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Brand experience: Why it matters and how to build one that works

Written by by Annette Chacko

Published on  June 7, 2023

Reading time  10 minutes

At the end of the day, we want to cut through the noise and leave a lasting impression that grabs market share. But an ever-crowded space filled with brands and creators means your relevancy is always at risk.

When a brand experience is consistently good, it champions powerful brand recall, turns customers into advocates and builds credibility that ultimately increases your repeat business.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to build an exceptional brand experience with a step-by-step brand strategy framework that adapts to your customers’ needs, plus social listening examples that show how sentiment mining drives ongoing customer growth and retention.

What is brand experience?

Brand experience is the sum of all the feelings—joy, nostalgia, excitement—consumers experience during their engagement with a brand. This could be via your social media channels, website, in-store, during events or with your customer care team. All these customer touchpoints contribute to shaping the overall brand experience and leaving a lasting impression.

Your audience’s reaction to your brand, or their brand experience feedback, helps you gain insights into their preferences and motivations, and predict future buying behaviors. Unlike customer experience, brand experience extends beyond the act of purchasing a product or service, so feedback may not be directly from a customer and instead reflect the general perception of your brand.

The elements of a good brand experience

A well-developed brand experience differentiates you from competitors and engages your audiences and customers on a deep emotional level. This, coupled with an exceptional customer experience, ultimately drives customer acquisition and retention to fuel your business growth.

Here are the key elements of a good brand experience:

Consistency across touchpoints

Giving your audience a consistent experience requires cohesive brand messaging, visual elements, online user experience and customer service. It also means a unified experience across all the channels you use such as your website, social media, mobile apps, advertising or physical stores.

Effective communication

Consistency in your content and communication across all touchpoints is crucial for a great brand experience. Your brand voice and storytelling need to match the wavelength of your target audience so it resonates with their needs while staying rooted in your brand.

Choose what narrative you want to build and follow it through in all your communications. For example, if you want to focus your brand narrative around your product, ensure your content has the same flow across all social channels. In fact, The Sprout Social Index™ 2023 shows that posts about products are the most effective type of content among consumers.

Emotional connection

A successful brand experience evokes a positive emotional connection with its audience. Customers go through a range of emotions (like happiness, inspiration or nostalgia) when they interact with a brand, and when the experience is positive, it creates a lasting impact that fosters brand loyalty.

By giving them something they want, you make customers feel like they are important and their opinions matter.

Personalization

Personalizing your brand experience to match customer personas and preferences adds value and creates a sense of personal connection with your brand. Analyze feedback data with sentiment analysis to develop targeted content and customized offers that increase customer delight.

Customer engagement and participation

When customers feel like they are part of your brand, it instills a sense of ownership in them. This means encouraging customer-generated content, social media interactions, soliciting customer feedback and choosing relatable brand ambassadors to encourage advocacy.

Why does brand experience matter?

A memorable brand experience boosts brand recall and nurtures current and potential customers. This further strengthens your efforts to build brand loyalty and trust—two things that influence up to 58% of consumers’ decision to choose a brand over competitors, according to The Sprout Social Index 2022™.

Let’s dive into the advantages in detail.

It helps with market differentiation

A unique brand experience separates you from the competition. Whether it’s a catchy jingle, a mascot (think: the Gerber baby), exclusive behind-the-scene footage or curated in-store interactions, an immersive brand experience establishes a distinct and memorable identity for your brand.

Enhances customer experience

A unique brand experience captures customers’ attention, provides excellent customer care and encourages authentic engagement, leading to an elevated customer experience. Happy and engaged consumers are more likely to spend time interacting with your brand and explore your offerings with an open mind .

Fosters customer loyalty

When a good brand experience fuels your customer experience, it enables businesses to connect with customers on an emotional level that turns casual buyers into repeat customers. It increases the chances of customers becoming brand advocates, sharing their positive experiences on social or through word-of-mouth.

Builds brand equity

When a customer has a powerful brand experience and feels the brand aligns with their personal value, they use that as a benchmark when engaging with other brands. Our 2022 Index shows that 40% of consumers will choose such a brand over its competitors. This raises your brand’s perceived value, which ultimately leads to higher brand equity.

Drives profitability

All the above advantages of a great brand experience contribute to a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) that increases profitability. Customers who truly feel connected to a brand tend to be less price sensitive because they value quality over price. They also contribute to a recurring sales revenue model.

What is a brand experience strategy?

A brand experience strategy is a framework outlining your plan of action to develop and implement an impactful brand experience throughout the customer journey. It is based on customer interaction, engagement and relationships and aims to measure and improve all these aspects.

How to monitor and improve brand experience in 5 steps

Building a brand experience strategy that provides a foundation for business longevity and customer retention needs foresight and structure. Here are five critical steps to develop a stellar brand experience.

1. Understand yourself, your customers and your competition

A strong brand experience starts from an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses so you know how best to provide value to your customers. In addition, you’ll need to know your target audience’s purchase motivations, buying behavior and opinions on competing brands. And, of course, keep an eye on how your competitors are playing the field and how audiences are responding to them.

That is a lot of information to keep track of and social listening data is often a crucial partner in this endeavour. According to The 2023 State of Social Media Report , 91% of business leaders say social listening impacts their critical customer insights.

Social listening involves analyzing conversations on social media and review platforms related to your brand and industry, which you can use to make better decisions. Sprout’s social listening tool analyzes hashtags and keywords, and captures trends from conversations across social networks like Twitter, Instagram and Reddit.

