Indulge me.

When I was very young, perhaps 5 or 6 years old, my family was visiting my grandparents in Brooklyn. At the time my family lived further out on long island, and we would travel to Brooklyn a few weekends a month for a visit and the traditional Italian Sunday sauce. I could write a novella about these weekends, my many memories, but one stands out.

This weekend a friend’s family was going camping, and I really wanted to go. Camping sounded fun, even though I really had no clear idea of what it was. In a bid to keep me happy, my grandfather told me he would take me camping. I was thrilled.

Later that evening, after the demitasse, my grandfather opened the window in the kitchen, at the back of the railroad flat, and we climbed out on the fire escape, pillows and blankets in tow. I cannot image it was easy for my grandfather to find any comfort, but for me it was heaven. I was camping!

Another world opened as I climbed out on to the fire escape. A world of clothes lines, tiny back yards with sheds, patios, bits of grass, a fruit tree here and there, gardens, bird baths, chairs, trash bins, bicycles, baby strollers, rear windows and fire escapes with little flowerpot gardens.

It was an eye-opening vantage point, a fresh perspective. I may not have learned much about camping, but I remember asking my grandfather a lot of questions about the new world I was taking in.

Staying open, with child-like wonder can be a hard-fought skill in adulthood, yet that’s where we discover new insight, feelings and experiences that are the essence of living. Its where new ideas are born.

To this day, in my mind, conjuring up the fire escape is a metaphor for seeking out new perspectives.

Permission granted; the fire I escape is the burning monotony of living with blinders on.

Find your fire escape.

The other day, I was listening to a popular marketing podcast.  This was a post super bowl episode, and the topic was the commercials. Guests on the show included various brand managers and agency folk. They were talking about a common theme of their work which they all agreed was the big driver of their success.  

They waxed on in glorious terms about their achievements in large part due to this major insight. It was if they were the first to discover electricity or the Beatles or something…. I turned up the volume. 

The driver of their work, the holy grail, the golden nugget, the secret sauce…”it’s all about the customer.” 

That’s it. The customer. They managed to fill over 40 minutes of airtime talking about why it is essential to keep the customer first in all they do and how it affects the strategy and the work and the success of their work. 

Maybe these folks were raised by robots. The notion that the audience is central to their success seemed a revelation. Hello? These were all articulate people but to me they missed an opportunity to have a more nuanced and valuable discussion about their audience insight and not limit themselves to the cleverness of the work. 

Audience, Brand, Creative – the ABC’s of advertising. 

As one of the last truly large-scale communal cultural events, super bowls ads are no longer simply about advertising, they are part of the show, the cultural moment, let’s go all-in and call it a high point. But the real game is away from the ball. The real game of advertising is being won and lost in the trenches, day-in and day-out. It’s the integrated campaigns that have the legs to live in the media, where the customer lives every day that will be the real winners. The Super bowl happens once a year, the super segmented social super bowl (say that 10 times fast) happens 24/7, 365. There is no getting around it. Targeted media to your Audience, the Brand relevance, and the Creativity to make it stick. 

After reading the rankings from Forbes, NY Times, Boston Globe, iSpot TV, USA Today’s Ad Meter and others, it’s clear that if you are in need of support to justify your personal top 5- 10 spots you are bound to find it. Only a couple of the rankings mentioned consideration of the game away from the ball; the knock-on effect of the social impact of a strategically integrated idea, an idea with its hooks in culture. The more thoughtfully integrated ideas have potential for real shelf life, the rest are at risk of just being part of game day entertainment.

Perhaps being entertaining is enough, but to quote a famous film about football, Show me the money. 

Scrolling and clicking, clicking, and scrolling, the mobile economy is surely a boon to retail brands. Strong brands are not defined by sales alone. Strong brands are built on a feeling.

None of this is new or news, yet the media environment and the metrics associated with algorithms of mobile media would appear to favor sales at the expense of brand building.

There is more than one way to build a brand. All brands want to achieve sales. The differences in approach to building a brand often have to do with its origins. If you built your brand out of your garage, then sales are essential to keep building and growing and keeping the lights on. In this scenario, sales are essential to keep funding the operation. If your product or service is good and your sales grow, you’re a success at creating something of value. Why need awareness advertising and brand building efforts? Let’s call this garage scenario brand A.

Let’s consider another scenario, we’ll call it brand B.  You’re a well-established entity that has already achieved scale and you have a new idea for a product or service, and you have budget. You can build demand for this brand through an awareness advertising campaign that demonstrates or implies the value of your new idea. This will be the lead driver of sales. In scenario B, you are investing in a feeling, in the aspiration of your idea as an integral part of the life of the consumer. If the advertising is effective and the brand idea is good and the product or service delivers on its promise, you’ll begin to grow your brand and sales too.

How do you measure the effectiveness of one approach over the other? Let’s conduct a thought experiment. If your brand were to disappear, is it easily replaced in the lives of consumers? Would it be missed in a manner that people would find disturbing?

Most brand managers don’t like to answer this question.

If the world wakes up tomorrow and the Apple brand is gone, is there a replacement? Nike?  Amazon? Prada?

Functionally you may try to argue there are alternatives. Emotionally, if you’re being honest, your response will be no. This is the signal of a true brand, it’s irreplaceable in hearts and minds.

