BRAND EXPERIENCES IN THE

DIGITAL WORLD:
BIG IDEAS & RELEVANT TRENDS FROM SXSW AND
BEYOND
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE: A POV
THE WEB IS READY FOR ITS CLOSE-UP
THE NEXT BIG THING? CONTROLLING CHANCE
GAME ON! AND THEN YOU DIE, AGAIN & AGAIN
MOBILE PAYMENTS: FIX THIS EXPERIENCE
EXPERIENCE THIS! SOCIAL+LOCAL+MOBILE+LIVE
THE BIG DEAL ABOUT BIG DATA
CREATING SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
LEARN MORE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Loyalty counts more and costs less than awareness. I read
that in the Harvard Business Review in 2001. At the risk of
snarky comments about aging HBR readers, Id like to use it
to set the stage for the following articles on key trends in
digital brand experience in 2012, at SXSW and beyond,
because it still gets at a fundamental issue.
When Kristen O. Sandberg wrote this 11 years ago, I
believe she meant that marketers would get more bang for
their buck by making customers love them than by spending
lots of money to generate awareness. Its an argument for
depth of engagement over breadth of impressions.
Lots has changed in 11 years. In 2001, awareness meant
traditional advertising, which was and still is expensive. In
2001, there was no Facebook, YouTube or Twitter; Google
was still a private company run by 20-somethings. Mobile
devices!fundamental to most of what we talk about at
places like SXSW!were simply something to call home with.
Now, in 2012, awareness has become seemingly cheap-
thanks precisely to all these inventions. P&G, the worlds
biggest ad spender, announced it will reduce billions in its
marketing spend by shifting its emphasis to digital marketing.
The perception is that if brands just go digital they can tick
off the awareness box at a discount. Its tempting to simply
replace one form of awareness with another and move from
an expensive traditional model to an inexpensive digital one.
But that would be a mistake.
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE: A POV
What we believe is absolutely critical for brands investing in
the digital space!and thats everyone, right?!is to build their
digital strategy t hrough t he lens of experience. By
experience we mean creating something that stands out,
thats special and memorable. It could mean a compelling use
of a digital platform to enhance consumers experience of the
brand. It could mean designing a new experience in the digital
space thats never been done before.
But it shouldnt just mean creating a video or attempting to go
viral. In a world where consumers time and attention is more
precious than ever, it is more important than ever to treat every
touchpoint as special. Our own research shows 75% of
consumers globally say if a brand wants to get my attention it
has to do something special.
So yes, what I read all those years back is still true!though I
might tweak it to say Engagement counts more and costs less
than awareness. Its even more true now, in a more digital
world: making people love you not only keeps current
customers sticky but also inspires admirers to talk about you.
Ultimately, digital brand experiences!and every brand
experience is at least partially digital now!should be an
answer to the question, Am I making people love my brand?
Liz Bigham is SVP, Director of Brand Marketing.
In a world where consumers time
and attention is more precious than
ever, it is more important than ever
to treat every touchpoint as special.
THE WEB IS READY FOR ITS CLOSE-UP
We need an app. If there's one phrase that throws me
into a tizzy (like Madelyn Kahn in "Clue") it's this.
Because 90% of the time you dont (see footnote).
But while this app craze has at times made my job
harder, I do think it has done something that is
fundamentally great for the web: It has made people
used tonay, come to expectsimple, elegant and easy-
to-use digital interfaces. And it is spreading into the
platforms and sites we use on a daily basis.
Look at the most recent web success stories. Pinterest:
visual, elegant simplicity. Instagram: it makes everyday
moments look like high art with the simple touch of a
"tree". About.me: it gives everyone an online portfolio
Tyra Banks would smize over. Even Facebook, arguably
one of the most non-aesthetic places on the web, added
a timeline that puts the photos in your life at the
forefront.
As a person who follows the KISS approach to UX
design (keep it simple stupid), this is an exciting time for
the web. I feel it must be like when (insert smart yet
relevant analogy to architecture or art).
Out: gradient metal sheens on over-animated sites. In:
understated simplicity that allows people's lives and
stories to take center stage. If you think about it, this is
such a natural progression for our hyper-connected,
global world. Not everyone speaks the same language,
jargon, nomenclature, but we can all understand and be
immediately affected by a photo.
