Spend any time with someone in marketing and you’ll hear a familiar theme. Everything changed with Covid.
As it turns out, following the FiveFour principles is good preparation. We’re not bragging but the changes in the business landscape over the past 18 months have made customer experience more important than ever.
That’s the lesson we took away from this article on FastCompany.com, a business site focused on innovation, technology and design.
The article, “COVID killed marketing. Long live the experience economy,” is written by Duncan Wardle, the former Head of Innovation & Creativity at Disney.
Wardle writes that the pandemic upended traditional marketing. “…but the ‘experience economy’ is taking its place to reengineer our relationships with customers and engage more deeply than ever before.”
As you may know, we’re devotees of the Experience Economy concept, as conceived by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore. The article fits nicely with what we teach at FiveFour. We believe that the customer experience – and all the details that go into it – is what builds your brand, not a bunch of money spent on advertising.
Now, there’s a place for focused marketing. We think about it as throwing gas on the fire of what you’ve already created. The upshot is that we can make your life a lot easier and improve your bottom line.
But back to the post-pandemic world as envisioned by Duncan Wardle. Here’s a great passage.
“Think about what we worked so hard to virtually recreate during lockdowns: Family dinners. Concerts. Cooking classes. We didn’t spend our time in isolation dreaming about a trip to the mall. We spent it dreaming about shared experiences.”
So true.
How is your customer experience? Take this quick assessment to find out.