Why? Brands and branding are not simply about driving sales. It’s about making deep connections with your audience. Connections that head for the heart. It’s these connections that drive more than sales, they drive loyalty above all other choices, they create advocacy among users; spokespeople who recommend your brand. They defend against upstarts, build positive association that protect against the odd mishap and build equity. This equity shows up as brand value that support brand extensions, partnerships, and new offerings in an ever-present response to evolving consumer needs. Most importantly, brand drives market value.

If you can only speak of your brand in terms of sales, chances are pretty good it can easily be replaced in the lives of your customers. You can start with scenario A and build a substantial bottom line but failing to invest in the brand building approach of scenario B leaves your business open to the vagaries of ruthless competition with little more to protect you than price.

Price alone is a race to the bottom.

One thing I’ve noticed in this semi-post pandemic work world is that despite demands by many companies that people return to the office, many people continue to work with a remote mindset.

There seems to be an aversion to getting together in the same room and hashing it out, whatever it is. Physically, on days back in the office, people are not taking full advantage of the opportunity for being in the same place at the same time, working on the same stuff, solving problems together. And, most importantly, learning from each other.

The world is suffering a virtual hangover.

Poor habits from the home office abound. For example, chatting via text or slack, slacking off is what I’m calling it. If you’re a senior manager, you have the obligation to guide junior team members, who may lack the experience as well as others who should know better.  It’s your job. Get the ball rolling, help your teams appreciate the benefits of getting into the same room and hammering out a solution.

No more slack time.

If you’re running a brand, a marketing team, agency or even a production company, I can offer you this insight. There are members of these teams who are junior and have no idea what they are doing. They are wasting a great deal of time and probably costing you money. They need leadership, management, and mentors.

Tools like Slack are effective when used with intention and clear purpose. In fact they can save time and create efficiency, but they are terrible for training your team on the ins and outs of producing great work.

I’m happy to bill you for my time.

I’m hot but not uncomfortable, saved from the intensity of the sun by the occasional gusty breeze and the air that’s being conditioned by the crashing surf.

If you are lucky or early, it’s possible to put your blanket down just above the high tide line. Close enough to the surf to benefit from cool ocean spray, yet far enough not to be forced to retreat up the beach if you catch a rising tide.

The sun feels heavy on your eyelids as you push your sunglasses up into your hair and lie back into the blanket. Squirming a bit allows you to conform the sand into the perfect cradle.

Somewhere up wind, someone moves and sand, carried on the breeze peppers your skin. Involuntarily you close your eyes tight, squinting against the odds. Along with the sand in the breeze comes the sounds of a distant ballgame on a radio and other radios add to the low chorus with music. The sounds of chattering kids playing, whooping in the surf, the smell of coconut oil and the salt air effervescence fills your nostrils. A deep breath, an exhale, and you drift back into a semi-conscious state, enveloped within the surround sound of summer.

Awake but asleep, suspended, hanging in the luxury of a perfect beach day it feels like another world. Distant, then near, the sound of a single engine aircraft lumbering at low speed stirs you to awareness. As it approaches you don your sunglasses, lean up on your elbows and watch in fascination as it drags a banner through the air a few hundred feet above and just offshore. Flying for miles along the beach, the banner promoting a radio station or beach club, brand or event, is seen by countless thousands of people, just there, just for you, the community of beach goers. An anticipated and perhaps welcomed part of the day, the aircraft with its banner, gives a wink and a nod to the pleasure of hang time. A summer ritual along the shore, popping and waving as it flies.

Back in the pre internet days, our attentions were not as divided as they are today. Now those flying banners are competing with the banners of the internet. Media has always been vying for our attention, at all times, in almost all locations, oblivious to our surroundings, our moods, our desires. On days like this, I’ll take the flying banner.

Is it an age-old media stunt? Sure is, but I don’t mind the novel interruption. When I sit up and open my eyes, I not only see the promotion, I also appreciate the sea and the sand and the sky. As the plane sails off into the distance, I notice the little shore birds chasing through the foam and I feel blessed.

Context is key.

The most important context of user experience design is consumer mindset.

Before we start pushing pixels around, we should be working hard to understand consumer wants and needs. Gathering insights into their emotional desires is critical to creating an experience, throughout the entire customer journey, that in both subtle and direct ways will reinforce your brand’s ability to help fulfill their desire.

These learnings can inform all design in both form and content to help deliver effective consumer engagement.

Once prototypes are developed, conducting user experience research, including eye tracking, allow refinements to be made that work to optimize the user experience right down to the micro interaction level.

Creators need to find the right balance between being engaging-entertaining while also being honest about the fact that the entire purpose is to facilitate the customers acquisition of the product or service.

User experience can also be thought of as utility.

The utility of the user experience, as a lens through which to view the entire customer journey, offers designers the opportunity to apply their talents to enhance the performance of the entire team.

Understanding and tracking the entire customer journey is essential to a successful engagement. The fractured media environment today demands simple brand ideas that are delivered simply and always in context of consumer desires. When user experience design diverges from the brand idea, it is no longer doing its job well. There are often opportunities to chase trends and implement ideas, methods, and tactics that may create a short-term boost in sales, but at the same time are weakening the brand.

In the long run, a great, well-executed, brand idea will outperform clever transactional tactics. It takes a strong idea and the willpower to resist the temptation of short-term thinking to build a strong and enduring brand.

To connect the dots, the customer experience journey is an obligation to the brand idea and strong brands are anchored in the mindset of consumer desire.