Everything we do digitally has to play out across all our
devices, therefore it has to be simple and visual. I won't
take the time to read 100 words of copy on my phone, but
I will get sucked in by clean design and powerful graphics.
Another exciting aspect of the beautication of the web: it
levels the playing eld. My (cough-cough) year-old mom
and my four year-old daughter both use Instagram. They
have different creative takes on the world, but it doesnt
matter. The beauty of this and all increasingly visual web
experiences: it doesn't reward the most savvy or those with
the most time on their hands; but the most passionate. And
isn't that what we should always strive to do?
Leesa Wytock is VP, Digital Director.
Footnote: Instead of saying I need an app, what you
really should be saying is I need a mobile strategy. An
app is just one component of a larger campaign.
Everything we do digitally has to
play out across all our devices,
therefore it has to be simple and
visual.
Theres a lot of buzz around the app Highlight coming out
of SXSWi. Its a clever combination of location-aware
services tapping into social networks to help you see people
physically nearby you might know or have something in
common with. Other than abetting your voyeuristic streak,
its trying to help you connect with other people, digitally
and in-person.
It taps into a larger trend around managing serendipity
thats relevant online and at in-person events. We all love
chance encounters with interesting people, or insights into
our own world we get from learning about something
totally unrelated. These chance encounters and connections
are at the heart of innovation and creativity.
Where Highlight succeeds is by helping to manage and
encourage those chance encounters. With a critical mass of
socially-networked, app-downloading people (like at
SXSW), you can use the app to meet new folks and have
interesting conversations.
Some of the frustrations around this years SXSWi
conference itself were precisely due to the feeling that there
were fewer opportunities for chance encounters. For
example, with so many focused campuses, it was much
harder to jump from a session on user interface design to
one on the neuroscience of marketing, without walking for
20 minutes and hoping you can get in.
We cant control serendipity, but in our programs and
experiences we certainly can embrace it.
Think about the experience, not your silos. It may be
logical to organize content based on your internal
organization, but it limits the breadth of the experience.
Find ways of encouraging the cross-pollination of ideas.
Create the space and opportunity for chance encounters.
Physically and digitally in your marketing programs, create
the space for the chance encounters to happen. If every
minute of your program is mapped out in advance, youre
likely missing the opportunity to enrich the experience.
Use the tools that make sense for your audience. Not
everyone has digital phones, nor is willing to give some
app total access to their Facebook account. Let the interests
and proles of your audience guide which tools you
embrace.
In short, we need to celebrate the context. Content is
everywhere, and chances are your content could be
accessed in other ways than your event or experience. The
context around the content is what makes an experience so
powerfulthose chance encounters with new people, or
different ideas. By incorporating serendipity into your
planning, youll be taking advantage of the real
opportunity your experience and program represents.
Tom Michael is a Senior Strategist.
THE NEXT BIG THING? CONTROLLING CHANCE
Physically and digitally in your
marketing programs, create the
space for the chance encounters to
happen.
Marketing cant ignore what some of us have known all
along: that games are good for business. Now its a multi-
billion-dollar industry. Some of us have been competing our
whole lives, and now its cool to be caught playing Words
with Friends. We can point to large-scale studies to defend
these once deemed waste of time activities.
And what about Minecraft, the amazingly simple block-
building experience which has grown massively due to word
of mouth? Underlying the success of Minecraft is something
that we marketers have to keep in mind, and thats the
power of good storytelling. Some game experiences like
Minecraft can tap into creativity, and innovative thinking. As
a brand experience marketing engineer, those are the
games we get excited by.
What's happened with gaming, as with photography, music
and publishing, is that it has become totally accessible. All
the pieces are in your pocket. Gaming is nally cool. We
will soon have the study that proves that World of Warcraft
staves-off early on-set dementia. That will be the day
someone will have to shoot me, for real.
Our world is one big game, and we're all playing to win.
Steve Mooney is Managing Director of Jack Mortons
Boston ofce.

For as long as I can remember, games have been my
reason to be. Now, nally, I feel vindicated: a recent set of
studies (covered in the Wall Street Journal) suggest that
gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception.
