Do you provide super experience to your customers?

Brands now belong to the consumer. Keeping this in mind, brands are diving into consumer insights and reaching out to consumers to collaborate and build brands. During the Festival of Creativity held at Cannes, the biggest idea regarding consumer experience was centered around tapping into shared humanity. This focuses on gathering insights of consumers lives rather than putting them in data categories.

According to Forbes, 80% of companies feel that they provide “super experience” – but only 8% of consumers agree. Understanding consumers and creating ways to communicate with them beyond the typical screens help companies become part of this 8%.

To do this, brands are creating platforms where consumers are co-creators of the brand experience. However; brands first need to identify and stand by their brand values before consumers can be involved.

A brilliant example of this is the food chain, Wendy’s, entrance into Fortnite. Wendy’s stands by the fact that they do not do frozen food. When they noticed that burger restaurant’s kitchens in the trending game on Fortnite included freezers, Wendy’s entered the game, built an avatar that looked like their mascot, Wendy, and began destroying freezers in Fortnite kitchens. Once Fortnite gamers realized what Wendy’s was doing, they too began destroying the freezers instead of playing the game. Consumers thereby co-created this environment, and with their help, Wendy’s was able to create enough noise that the developers of Fortnite removed all freezers from the virtual game.

Another insight was the new trend of using sound to create a connection with users. Visa, and now Mastercard, have created sounds at points of purchase that reflect the brands and their personalities. However, while creating a sound, brands need to be mindful of the impact that sound can create and how it may come across in different cultures.

To be relevant and provide the right kind of experience to customers, brands need to first establish their own values and tonality across all channels. They then need to understand who the consumer really is and reach them on their relevant platforms, and in the midst of their trends, become a story in the consumers’ lives.