People like to beat up on RadioShack for all kinds of obvious reasons.

From a brand experience POV, sexy it ain’t (the stores look ’80s retro, but not on purpose). And from a financial POV, its need to redefine its retail premise and improve its experience is urgently manifested in its historically low $5 share price.

And yet…

Today I went to my neighborhood RadioShack out of a desperate need for ear buds for my iPhone. As I bought my (Apple, premium priced) earphones amidst the downmarket retail experience that is RadioShack, I was blown away by the contrast to Apple stores… but in a surprisingly positive way.

1. The salesperson took the time to engage me even though I was buying a relatively low priced item
2. She noted that my iPhone is cracked and offered to find out when I can upgrade (sooner than I thought, and I didn’t know I could do that at a RadioShack)
3. As part of that pitch she managed to get my email address, my home address and my home and mobile numbers
4. Although I missed that glistening shiny white cool feeling one gets at the Apple store, I did not miss that panicked claustrophobia I feel amidst the crowds, nor did I miss the implied insult of having to make an appointment or get on a waiting list for service

So: even if your brand can’t afford or isn’t ready for or simply doesn’t want to have that glistening shiny “special” brand experience of an Apple store, simply having effective, engaging, well-trained staff that proactively offer solutions to customers can help you make people feel pretty good about your brand experience.

One of the issues that marketers grapple with when trying to design a better brand or customer experience is that often, everyone and no one “owns” experience. 

So, for example, one team owns the customer call center, and another owns email communications, and another owns product, and another owns… and so forth.

Of course customers don’t make these distinctions — they just expect the entire experience to be great, from start to finish, across touchpoints.

An article by McKinsey & Company that’s been sitting on my desk for a shocking period of time (yes, very analogue) does a terrific job of addressing this issue and suggesting ways that organizations can fix the problem. 

Here’s a link to the article online > http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Were_all_marketers_now_2834

How many times would you guess the average 20-something would switch media, i.e., move their attention from one piece of media content to another, in a typical (non-working) hour?

According to a report covered in this week’s Ad Age, it’s 27 times an hour.

Yes, 27 times.

That’s 27 shifts from the TV to tablet to mobile device and back with multiple windows open on each. 

For me, that’s categorical proof that engagement really does matter in the digital space. It’s not enough to create a cute-babies-snarky-humor video and wait for it to go viral. Getting people’s attention and holding it for more than a split-second really requires you to do something special. 

This is especially true of 20-somethings or “digital natives”: their propensity to switch channels, according to the study, is higher than that of “digital immigrants,” or those of us who grew up in the old media world but have become accustomed to this one, who switch only 17 times.

For more on the value of digital brand engagement and how that’s different from just winning clicks and eyeballs, read Jack’s latest article on Digital Brand Experiences and trends at this year’s SXSW, available on our Slideshare channel.

Great piece on NPR this morning ( > http://n.pr/wvcmzR) about the growth of car-sharing and the expansion of new models of experience built around individual car owners “renting” their cars to strangers through companies like Wheelz.

The evolution of this business offering over the past decade is a great example of creating a new experience that reflects changes in consumer behaviors and attitudes (e.g., more urban population, eco-consciousness, recession). What’s fascinating (as the story reports) is how established brands like GM are staking a claim through investments rather than seeing such businesses as a threat. That’s good experience brand thinking. 

photo source: NPR

Valentine’s Day gives me an excuse to comment (as so many others have) on Chipotle’s “Back to the Start”. This two-minute ad has been steadily accumulating YouTube views since August but inspired a frenzy of social commentary when it aired nationally during the Grammys.

The connection between pigs and Valentine’s Day? Passion, of course.

It’s Chipotle’s passion for “food with integrity” that so impresses me. Most brands assume consumers aren’t interested in or shouldn’t know about the supply-chain: where ingredients come from, how they’re made and what their social impact may be. (Indeed Fast Company has pointed out how unusual this is in the fast food space.)

Chipotle’s passion for their ingredients and where they come from is in a class of its own. They’ve orchestrated a shift in the conversation around ingredients that some said stole the spotlight during the Grammys (a big feat given the competition between animated pigs and, say, Adele).

It may be off-putting to some (I dunno, people who don’t like cute farm animals?) but I’d hazard that it will inspire intense loyalty in its customers (it certainly does in me) as well as ever-increasing awareness and market share for the brand. 

A new study by Accenture (http://bit.ly/xHldfD) shows that brand love isn’t enough to keep customers loyal and focused on your brand. It’s a perfect parellel to relationships (a nod to Valentine’s Day tomorrow). An enduring feeling of loyalty isn’t enough to keep the spark alive - you have to constantly be putting effort into making the experience something worth coming back for. 

And expectations go UP over time, short wait times and talking to one person to resolve your issue are now just the table stakes of customer service. 

What does this mean for brands? They have to be diligent about providing a great customer experience ALL the time. And to do that, they have to start measuring each experience on its own to truly understand where the breaks occur. 

Without feedback you can’t understand the true positives and negatives of your customer experience. Without measurement, you can’t improve.  And without constant improvement, customers will start to look elsewhere, brand love and all. 

It all comes back to the experience. It’s why customers come, it’s why they stay, it’s why they love a brand. And when it’s not up to par…it’s why they leave.

(Source: adage.com)

Corporate conferences are a centrifuge of rich data. Just think about it—attendees provide personal information, register for sessions, exchange business cards, present knowledge, send tweets, write blog posts, and (let’s face it) there were probably a few photos taken at the post-conference happy hour too.  

But what happens to that river of data after most conferences? Maybe an email list is assembled and used to market the event the following year. But for all intents and purposes, it just floats away. Chuck Hollis, VP Global Marketing CTO at EMC Corporation, recently blogged about the fact that big data analytics are “the next big thing in creating value from information.” It’s true. Increasingly, we as marketing professionals have to become data scientists—specialists who can make use of big data to significantly improve the quality of the work we do as a company. 

At Jack, we’re in the business of creating brand experiences that reach the people that matter most to organizations, which requires brands to show that they know their consumers. So ask your company this:

1. What if brand experiences got smarter every time they happened?
2. What if no two annual events were ever the same, because every year, they’re more personal and personalized?
3. What if you were at EMC World next year and the person at the information kiosk already knew which session you were looking to get to next and that you might be interested in them making a dinner reservation at a Thai restaurant that night?

These are the questions we spend our days pondering… how can we make your brand experience work harder for you and your customers?