So games are good for you. What took so long?
Maybe its that nobody was paying much attention until
Mark Zuckerberg came along with the biggest gameboard
ever. Gaming is the new black and all marketing must be
gamied. Is gamication even a word?
These new studies tell just half of the story. Those of us who
traded GPAs for capture the ag back in the analogue days
can tell you that gaming impacts more than meets the eye
not just creativity and decision-making but also leadership
and entrepreneurialism.

And heres my beef: what's missing from most of the recent
wildly popular games is invention. We've lost the chaos of
having to dream up a game from scratch. Technology
makes everything too easy. Where's the iPad game where
players have to invent the game rst, and then play it? We
hear about professed improvement in laparoscopic surgical
technique due to pushing those buttons. But what happened
to picking teams, devising a winning strategy, and dealing
with changing situations like when Billy quits because his
sister schooled him? Black Ops and Red Dead Redemption
have nothing on a ve-hour marathon game of Risk.
GAME ON! AND THEN YOU DIE, AGAIN AND AGAIN
Gaming is the new black and all
marketing must be gamied.
After almost 20 years of minimal consumer-facing innovation
in the payments vertical, all the recent buzz has centered
around the notion of mobile payments. Why carry a wallet
full of credit cards when your phone can do the same job
and also incorporate loyalty points, coupons, and send real-
time offers from Macys the minute you walk into
Bloomingdales? Near Field Communication (NFC) solutions
like Isis and Google Wallet and Cloud-based products like
LevelUp are making big bets that consumers agree.
So, then, why is that mobile payments technologies have yet
to take off? It was almost two years ago that Verizon, T-
Mobile, and AT&T announced that they were forming the
joint venture known as Isis. Arguably the most important
reason: mobile payments brands have yet to clearly
articulate a real value proposition to consumers to drive
adoption. Whats the experience consumers are truly
looking for? Its not convenience; theyre bringing their
wallets with them anyway.
The real opportunity for mobile payments brands is to make
their experience absolutely simple, intuitive, and easy for a
consumer to adopt offers, pay for something, and get credit
at their favorite merchant. Asking consumers to take their
phone out, open an app, select a card, and then pay is too
muchespecially if you factor in the guy standing in line
behind you at Starbucks who just wants to pay for his
morning latte with cash.
Companies should look to Amex and foursquare. Simply link
your Amex to your foursquare account and the
statement credits start rolling in when you check-in to
places. No special phones and special readers at the point
of sale. No slowing of the check-out process. Just a great
customer experience.
Which brings us to another very important issue: until all
merchants accept mobile payments, mass adoption will
never happen. Brands need to take away pain points for
merchants, not add to them. Asking a local merchant to
invest in NFC or some other modication to their POS just is
not realistic. And until all dry cleaners and coffee shops
take mobile payments, customers wont care.
So, what are mobile payments brands to do? For one,
leverage the power of experience and one-to-one
marketing. Empowering early adopters (like all of the
hipsters at SXSW) to share their experiences with the
masses not only helps to make consumers aware but also
breaks down adoption anxiety. People listen to nerds,
especially when they have something interesting to
say. Give early adopters a platform to become evangelists
for mobile payments technology and watch consumers and
merchants hop on board.
Doug Wilber is Director of Business Strategy.
MOBILE PAYMENTS: FIX THIS EXPERIENCE
The real opportunity for mobile
payments brands is to make their
experience absolutely simple.
SoLoMoAKA social + local + mobileis not only a
great buzzword, its a hugely valuable phenomenon for
any brand seeking to engage people through live events
and experiences. (I think that includes just about every
brand.) In most cases, people at events are already on
their mobile devices snapping pictures, tweeting and
checking in. By adding social + local + mobile to these
experiences, we have a chance to engage in a
conversation with attendees on multiple platforms,
combining the in-person experience with online in real time
and beyond any single event.
Social makes it easy for your customers to broadcast any
message in their own voice, but they have to have
something to talk about. Think about your event in terms of
telling your story in an interesting way, and what an
attendee might see or want to share. Is there something
remarkable or compelling about your product that is must-
share, or could it be the activation itself where people to
talk about a great experience they had?
