The Six Disciplines of Agile Marketing

Chapter 13Creating Remarkable Customer Experiences

This is what customers pay us for—to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it.

—Steve Jobs, American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Computer

Creating remarkable customer experiences lies at the heart of Agile marketing. It is the ultimate outcome.

If marketers use Agile simply to produce more content, more advertising, more social media shares—more unwanted copy that never gets read—then we've failed. The ultimate test of Agile marketing is this: Can it be used to create an engaging, differentiated customer experience that draws new customers and engages them powerfully with the brand, and in remarkable ways?

Marketing Is About Experiences

In their book, Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing, Robert Rose and Carla Johnson argue convincingly that we are in a new era of marketing—an era based on experiences. Figure 13.1 outlines Rose and Johnson's seven eras of marketing. Although not everyone would describe the history of marketing in terms of these specific seven eras, there is general agreement among marketers that there is a difference between marketing products alone; marketing products plus services; and marketing products, services and a brand relationship.

This seventh era of marketing ...