We synthesize the results into insightful reports that show how people are talking about and engaging with your brand, competitors and industry. These reports, when combined with other business intelligence you’ve gathered, give a holistic view of your entire brand experience so you have tangible insights into how you can elevate your brand.

2. Define your goals and objectives

Once you have a full scope of your business environment, you must define your goals and objectives. This could mean deciding what brand perception you want to build, how you want to differentiate from competitors or what emotions you want associated with your brand. Ensure your targets are achievable and connected to business goals.

Establishing this direction will help you obtain buy-in across teams, as you’ll need support from your entire organization to build and improve your brand experience.

3. Collect and analyze customer feedback

To get unbiased, relevant and targeted brand insights, this step requires collaboration between human expertise and intelligent automation that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) techniques like natural language processing (NLP) , text analysis and emotion mining. Here’s how to use both to get relevant customer feedback:

Data collection

Collect customer feedback from a variety of data sources to get reliable and holistic results. These include social listening data from relevant social networks (TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc.), review websites (TrustPilot, G2), forums (Reddit), sales emails and other business-critical channels.

If you conduct a survey to solicit feedback, ask customers specific questions about their interactions with your brand such as “What do you like most about our products?”. Allow for open-ended responses, like the example below from Yves Rocher, so customers have a chance to mention information on topics you may have missed in your questionnaire.

Once you’ve chosen your feedback sources, use a social listening tool, like Sprout, to capture and synthesize accurate brand experience insights from the data.

Text analysis

Text analysis classifies and processes text from social and review sites using NLP and machine learning (ML) to understand the conversational lingo and break it down into topics and themes for thorough data mining.

Sprout automatically collects and consolidates information from a variety of sources such as Facebook, Instagram, TripAdvisor and Google My Business, and analyzes the feedback data through text analysis.

NLP tasks such as topic classification use machine learning to attach a theme (food, drink, accommodation) to the feedback data. Semantic classification further ensures there are no duplicates. Named entity recognition (NER) helps Sprout to recognize brand names, locations and other named entities so it can draw insights based on authors, competitors or store locations.

All these AI and ML techniques ultimately analyze massive amounts of qualitative data quickly and accurately to give insights most relevant to your brand.

Sentiment analysis

Once all the data is processed and run through the text pipeline, sentiment analysis interprets it for brand sentiment. Sentiment is measured for topics and categories and assigned positive, negative and neutral scores. These are aggregated so you get a holistic sentiment score for your brand and individual topics.

With Sprout, customize listening topics based on specific social campaigns and get targeted insights. These insights are presented as intuitive reports that can then be shared with multiple teams to improve the overall brand experience.

AI-driven business intelligence tools depend a great deal on the quality and relevance of the data they analyze to provide accurate results. For this, you need to choose data sources most relevant to your objectives based on key factors like social media demographics , market segmentation and audience demographics. This is where your experience and expertise become most essential to the process.

4. Adjust your strategy based on learnings

Once you’ve completed the data analysis, apply the results to your brand strategy. Consider taking these actions:

• Categorize insights from your feedback analysis for a holistic view of your current brand experience.
• Prioritize areas that need immediate attention and take actions to address customer pain points consciously.
• Build on what customers expect from you and cover all customer-journey touchpoints, such as in-store experience, website user interface (UI) and user experience (UX), social networks, sales and customer service.
• Make sure your brand experience is consistent across all mediums (videos, social posts, events, TV ads).
• Pay special attention to your social media presence for stronger customer engagement and support. This is key, given that 22% of customers expect you to respond on social media within 1-2 hours, per 2022 Index data.

5. Measure your brand experience and track it regularly

Monitor and measure your brand experience continuously with metrics that speak to your customer experience, customer engagement, brand perception and reputation, customer retention and revenue.

Assess the effectiveness of your brand strategy against these metrics in conjunction with your objectives on an ongoing basis to proactively meet customer and market shifts.

3 Brand experience examples

These examples demonstrate how brands can use social listening analytics to truly understand their audience and build thriving brand experiences that support their growth.

Netflix garners tons of social media comments from its 232 million subscribers. They leveraged this massive source of customer opinions for robust insights to build a brand voice that’s authentic and differentiated from others.

They also leaned into social listening to draw inspiration for relatable content and create unique, ownable moments on social (Netflix memes). Based on their audience’s social conversations, they developed new content categories like “Netflix is a joke” and “strong black lead” and dedicated Twitter handles to drive awareness with compelling storytelling that added to the conversation while increasing engagement.

2. Chicago Bulls

The Chicago Bulls wanted to revitalize their brand experience to engage and connect with fans on a deeper level. Through Sprout’s analytics and Advanced Listening, the Bulls sought to uncover emerging trends amongst their audiences and better understand what content resonated most. They also dove into audience attitudes and opinions for insights based on audience demographics and geographic location.

As a result, they found opportunities to level up their entire social presence by creating compelling and interactive content (behind-the-scenes footage, interactive fan contests and player features), and responding to fan comments and posts that don’t tag them but are about the team.

@chicagobulls POV: Soaring around the court before tip off 😎 #nba #tipoff #basketball #chicagobulls #pov #nba ♬ original sound – Chicago Bulls

This further solidified their place amongst the passionate sports fan community. With improved content, community management and authentic engagement, the Bulls raised their brand experience on social while implementing efficient data flows that enable timely optimizations.

3. NutriSense

Health technology company NutriSense wanted to reinforce its brand mission to achieve better health with a compelling brand experience on social that educates while impacting the marketing funnel. They used Sprout to gain data-driven insights into customer opinions and preferences that would transform interactions with their audience. They discovered user-generated content was the key to achieving their goal and fueling audience engagement.