One of the stand-outs at SXSW 2012 was Chevy, which did
a great job of amplifying and extending their reach by
offering attendees a brand experience that addressed a
real need: nding a ride around town. SXSW is spread out
over dozens of Austin locations, and getting back and forth
between venues can be a challenge. Brand ambassadors
drove branded Chevy vehicles around the streets of
downtown, offering free rides to any attendee. Attendees
agged down available cars and were taken wherever they
needed to go.
It wasnt a hard sell but a genuine experience with a
product that solved a problem. Online response was
tremendous, with thousands of tweets, photos and check-ins
posted from in and around these mobile brand experiences.
If you want to make your live experience resonate SoLoMo
style, think about how your activation ts a customers need
or interest at a particular place and point in time. Facilitate
the conversation: let it be natural and in your customers
voice, but make sure you are giving them compelling
reasons to talk beyond your brand or product message.
Use technology to help measure and monitor the
conversation, and participate in the conversation to
maximize the impact and turn a point in time into an
ongoing relationship.
Madelyn Varella is VP of Digital Strategy.
EXPERIENCE THIS! SOCIAL+LOCAL+MOBILE+LIVE
Think about your event in terms of
telling your story in an interesting
way, and what an attendee might
see or want to share.
The old adage goes, I know half my advertising dollars are
wasted; I just don't know which half. If you are ready to
get a better idea, get ready to embrace Big Data. Slated to
be a $50 billion industry by 2017, Big Data represents the
unthinkably vast but now vastly less unwieldy mass of data
available to companies to better understand their business,
their customers and how to optimize their brand experience.
That, in a nutshell, is why Gartner predicts that by 2017
CMOs will outspend CIOs on information technology:
because data can help them design better customer
experiences and derive better marketing ROI. Smart
marketers and their partners can turn mounds of data into
actionable insights.
Here are three ways brands can leverage Big Data to
design a better customer experience:
#1: Personalize to prot
Grocery stores and online retailers have long used
purchase history and basic demographic information to
generate tailored offers for customers, but todays targeting
can go far beyond straightforward suggestive selling.
Brands can personalize in-store experiences by providing
sales associates with guidance to recommend products to
shoppers. Facial recognition technology can trigger a
customers favorite music to play in a dressing room.
Purchase history can trigger outbound communications to
customers with personalized offers. New information
captured ensures that brand experiences get more personal
every time.
#2: Accurate multichannel analytics
As marketing channels continue to fragment across owned,
earned and paid media, marketers are seeking new ways to
show ROI. Big Data, when analyzed properly, provides a
clearer picture of which brand experiences contribute the
most to the brands bottom line and long term viability.
Accurate multichannel analytics can also help brands be
more strategic in their marketing spends based on proles
audiences initiatives resonate with most. Such analysis can
determine key metrics regarding customer value: how much
it costs to acquire customers and what budget must be
allocated to retain them.
#3: Predictive analysis
Between sky-high distribution costs, an increasingly
competitive market, and a digital landscape that enables
consumers to make more informed decisions than ever,
theres never been a better reason for brands to get ahead
of their consumers. Leveraging predictive analysis through
Big Data is helping Walmart anticipate demand for water
bottles before tornadoes hit and ADP call its business
customers when the time is right to close a sale. Beyond
increased sales and reduced operating costs, Big Data is
helping companies like Walmart and ADP provide more
relevant and value-laden brand experiences that consumers
will seek out.
Ben Grossman is a Digital Strategist.
THE BIG DEAL ABOUT BIG DATA
Smart marketers and their partners
can turn mounds of data into
actionable insights.
No one has ever said, "I'm in a relationship with your brand."
But the truth is, they are.
Psychologist Robert Sternberg identies eight kinds of love
based on three elements foundational to human relationships:
Intimacy, Passion and Commitment. I hypothesize the
relationship between a person and a brand can range from
"Nonlove" (the absence of all three elements) and
"Companionate Love" (which includes Intimacy and
Commitment) to Loyal Brand Advocates (the best kind).
