LinkedIn, brand strategy takes centre stage. Agencies love doing it. Clients love buying it. They are fun, shiny, and feel important. Organisations dive into them because they often align with a change agenda. However, a brand strategy, like a dating profile, despite its powerful wording and clever double entendres, can often feel flimsy and theoretical. That's why I want to espouse my love for brand experience, the equally sexy but more giving side of brand planning. 

At The Royals, we talk about brand experience as the feelings and behaviours a brand creates for audiences in specific moments. It is best thought of in terms of the outcome - the result you want of people interacting with the brand.  

And, just like a good conversation on a date, brand experience adds dimension to other brand elements like design and identity, and considers how people interact with and perceive the brand in real-world situations.

Brand experience is poorly understood. People think about it in artefacts, not applications. A lovely deck. A brand book. A great line. But all that comes to nothing if people don't buy into it or if it can't be activated. No one wants a dust-collecting brand relic. 

Short-termism is another factor. Brand experience is a long game, and most companies prioritise immediate issues, sales, and leads over long-term brand building through experiences.

Many marketers simply don't know what brand experience is or how it's useful. Many have done brand strategy projects but few have pulled it through to experience. Committing time and resources without a framework for assessment is challenging.

Creating consistent brand experiences across multiple touchpoints requires coordination across various departments and channels. This can be challenging and sometimes terrifying for bigger organisations, not to mention political ones.

It helps you stand out. In crowded markets, a unique and memorable brand experience can become a differentiator. IKEA's meatballs are a perfect example of a brand experience that people find charming and delicious. 

It forges genuine emotional connections with customers. Positive experiences create emotional bonds between customers and brands, fostering loyalty. The Nike Running app's coach pep-talks, while very American, help you celebrate that 3km win.

It acts as the thread holding disparate aspects together. Brand experience creates commonly understood principles to design from, applicable to everything from onboarding emails to content strategy. Klarna's Smoooth brand platform exemplifies this - smoooth ads nodding to a smoooth user experience. 

To implement brand experience effectively, agencies should focus on three things: experience principles that flow from brand strategy - these are consistent ways the brand delivers on customer expectations, anchored in feelings and actions; a strategic framework that connects with other brand elements like vision, purpose, and values; and journey mapping that plots the customer experience around emotions and identifies key brand touchpoints.

No one wants to go on bad dates where what you advertise falls short of expectations. While your brand strategy is vital, it's equally important to plot the path of your brand.

Brand experience is where all that design and positioning thinking moves from words on a page to something concrete and tangible that customers can feel, touch, and remember.