NutriSense adjusted their content strategy to incorporate posts that encouraged customers to share candid feedback about using NutriSense’s health suite. Using Sprout’s Smart Inbox , they actively monitored and engaged with respondents to keep the conversation going and collect user-generated content.

This personalized interaction created a deeper sense of community, built a safe and supportive environment for customers and helped develop social proof around the brand. With this elevated brand experience, Nutrisense’s social media engagement grew by 45% within 18 months and their community saw an increase of 469%.

Start building a brand experience your customers love

Your brand experience is a dynamic process that needs to be continuously refined to reflect your customers’ changing preferences and adapt to moving market trends. It starts with a strong foundation that takes advantage of the billions of customer insights waiting to be harnessed with social listening. By listening to the conversations that reveal your audience’s needs, aspirations and ideas, you create an environment that continually feeds customer loyalty while proactively improving your brand’s reputation.

Read how you can take measured steps to refine and polish your brand perception in the market on an ongoing basis.

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Brand Experience Case Study:

How One Consultant Brought The Concept For The Nonprofit Science Institute To Life During A Global Pandemic

Sheela N. Mahajan

Nonprofit science institute.

The Challenge

When we met Sheela N. Majahan, she had been consulting nonprofit organizations for many years. Over those years, she noticed challenges nonprofits were facing across the board. Further, she saw how her background in scientific study could help them uniquely solve those challenges. She decided to do something big about it and coined the term “nonprofit science.” Building a framework to solve those challenges with scientific thinking, Sheela needed to go through the brand experience process. 

She came to us with the concept of the Nonprofit Science Institute and needed to create professional branding. This project would be complete with a brand identity, messaging, and a visual identity so she could bring the idea to life. The challenge was that Sheela wasn’t sure how to present her big idea to the world in a clear, concise way. She was struggling to make all the elements come together for an educational brand with excellent positioning that nonprofits would recognize they need. She knew she needed to work with experienced brand strategists to build the brand.

Sheela hired us to take her through the Brandividuation brand experience process. We started with an exploratory phase to get all her important brand values, ideas, and frameworks clarified so we could turn it into a well-defined foundation for the brand. From there, we created the brand identity guidelines, messaging hierarchies with key words and phrases, and a visual identity. This all had to be aligned to the level of some of the top educational organizations for nonprofits, but uniquely relevant to the Nonprofit Science Institute. We then used that brand experience process to build a platform on WordPress that can serve as her company’s digital home. The site was further developed with a hub for episodes and transcripts of her new podcast.

Sheela walked away with a brand messaging and style guide she can use for her team moving forward as she builds the organization from the ground up. This will ensure they all present a consistent, clear, and attractive image to the nonprofits they want to reach. She also got all the files she will need in several formats for the logos and social media graphics. Not only that, she also got a launch strategy plan so her organization had a plan to bring the new resource to the world. The strategy would ensure her brand and marketing efforts were effective.

The Solution

“You pushed me to think through exactly how I wanted to present my brand and how my brand was going to interact with the world. You helped me refine my core message to create a brand that feels true to me and will make a difference for those I work with.”

The Nonprofit Science Institute now has a fully developed, high-quality, and professional brand. It’s attractive to nonprofits who need support while also aligned to the core values of the Institute and founder. Sheela shared that we took the angst out of figuring out what to say to describe her organization and create messaging in a compelling way. She shared that we relieved the stress of outsourcing. We continue to work with Sheela and the Nonprofit Science Institute to build on the work we’ve done and help them scale their efforts as they grow their audience and build brand awareness. 

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Brand Marketing Case Studies

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Brand Experience

• What is Brand Experience?

See how Qualtrics Strategic Brand works

Your ultimate guide to brand experience.

16 min read Brand Experience (BX) incorporates elements of customer experience and employee experience to accelerate customer acquisition and drive business growth. Here’s everything you need to know…

What is brand experience?

To understand brand experience fully, it’s useful to remind ourselves of the related customer and employee experiences:

• CX : The feelings, reactions, and ideas that result from direct consumption, purchase, and use of a branded product or service
• EX ™: The feelings, reactions, and ideas that result from direct engagement with a business as a current or former employee

With this in mind we can describe brand experience as follows:

BX: The feelings, reactions, and ideas that result from the direct or indirect exposure to any branded/brand-medicated interaction influencing a future purchase decision.

It’s obvious who customer experience and employee experience programs focus on, and these are easily measurable using feedback surveys at touchpoints to collect and analyze actionable data.

A brand is more nebulous. However much a company likes to think it owns a brand and can shape it easily through marketing strategy, brand assets, and social media posts, things are actually a bit trickier than that.

Free eBook: The state of brand experience management

That’s because a brand lives in consumers’ minds, and customer perception can make or break it. And while organizations have never fully controlled their brand, ensuring great brand experience has become even more challenging in today’s hyperconnected world, where every consumer has a megaphone.

A bad reputation, faulty product, rude sales assistant, a company representative saying or doing something controversial – each a bad brand experience – all can harm a brand and prevent future sales.

“[Brand experience is] how consumers interact with brands in real life, generating feelings, beliefs and behaviors that result in comparative marketplace advantages that lead to more sales, pricing power and resistance to competitive threats.”

– Frank Zinni, Senior XM Scientist, PhD

An emotional connection

What if your brand/customer relationship could be such that people are so connected with the brand that they feel they belong to it – that they’re part of the ‘family’, willing to share in the brand’s triumphs and forgive minor transgressions? The word ‘feel’ is important here; brand experience is all about helping your customers form that emotional connection.

