It’s About Time

What business wouldn’t like a customer to spend more time with them?

Certainly not Korean car maker Genesis, which built an entire value proposition around the concept of wasting as little as possible of people’s precious time.

They invented the GPA, the Genesis Personal Assistant, which supports customers at every step of the buying and ownership experience. They created the ‘We come to you’ promise for every test-drive, every car delivery and every annual service, so you never have to visit a dealership again. They also launched  ‘transparent pricing’, so you don’t have to shop around for a better offer. And they created three luxury showrooms in urban city centres where their affluent, but time-poor audience lives, so people wouldn’t have to venture to an out-of-town dealership.

With everything they do, Genesis respects the value of its customers’ time, so they can spend it on the things that are truly important to them.

It’s a proposition that flies in the face of conventional marketing wisdom.

Concepts like brand engagement or brand relationship building are based on the belief that people want to spend time with a brand. We measure dwell-time, frequency of contact and engagement rates and while this might be useful for a few lucky businesses that are an integral part of something people are truly passionate about (think Rapha for cyclists), the concept of demanding more of your customers’ time seems deeply flawed for the rest of us.

There simply are too many brands vying for people’s attention, and it becomes harder and harder to win the fight. But more importantly, personal, freely disposable time is becoming an increasingly precious resource. Even though global wealth has risen over the past decades, this material prosperity hasn’t translated into time affluence. And for many people, the stress of being ‘time poor’ is often linked to poor well-being and physical health, and reduced levels of productivity. It’s an epidemic that spans most of our rich, Western societies. 

Put simply, most people don’t have the time for your brand. They don’t have half an hour to dive deeper and uncover your carefully crafted narrative. They don’t want to start a relationship. They don’t want to spend their precious time. They want less, not more. Ask any parent if they have time to waste and you will know the answer.

And whilst this might seem problematic, it also presents a huge opportunity for brands to stand out and make a meaningful difference to consumers. Immediacy and simplification have become the next frontiers of disruption, where competitive advantage is gained by providing brand experiences that are as efficient and non-intrusive as possible. Whole new categories are being built around the proposition of ‘value for time’.

Genesis is just one the latest brands to do this, banking, just like Amazon did nearly three decades ago, on the true success of a business being built not on lower prices, but on higher convenience. People return time and time again to Amazon because next-day delivery saves time compared to high-street retailers and its one-click shopping minimises the buying effort.

Equally, new disruptors such as Gorillas or Getir have transformed grocery-shopping with the promise of 10-minute deliveries. Brands like Webuyanycar.com have turned the stressful and time-consuming business of selling a car on its head. And even printer manufacturers such as HP have innovated, with ‘Instant Ink’ deliveries saving people the trip to the stationary store in case their inks run out.

Whilst not every brand can create a completely new business model, most companies can find ways to respect and value their customers’ time. They can ask themselves if every customer interaction is necessary and if every piece of customer engagement is a true benefit. They can find new ways to simplify arduous tasks that steal their customers’ time. They can hone their service experience to better match customer expectations. Or they can create unforgettable moments that people gladly trade for their precious time.

To unlock the potential, brands need to closely look at the importance people place in their actions and behaviours and the time they’re willing to invest into these. They need to understand the value of time in the context of people’s lives.

Tools like ‘Brand Experience Mapping’ can help marketers to do just that. By looking at the entire brand experience, it allows agencies and marketing professionals to spot inefficiencies and pain points within people’s journeys. But more importantly, it allows them to broaden their perspective and think about how the brand might be able to innovate outside the immediate category. The concept of 10-minute grocery delivery for instance wasn’t just an optimisation of the supermarket experience but a reaction to people’s impulsiveness and lack of planning in their daily lives. Time is something you usually don’t have if your kids are screaming for dinner and you’ve run out of fish fingers that you promised on the way home.

So, instead of thinking about what else we can throw at customers to make our brands more likeable and engaging, let’s think about how we can declutter people’s lives. Let’s start thinking about where we can simplify their journeys. Let’s start thinking about how we can do less but in a more meaningful way.

It’s about time.