Make Your Brand Matter

CHAPTER 8Humanizing the Experience

Throughout the previous chapters, the selected brand stories have clearly demonstrated that digital transformation has changed how every individual, regardless of relationship, demographic, and socioeconomic category now engages with brands. Consumers, business customers, employees, and partners worldwide now use a range of digital tools and technologies to communicate, inquire, and transact, regardless of whether they're in a remote rural area or the most crowded metropolis. This has reached a point, in this newly emerging post‐digital transformation era, where digital has become invisible. Like air, we don't notice digital capabilities unless they're absent. It's a foundational expectation.

This was a topic I discussed in detail with other experts in preparation for this book. One person I had an opportunity to spend significant time with was Kaleeta McDade, who currently serves as the Global Executive Creative Director for Ogilvy Experience. Kaleeta is a brilliant mind who embraces the understanding that experience has become the foundation for defining the brand in the post‐digital transformation era.

In our discussion, Kaleeta highlighted the rush to functionality that so many brands were forced to employ during the first full decade of the digital transformation era. Many brands followed a Field of Dreams strategy (a reference to the 1989 film released by Universal Studios), building functionality on multiple platforms and hoping that ...