Brand experience, really, is the art of creating an ecosystem around the brand in such a way that people can fit themselves into it, and so that when they interact with your brand then they should feel the connection with you.

Why is brand experience important?

Brand experience is important because it engenders brand loyalty . And when you consider that it can cost five times as much to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one, keeping a loyal customer base makes solid business sense.

What does a good brand experience look like?

Because brand experience is all about a holistic, emotional feeling and sense of belonging, a strong brand experience never results from just one interaction.

Companies need to adopt a joined-up approach so that every interaction with a consumer produces those same warm feelings of brand belonging. All these brand experiences are likely to influence how people think, feel, judge, and behave towards the brand.

First up, let’s look at how your marketing strategy can influence brand experience:

1. Direct marketing

• Impeccable customer service that makes consumers want to buy from the brand again (and again)
• Brand-owned website – a rapidly-growing form of direct-to-consumer marketing
• Advertisements that express the brand’s personality and ‘feeling’
• Design – on logos, advertisements, web content, stores, signage, and other marketing communications that chime with customer emotion
• Discounts, rewards, and promotions to attract new customers and reward loyalty
• Newsletters and press releases tailored to interest-specific target audiences
• Product placement or celebrity endorsement in films or commercials
• Influencers on social media

2. Indirect marketing

• Great employee engagement: where enthusiastic employees are also your brand ambassadors, they deliver a great customer experience
• A strong online presence beyond the website into social and search that comes up when customers express a need that the brand can fulfill
• Customer reviews on marketplaces (like Amazon) that describe positive user experiences
• Press articles about the company’s social impact initiatives

In other words? Experiential marketing is the key to building a strong brand.

Every positive interaction and experience with a brand, however large or small, goes towards building brand loyalty over time. By asking consumers about all those moments, and understanding which matter the most and to whom, we can deliver an even better brand experience.

Incorporating the right data

Ok, so the solution here is in gathering feedback, collating user experience data, and making improvements? Well… Yes and no. In today’s omnichannel, always-on business environment, using a traditional brand tracker to gauge customer sentiment towards a brand isn’t enough, because:

• It’s incomplete: Marketers must connect the brand with what’s really going on in the business to ensure it’s driving the organization forward
• It’s not fast enough: With more competition, disruption, and the speed of consumer expectations, businesses need a way to have a constant pulse on their brand and how effective it is in growing new customers

You need to collect data from all the elements of your brand. This is where you bring out your secret weapon – combining O (operational) with X (experience) data:

Operational data derived from objective, observable, measurable processes (sales data, finance data, employee data, marketing spend)

Experience data that measures attitudes, beliefs, emotions, sentiments, intentions, etc. that often don’t lend themselves to straightforward, objective measurement

The intersection of X and O data unlocks the possibility for more robust predictions, more precise and impactful actions, and long-term positive brand experience management.

Using a combination of customer and brand experience data, and employee experience data, you’ll be better positioned to manage your brand experience at every level: employee, customer, and consumers/public.

And that’s what good brand experience looks like.

Brand experience examples: 3 companies offering a fantastic brand experience

Ok, let’s put what we’ve learned to the test: let’s take a look at brands that act as a great example of honing all those positive experiences, with consumer-centric approaches that ladder up to brand experience:

Duracell Trust Your Power

Duracell has taken an everyday item that we put in our remote controls, torches, and children’s toys – a battery – and elevated it to a product whose unstoppable power we feel we can trust. By playing on the concept of power and the emotion of trust, Duracell’s brand experience stands out:

• Through ads telling inspirational, moving stories that create an emotional connection with the brand:
• Through sponsorship of sports, such as NASCAR and rugby
• Through association with the Star Wars movie franchise

Vroom Commercial | Dealership Chaos

Vroom is a US online company that really came into its own during the COVID-19 pandemic. The market for second-hand cars boomed with many people unwilling to use public transport, and unable to visit dealerships. Its brand experience was exactly what locked-down car buyers needed:

• High-quality, low-mileage cars with clean vehicle histories
• Easy online finance
• Delivered to your door
• No need to visit pushy, gimmicky dealerships

Nobody does total brand experience quite like Apple. Walk down any street and somebody is scrolling on a shiny Apple product – the legacy of Steve Jobs is everywhere. Just how did he, and his Apple team today, achieve such dizzy heights of brand equity?

• They keep it simple: Clean, sleek, consistent design on everything from their computers to their packaging to their marketing emails are instantly recognizable as Apple. They don’t need to clutter their brand identity when the tech speaks for itself.
• They become the product: You hoover your home, wipe your nose on a Kleenex, make a call from your iPhone… Apple ‘owns’ the smartphone market, bringing newer, more innovative features with each new product release.
• They speak their customer’s language: Tech can be utterly bewildering, and Apple knows this. By cutting out the jargon, and communicating in its trademark clean simplicity, Apple presents its features as simple and intuitive to use.
• They are masters of mystery: from feeding rumors of a new product into the media and keeping it top secret until its triumphant unveiling, Apple ramp up the hype to trigger a sales frenzy when a product is released.
• Their CX is premier: In-store, knowledgeable Apple staff make you feel special: they help and advise you, and once that all-important purchase is made, bring you your beautifully boxed product with a certain ceremony from behind the helpdesk.

How to create a strong brand experience

Firstly let’s just remind ourselves of a few key facts:

• Your product or service is what you sell
• Your brand is how your customers perceive you
• Branding is the strategy you use to create that perception
• There is a difference between consumers and customers
• Customers have bought your product before
• Consumers are a brand’s current customers, lapsed customers, and prospective customers
• CX focuses on the existing, current customer
• BX cares about them all.

