The Experience Effect: Engage Your Customers with a Consistent and Memorable Brand Experience

CHAPTER 7

Reach Out and Touch

Mapping Effective and Engaging Touchpoints

IN CHAPTERS FOUR, FIVE, AND SIX we’ve been exploring the

need for a full and deep understanding of our consumer targets.

Understanding our consumers and their rational and emotional

needs is critical to developing the experience effect.

A deep understanding is the foundation for making a connec-

tion with our consumers and motivating their behavior, perhaps

even adding value to their lives—which is ultimately what we need

to do as marketers if we hope to build a relationship with them

and if we hope to build brand loyalty to any extent.

Now it’s time to do what we set out to do: actually create the

experience effect. We now not only have a good understanding of

the target markets, both rationally and emotionally, but we’ve also

99

defined the brand. We’ve got what we need to start building. The

next step in our process here is the touchpoint.

Marketers use a lot of different terms when it comes to

describing consumer touchpoints. Some use terms such as media,

channels, vehicles, venues, connections, or even engagements. All of

these terms mean the same thing in my mind. I like the concept of

a touchpoint because it is so visually descriptive and so broad in

its potential coverage. It’s a chance for the brand to reach out,

make a connection, provide information, and motivate consumers

to do something that will ultimately impact their lives.

Marketers have often thought of

touchpoints in only the traditional

way, as in television and print adver-

tising. In a constantly changing world

of media options, I’d like to think of

touchpoints in the broadest way pos-

sible to include any channel available

to us, whether on the Internet, out of

home, in any kind of mail, or in any

manner in which the brand can con-

nect with a consumer. Any opportuni-

ty to reach a consumer is a touchpoint that we should potentially

use to build the brand experience. It can be anything that puts the

brand within arm’s reach of a consumer. Movie theaters, cell

phones, bathroom stalls, chat rooms, exercise bikes at the gym,

taxicabs, pens, banner ads, freight trucks, social media—anything

and everything.

Don’t be constrained by traditional thinking, like television

advertising or even websites (the “new traditional”). Think even

broader than what is currently called the new media on the

Internet, like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. With the proliferation

of media options, the list of potential touchpoints is almost end-

less. Almost anything is a possibility—even people walking up and

100 The Experience Effect

A touchpoint is anything

that puts the brand

within arm’s reach of

a consumer—movie

theaters, cell phones,

bathroom stalls,

chat rooms—anything

and everything.

down the streets, one of the oldest forms of media, although now

we call them “street teams.”

Banana Republic does a great job of using shopping bags as a

touchpoint. If there’s a sale happening at Banana Republic, then

the streets and the mall are filled with consumers carrying shop-

ping bags announcing the sale.

Touchpoints themselves can have rational and emotional

components. Advertising touchpoints can be pretty straightfor-

ward, but the creative execution can certainly leverage an emo-

tional connection—an entire industry has been built around it. I do

love the newer media and the more creative touchpoints for their

emotional component. Many of our choices here have strong

emotional potential, especially in areas where consumers can

connect with each other and share their experiences, like in blogs,

message boards, forums, or the social networking sites like

MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. These touchpoints are

hugely emotional and offer a tremendous opportunity for mar-

keters if we engage with consumers correctly. Of course, user-

generated content within a touchpoint hits the top of the emotion-

al chart. Just take a look at some of the videos that consumers

submit to websites about breast cancer, for example.

YouTube is a multiple touchpoint for advertising and sponsor-

ship opportunities in addition to the video uploads. For some

brands, it makes sense to specifically develop long-format adver-

tising for use on YouTube alone, and a lot of brands are adding

their advertising to YouTube as a way to work around DVR and

TiVo surfing. Nike actually puts extended versions of its advertis-

ing on YouTube so that brand lovers can get the full experience.

Kraft uploads how-to videos from its website as well. So as a con-

sumer you may not catch the television advertising when sched-

uled but you can still experience it online. The rules are less strin-

gent and the emotions can run much higher, which means the

brand can go much deeper with consumers than it can on network

101CHAPTER 7 Reach Out and Touch