The TL;DR version
BX is the link between what a brand uniquely stands for, and the interactions people have with that brand. It brings together two different ways of thinking (brand strategy and CX) to create something new. Done with purpose, it has the potential to create value for customers, organisations and society.
The longer version
Sometimes it’s handy to go back to the beginning of time. Well, maybe not the beginning of time, but at least the beginning of brands.
First, there were brands
They came about as a way for people (cattle farmers, to begin with), to indicate ownership of something. As marketing industrialised in the early 20th century, brands became more than just “marks” — they were a whole host of associations, feelings, words, and images that a company could lay claim to “owning”.
In brand thinking, being (or seeming) different from the competition is the most important thing.
Then, there was customer experience (CX)
Well, you could argue that customer experience has been around as long as there have been customers. But it really kickstarted in the 1980s with the emergence of Total Quality Management, which sought to create “a climate where employees continuously improve their ability to provide on-demand products and services that customers will find of particular value.”
And then, the internet happened
And for a while, these two different ways of thinking existed alongside each other in the same organisations — sometimes in friendly ways, sometimes not so much.
But now, both are under threat and revealing themselves as imperfect solutions in an increasingly competitive digital world.
Brands are becoming less controlled
In a pre-internet world, if you had the advertising budget, you controlled the message. This meant brands could be more neatly maintained and controlled. But the internet has empowered customers to tell your brand’s story for you — good or bad.
Adding to this, people are increasingly distrustful of advertising and institutions (like governments and corporations) in general. Usually for good reasons. Smart organisations realise that a good brand isn’t something you own, but something you earn. This has contributed to the rise of ‘purpose’, and organisations building value around why they exist, and the value they offer to the world beyond selling a product or service.
And experiences are becoming more generic
As CX has matured as a discipline and approach, and been embedded in most big organisations, it has become commoditised.
If you have four different phone companies, all selling the same product through the same channels, doing the same CX research, all with the same aim of quality experience — you’ll inevitably end up with similar outcomes. The difference relies on the quality of your people, and the degree to which your systems enable you to implement the experience. Both important factors, but expensive and hard to ‘own’.
As a customer, the reason to choose one over the other inevitably ends up being price.
A new way forward
Brand experience (BX) is a new way of thinking that brings together customer experience and brand to create a new result: a unique and compelling way for people to interact with our organisation.
It’s a collaboration between brand and CX to create something new; it doesn’t replace what they’re doing.
Great brand experiences should be:
- Surprising, leading to engagement
- Ownable, leading to differentiation
- Cohesive, leading to equity
- Loved, leading to advocacy
- Feasible, leading to (appropriate) scale
- Purposeful, creating a positive impact in society
Inspired by brand
From brand, it takes purpose and uniqueness. It aims to create signature experiences rather than generic ones. It’s not just about satisfying, it’s about surprising and being different.
Brands have colours or shapes they own; similarly, BX should ultimately be a common thread running through every interaction.
Built on CX
From CX, it takes a focus on services, products and experiences. BX is something you interact with, not something you’re interrupted by (like advertising).
It also takes a human-centred, iterative approach. BX is not something you do ‘to’ your customers. It’s something you do ‘with’ them.
BX vs CX
This will be a contentious one. Great brands should be experiential, and great CX should be unique. But the reality is, that’s not always true, especially in large, older organisations with a lot of legacy technology and business silos. The cohesion that brand demands is challenging. CX teams often spend their time dealing with pain points that existing systems have created, rather than generating new value. In these instances, BX becomes a useful tool for helping an organisation collaborate and find new frontiers.
BX/CX/UX
What’s with all of the Xs? Well, we live in an experience-driven economy, so it’s inevitable that it will be codified at different levels and from different perspectives. But to summarise:
- UX is a user’s interactions with a specific product or experience. It focuses on usability.
- CX is a customer’s interactions with a service across all channels and touchpoints. It focusses on desirability, viability and feasibility.
- BX is the unique way our brand delivers both those sets of interactions and more. It’s focussed on a comprehensive and meaningful approach to differentiation: cohesion, ownability and connection to purpose.