That’s why your BX strategy has to be well-developed, targeted, and different.. You’re up against:

• More competition than ever before
• More market disruption
• Keeping tabs on consumers who make snap judgments and rapidly change their minds
• Customer empowerment to speak up and choose where to spend their money

  A COMMISSIONED STUDY CONDUCTED BY FORRESTER CONSULTING ON BEHALF OF QUALTRICS, 2020

The keys to keeping up with all these challenges are frequency and speed . You need to collect data more frequently and you need to analyze it quickly to inform your strategy. A pulse survey each month is probably the least you should be doing.

A brand strategy that places brand experience at its core recognizes what we noted earlier in this guide: how people feel about you is what they will remember. So always be sure to place your bets in areas that can have targeted, high impact – like digital ads, social media, and influencers.

But you must also be sure that those actions grab attention and evoke an emotional response.

Brand experience strategy

It’s a lot to think about, but don’t worry: if you’re looking to boost your brand experience, drive better brand experiences, and increase customer satisfaction? Here’s how:

• Draw up a mission statement that identifies your target audience, outlines your vision, informs marketing, and puts brand experience at the forefront.
• Tell your company story: everyone loves storytelling – it chimes with us emotionally back to our childhood, and is a great way to make a brand memorable.
• Understand your target audience by performing a segmentation analysis and creating customer personas.
• Build unique brand positioning using your mission, company story, and differentiators to speak to a specific audience.
• Don’t be afraid to get emotional: A brand experience depends upon a relationship with a customer, and sentiment is involved, whether happy, thoughtful, or moving.
• Personalization – this is becoming a major driver for brand experience; when a customer feels valued and treated with empathy – and with a more bespoke user experience – they’re more likely to remain brand loyal.
• Find the ways that your customers will respond authentically whether on social channels, with reviews, etc. Customers can greatly influence the perception of the brand to new audiences.
• Enhance your in-person experience: whether it’s pop-up events, in-store offerings, or collaborations, use live experiences and employees to immerse consumers and create memories.

How do you increase customer loyalty with BX?

It’s been argued that brands grow by being mentally and physically available , and there is beauty in this simplicity. If we pick that logic apart, it follows that nailing the brand experience – by having an ethos of empathy and availability – can positively influence a bunch of associated brand metrics .

After all, it’s those positive customer feelings that go on to define things like brand image, overall brand awareness, and – importantly – customer loyalty.

The ultimate guide to measuring and boosting yours

Experiences happen at an emotional level: it’s the feeling that the experience evokes that triggers the memory of the brand, driving overall brand awareness . Research shows , meanwhile, that brand experience has a positive influence on brand image . And, ultimately, a strong brand image influences consumers to choose a company’s products or services – because how your consumers perceive you may pre-determine whether they will use your brand.

If you’re interested in boosting customer loyalty by building a better brand experience, here are a few practical tips:

1.Keep a finger on brand pulse

If you’re only checking in on your brand experience semi-regularly, you’ll be working with already out-of-date data. The best way to continually measure sentiment, brand loyalty, consumer intent, and ease of doing business is by using real-time data, powered by AI conversation analytics.

Today’s brand management software can automatically surface and prioritize emerging trends, risks, and user experience opportunities expressed by consumers, no matter which channel they’re on – from social media accounts to customer service conversations.

Qualtrics’ XM Discover platform is a great always-on solution for this. It can scour every channel, and every interaction, to flag actionable insights. If you’re listening to the conversations people have about your brand with an omnichannel ear, you get a more complete picture of what’s really going on – and create a culture of action around those insights.

2.Keep an eye on the competition

How customers perceive your brand experience will automatically improve if you’re offering things your competitors can’t. It pays, then, to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors’ brands, to spot gaps in the market, and to identify points of differentiation.

Using an experience management tool like XM Discover will enable you to understand what people are saying about your competitors – and how that compares.

3. Get on your customers’ good side

Customers will naturally feel more loyal to companies whose values align with theirs, so your communications and marketing efforts must be fine-tined and appropriately engaging.

Experience and brand management suites like the XM Platform™ can offer real-time reactions, and reveal how your advertising and marketing campaigns are landing – and who they’re landing with. With that information, you can make decisions that drive stronger marketing campaigns that land with existing customers and new customers alike.

Related resources

How to build a brand 14 min read, ideal customer profile 10 min read, top of mind awareness 11 min read, brand & customer experience 12 min read, brand engagement 14 min read.

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Market Fragmentation 9 min read

Brand Perception

Brand Sentiment 18 min read

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The Science of Successful Branding: Case Studies and Insights

Successful branding can influence consumer perceptions, build trust, and drive long-term customer loyalty.

Branding is a powerful force in the world of business. It's the art and science of creating a distinctive identity for a product, service, or company. Successful branding can influence consumer perceptions, build trust, and drive long-term customer loyalty. In this article, we will explore the science behind successful branding , exploring key principles and sharing case studies highlighting the strategies and insights that have propelled some of the world's most iconic brands to success.

Branding as an Emotional Connection

At its core, branding is about creating an emotional connection between a brand and its audience. It's not just about logos, colors, or slogans; it's about how a brand makes people feel. Successful brands understand that emotions play a crucial role in consumer decision-making. They tap into these emotions to create a bond that goes beyond the functional benefits of a product or service.

Case Study: Apple Inc.