Psychology also teaches us that both human and brand
relationshipsgood ones, that isare based on similar values:
transparency, communication, engagement, interaction,
respect and authenticity. Interestingly, these same elements
are applied to the social space by the most effective brand-
driven experiences. Those brands that fail at activating the
social media channel largely ignore these principles in their
approach.
Getting social right is imperative to brand success. Why?
According to recent research (from Chadwick, Martin &
Bailey), "50% of consumers will purchase your brand after
'Liking' it on Facebook" and "51% of consumers will
recommend your brand after 'Liking' it on Facebook."
According to Erik Qualman's Socialnomics, only "14% of
consumers trust advertising" whereas "90% of consumers trust
peer recommendations".
Relationships are also based on experiences. Social media
isnt one and done.
Brands must create true social experiences in order to
activate relationships wit h t heir audiences. These
experiences can range from brilliant hands-on product
introductions to excellent customer service interactions. No
one ever bought a multi-million dollar business solution
because of a billboard. The same holds true for simply
creating a Facebook page, Youtube channel or Twitter
feed.
Social media is a relationship building platform.
Experiences are different. Effective experiences tell a story,
they are immersive, engaging, interactive, intimate,
personal, authentic, the list goes on. Make sure your
brand's social media presence is experience-based, not
broadcast-based.
Finally, think in terms of ecosystem, not singular
destinations. The tools and platforms available to us are
incredible. Each one of these gives us a new way to
engage with our audiences to build experiences which
result in relationships. How are you using the latest
Sharing, Playing, Networking, Buying and Localization
tools in your ecosystem to create social media experiences
for your audiences? In the words of Deb Schultz,
"Technology Changes, Human's Don't." Remember this as
you build and manage your ecosystem. It's not about the
platform. It's about the experience and ultimately, the
relationship with your audiences.
Ian McGonnigal is SVP, Client Strategy and Brand
Performance.
CREATING SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
Brands must create true social
experiences in order to activate
relationships with their audiences.
Like anyone Im constantly changing the lenses through
which I view brands and experiences. Expectationswhat I
think an experience is going to be likeare a massively
distorting lens. If Im expecting something to be great, and
its merely pretty good, I see it through a lens of
disappointing.
I had high expectations visiting SXSWi for the rst time in
2012. Ive attended scores of massively large-scale global-
sized events in my time, so I felt well equipped to make
assessments of the SXSW experience. I landed and was
reminded I havent experienced everything.
Visiting the festival to see what brands were doing was the
equivalent of people watching beach-goers at the rst sign
of spring. The spectacle was overwhelming. From the
moment I landed, brands were clamoring to be the rst to
greet and welcome me to the beautiful city of Austin. I came
prepared with my SXSW app along with the tech tips-and-
tricks to nding what I needed while visiting. Even on my
smartphone, brands were sneaking their way into the titles
of sessions. It was apparent brands were desperately trying
to be everything to everyone, everywhere.
Chevy did a great job at activating their sponsorship by
tying their objectives to what attendees need; power stations
everywhere for their electronics and free transportation in
and around Austin. On the other hand, I knew that Miller
Lite was a title sponsor, but I saw very little on-the-ground or
technology-inclusion from their activation. And AMEXs Jay-
Z concert was amazing, but under-promoted (really).
As a brand experience agency, we collaborate with our
clients to help them understand its not always wise to try
and boil the ocean. At whatever level brands want to get
involved, they should do it with strategy and purpose and
make the most of it. Its unwise to come to the beach
without the right bottle of SPF tanning lotion.
Robb Trost is Director of Client Services.
SXSW: LIFES A BEACH
[At SXSW] brands were desperately
trying to be everything to everyone,
everywhere.
JACK MORTON WORLDWIDE is a global brand experience agency. We create experiences that strengthen
relationships between brands and the people who matter most to themthereby helping our clients become talked-
about experience brands. Rated among the top marketing service agencies worldwide, we integrate live and online
experiences, digital and social media, and branded 3D environments that engage and inspire consumers, business
partners and employees. Jack Morton has a staff of 500 employees in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacic that drive our
idea-led agency culture and is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (NYSE: IPG).
To join our conversation about how experience brands behave in the digital world, please connect with us online:
Web site: http://www.jackmorton.com/
Blog: http://blog.jackmorton.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jackmorton
Learn More