One of the most iconic examples of emotional branding is Apple Inc. Apple's brand is synonymous with innovation, creativity, and a sense of belonging. They have mastered the art of making their customers feel like part of a community, appealing to their desire for uniqueness and self-expression. Apple's design aesthetic, sleek product packaging, and marketing campaigns all contribute to the emotional connection that has made Apple a global brand leader.

Consistency is Key

Consistency is a fundamental principle in successful branding. A brand should present a unified and coherent image across all touchpoints, from its website to its packaging and advertising. This consistency builds recognition and trust over time.

Case Study: Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola, one of the world's most recognizable brands, has maintained a consistent image for over a century. The red and white color scheme, the classic contour bottle, and the timeless "Enjoy Coca-Cola" slogan have remained largely unchanged, fostering a sense of nostalgia and reliability. This consistency has allowed Coca-Cola to establish a strong emotional connection with its customers, making it a global symbol of happiness and refreshment.

Understanding the Target Audience

A deep understanding of the target audience is essential for successful branding. Brands need to know who their customers are, what they value, and what problems they need to solve. This knowledge informs branding strategies, ensuring that a brand's message resonates with its audience.

Case Study: Nike

Nike's "Just Do It" campaign is a testament to understanding its audience. Nike recognized that its target demographic, athletes and sports enthusiasts, sought motivation and inspiration. The campaign's message, paired with powerful imagery of athletes overcoming challenges, spoke directly to this audience. The result? A brand that not only sells athletic gear but also motivates people to pursue their dreams and passions.

Storytelling: Creating a Brand Narrative

Storytelling is a powerful tool in branding. A compelling brand narrative can engage consumers on a deeper level, allowing them to connect with the brand's values and purpose.

Case Study: Patagonia

Outdoor clothing company Patagonia has embraced a brand narrative that goes beyond selling outdoor gear. They've positioned themselves as a brand that cares about the environment, sustainability, and social responsibility. Their "Worn Wear" campaign, which encourages customers to buy used Patagonia clothing and repair their old items, reinforces their commitment to reducing waste and protecting the planet. By weaving this narrative into their branding, Patagonia has attracted environmentally conscious consumers who resonate with their values.

Adaptation and Innovation

Brands must evolve and adapt to changing market dynamics, consumer preferences, and emerging trends. Stagnation can lead to irrelevance.

Case Study: Amazon

Amazon started as an online bookstore but rapidly evolved into a global e-commerce and tech giant. Their commitment to innovation demonstrated through products like the Kindle e-reader, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Amazon Echo, has allowed them to stay at the forefront of industry trends. Amazon's willingness to adapt and expand has made it a brand synonymous with convenience and innovation in the digital age.

Cultural Relevance

Brands that understand and embrace cultural relevance can connect with their audience on a deeper level. They tap into what's happening in the world and leverage it to create meaningful messages.

Case Study: Dove

Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign challenged traditional beauty standards and focused on promoting self-esteem and body positivity. By addressing a cultural shift towards acceptance and inclusivity, Dove resonated with consumers seeking authenticity and empowerment. This cultural relevance not only boosted brand loyalty but also led to societal change.

Customer Experience and Feedback

Brands must prioritize the customer experience and actively seek feedback. This helps brands improve their products, services, and messaging based on real-world insights.

Case Study: Zappos

Zappos, an online shoe and clothing retailer, places customer experience at the forefront of its branding. Their commitment to delivering exceptional customer service, including a 365-day return policy and 24/7 customer support, has turned customers into brand advocates. By actively seeking and responding to customer feedback, Zappos continuously refines its approach, resulting in a loyal customer base.

Consistency in Branding

Successful branding requires consistency across various touchpoints. This includes the visual elements of branding , such as logos and color schemes, but it also extends to the tone of voice, messaging, and the overall brand experience.

Case Study: Starbucks

Starbucks has mastered the art of consistent branding. Their green mermaid logo, cozy store ambiance, and the promise of a personalized coffee experience have been replicated worldwide. Customers can step into any Starbucks location, whether in Seattle or Shanghai and expect the same comforting atmosphere and quality coffee.

Sustainability and Responsibility

In an increasingly environmentally conscious world, brands that prioritize sustainability and social responsibility have a competitive edge.

Case Study: Unilever

Unilever, the consumer goods giant, has made sustainability a core part of its branding strategy. With brands like Ben & Jerry's and Dove, Unilever focuses on sustainable sourcing, ethical practices, and reducing its environmental impact. Their commitment to positive social and environmental change resonates with consumers who prioritize responsible consumption.

Adaptation to Digital Channels

In the digital age, brands must adapt to new marketing channels, such as social media, online advertising, and influencer partnerships.

Case Study: Airbnb

Airbnb disrupted the traditional hospitality industry by creating a platform that connects travelers with unique accommodations. They've harnessed the power of digital marketing and social media to reach a global audience, while user-generated content and reviews provide social

proof. Airbnb's success demonstrates the importance of adapting to digital channels and embracing the sharing economy.

The Role of Trust

Trust is the cornerstone of successful branding. Brands that consistently deliver on their promises and provide high-quality products and services build trust, which, in turn, leads to brand loyalty.

Case Study: Toyota

Toyota has established trust by consistently delivering reliable and durable vehicles. Over the years, their commitment to quality and innovation has earned the trust of millions of customers worldwide. This trust has not only resulted in brand loyalty but has also positioned Toyota as a leader in the automotive industry.

Authenticity in Branding

Authenticity is an increasingly vital aspect of successful branding. Consumers are drawn to brands that are genuine and transparent in their communication and actions.

Case Study: Pat McGrath Labs

Pat McGrath Labs, a cosmetics brand, stands out for its authenticity. Founder Pat McGrath, a renowned makeup artist, leveraged her personal brand and expertise to create a cosmetics line known for its quality and inclusivity. Her direct involvement and genuine passion for her products have created a cult following among makeup enthusiasts.

Embracing Change and Innovation

The world constantly changes , and brands that embrace change and innovation stay relevant. This includes adopting new technologies, exploring new markets, and seeking out opportunities for growth.

Case Study: Netflix

Netflix began as a DVD rental service but transitioned into a streaming platform, revolutionizing the entertainment industry. Their commitment to creating original content and adapting to consumer preferences has made them a household name, even as the media landscape continually evolves.

The science of successful branding is a dynamic and multifaceted field. It involves understanding the emotions and needs of the target audience, maintaining consistency, telling compelling stories , adapting to change, and prioritizing customer experience. The case studies provided, from Apple and Coca-Cola to Nike and Amazon, demonstrate how these principles have been applied in diverse ways to achieve remarkable success. Successful branding is not just about creating a logo; it's about creating an enduring and emotionally resonant identity that stands the test of time. It's about forging connections that transcend transactions and lead to lasting brand loyalty.

You Should Know

ThoughtLab is a dynamic and innovative full-service creative agency renowned for its exceptional branding prowess and relentless commitment to thinking outside the box. With a team of visionary creatives, strategists, Web3, and marketing experts, plus decades of superior website design, ThoughtLab consistently delivers groundbreaking solutions that redefine the boundaries of branding and design. They understand that breaking away from convention and embracing bold, unique ideas is vital in today's fast-paced and competitive landscape.

ThoughtLab's approach involves immersing themselves in their client's businesses, understanding their values and aspirations, and crafting tailor-made branding experiences that resonate deeply with the target audience. Their track record of success stands as a testament to their ability to push creative boundaries, captivate audiences, and ensure their client's brands stand out amidst the noise. With a focus on innovation and a passion for excellence, ThoughtLab continues to be at the forefront of revolutionizing the world of branding and marketing. Contact ThoughtLab today.

Brand Equity: Understanding and Enhancing Your Brand’s Value

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3 Branding Case Studies That Create Memorable Customer Experiences

Your brand is what makes your business unique. It’s everything from your niche and values to your visual identity. 

But so many companies put too much emphasis on design and not enough on the customer experience. No one wants to buy a product or service they don’t understand. And a great name and logo won’t make you successful.

The most successful brands put thought into every stage of the customer journey. You want to create a memorable experience that makes people want to come back again and again.

So, here are 3 branding case studies that are doing just that:

Good Pair Days – rebranding and rewards done right

Riverford organic farmers – honest marketing and a simple customer journey, itch – two personalized services for the price of one.

Good Pair Days is a D2C wine subscription that started life as “The Wine Gallery”. But after a new brand name and huge redesign, they’re now one of my favorite brand identity case studies.

The brand strategy starts with a quick quiz. But don’t worry, newbies. None of it’s related to wine. You’re asked things like:

• The kind of chocolate you prefer
• How much butter you like on your toast
• A few fruits you couldn’t live without

The quiz makes the service feel so accessible from the get-go. And it shows they know their target customer. One of the first things they also ask is your experience with wine. Then they adjust their level of explanation depending on your answer.

This fun brand voice is everywhere on the site. They use conversational copy wherever they can. And it’s casual, down-to-earth, and relatable. Which is so important in a typically stuffy, high-class industry.

Plus, the amount of communication is just right. They let you know when your next box is due and what’ll be in it. (This gives you the opportunity to make edits and change the price before it comes.) Plus, all the usual delivery notifications. 

But not just a generic tracking email from the courier. It’s all so personalized:

As a subscription business, they need to keep current customers happy. And the rewards system and gamification makes you keen to engage. You earn points for simple tasks like rating recent bottles or downloading the app.

The most points are given for referrals. (But you and your mate also get a free bottle of wine sent with your box.) And as you hit milestones with your points, you get rewards. These range from magnets to bottle stoppers and cheeseboards.

Not many companies do this anymore, so it’s another way they stand out. They’ll also give you bonus points occasionally just for engaging. It’s such a simple way to incentivize people to continue. I interact with their site so much because of it.

They also took the rebrand opportunity to go greener. And the design studio managed to create 100% recyclable packaging. Which fits into the company’s “No planet, no pinot” sustainability fund to help winemakers affected by climate change.

Good Pair Days understands the customer experience isn’t just about web design. People care about what they receive. And what they have to throw away.

Having a brand identity with a human touch is so important. But even more so when you’re a purely digital company. And everything about Good Pair Days is so unique. From the color palette to the graphic design, typography, and illustrations.

This brand has thought about every stage of the customer journey. Not just a new cool name from a copywriter. And it’s all tied together perfectly. Show me a rebranding case study more effective than Good Pair Days. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find one.

If you’re interested, check out the full design case study from the branding agency’s site.

Healthy eating shouldn’t be hard. But it’s a lot easier to buy a burger from a fast food place than it is to prepare a home-cooked meal. Riverford are trying to change that. By offering weekly home delivery of produce from organic farmers.

Riverford is all about eating seasonally and sustainably. For maximum freshness and flavor. And the customer journey for this branding case study couldn’t be simpler.

The only thing they ask for to get started is your postcode. Because this will immediately tell you if your area is covered. Plus, there’s a bit of social proof underneath to give you instant confidence in them.

Once that’s confirmed, you’re ready to browse their product. If not, you can still check out the rest of the site. Riverford focuses heavily on education around seasonal farming. They’re trying to move us away from the modern mindset of thinking all fruit and veg should always be available.

The whole process is clear and easy to use. Adding and removing food happens at the click of a button. And it’s clear what’s in your next delivery and when it’s coming. You can also easily pause deliveries if you’re going to be on vacation. Or just haven’t used up your last box yet:

They don’t try to make it difficult, either. Because education about reducing food waste is a huge part of their content. They focus on what’s currently in season and how to use it. And you can still use this knowledge even if you’re not in their delivery zone.

Like most brands, a lot of their marketing strategy takes place on social media . They post tons of great videos on their site and Instagram. Recipe and cooking videos are huge on visual platforms like YouTube and Instagram/TikTok. And Riverford jumped onboard at the right time:

They’re also really active on Twitter. Replying to customer queries and sharing stories. And just generally being friendly and informative:

UK bat numbers have declined by nearly 90% over the past century, but plenty of insects on our Devon farm means lots of food for them. One of the UK's largest roosts of 2,000 bats is close by; they help us control pests naturally🦇 #organicseptember @_BCT_ https://t.co/GM1icgrCO5 — Riverford (@Riverford) September 8, 2022

They do a lot for the environment too. But they don’t shout about how great they are on their landing pages. They hit their important values with small icons that potential customers align with:

But the information is there on the site if you want to find out more. And it’s all really impressive. It makes you feel like you’re doing good by buying from them. And that’s what most customers want.

It’s also clear they listen to feedback and take it on board. Less plastic and compostable packing were a couple of the biggest wishes from customers. And in 2021, they made it happen:

The farm’s founder (seen in the video above) also sends a monthly update with opinions and updates on what’s going well and not so well. It all plays into a really honest brand image which makes them feel trustworthy. And that’s a huge hurdle that not many brands get over.

Riverford also have a magazine and podcast called Wicked Leeks. Centered around sustainable food and ethical business. It’s a marketing case study that shows the power of branching out into other types of content. Even in traditional industries.

Finally, their referral scheme. Helping more people eat healthier for less and planting trees while they’re at it. I recommend Riverford to people I know without it. But it’s just another reason to love the company and service.

Farming is probably as far removed from the online world as you can get. But Riverford nail their digital marketing. They succeed in showing how easy it is to change our eating habits. With a clear customer journey that educates while it sends locally-grown, organic food to your doorstep.

All of us with pets know we should be treating them for pests like fleas, worms, and lice. But remembering to prevent it is probably not high on your list of priorities. Itch was created so you don’t have to.

This branding case study is a monthly treatment that’s posted out to you. The dose you need is already measured out. And they’ll send it on a vet-approved cycle. Like Riverford, they’ve also added social proof to their landing page to show the number of people that already trust them.

They also have an introductory offer that sends your first box free. So, there’s nothing to lose by trying them out. You just need to answer a few things to get started. Because this will determine the dose you’re sent. And how often.

Once you start getting deliveries, they keep it fun by monitoring your winning streak. This is a really simple type of gamification that doesn’t need much development at all. But you may wonder why you should bother?

Well, streaks are a marketing psychology tactic used by lots of businesses. Because they can be addictive :

“They create an emotional response and an implicit system of reward and punishment. The longer they go on, the greater the perceived gain of maintaining them and the greater the perceived loss of breaking them.”

Flea treatments are Itch’s main offer. But they also sell treats, supplements, and other health products like toothpaste. And they make it easy to add any to your monthly box on a recurring basis with one click.

They also have a simple referral scheme for 20% off for you and a friend. It’s not crazy imaginative. But it’s always a nice touch.

Pest control and medical care are two things you can’t go without when you have a cat or dog. And one of the biggest benefits of signing up to Itch is the free access to FirstVet. A 24/7 subscription for video calls with UK-registered vets.

I’ve signed up to both services, so I’m speaking from experience here. I used FirstVet for a free consultation to confirm my dog had kennel cough. And it saved me spending $60 on nothing at my local vets. It’s such a clever concept and the UI (user interface) is simple and smooth.

Getting two important services for the price of one is amazing in the current climate. If you can partner with another site or app in your niche, you can create an offer that beats all your competition.

The brand experience you offer can leave a lasting impression on your audience. It can make them want to come back for more. Or you can be an easily forgotten one-time purchase.

It doesn’t matter who your consumer is. Whether you’re a D2C or B2B brand. Your overarching goal is to make downloading or buying easy and enjoyable.

These 3 branding case studies all rely on their online service. And each has created a seamless, unique journey. Everyone in your niche is vying for the same people’s attention. So, make the choice to go with your business an easy one.

Are there any other branding case studies you’ve learned from? Which big brands could do with putting more thought into theirs? Let us know in the comments below.

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Thank you very much for sharing, I learned a lot from your article. Very cool. Thanks. nimabi

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Experiential marketing: 9 examples of brilliant brand experiences

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By Emma Mulcahy, Staff writer

May 22, 2019 | 8 min read

Listen to article 4 min

In an increasingly digitized world, experiential marketing is proving popular among brands eager to retain a real-world connection with their consumers.

Vans: Girl skaters, WWF: Elephant hologram, Ikea: Sustainable boats, Netflix: Luke's Diner

Often heralded as a back to basics marketing approach, experiential marketing is in fact well suited to the needs of the modern consumer. For both Gen Z and millennials, there is a greater emphasis placed on experiences over material wealth, and experiential activations therefore allow brands to give these audiences what they crave. Such emotional connections can in turn drive long-term advocacy .

Here The Drum looks back on nine of the most interesting recent examples of experiential marketing from the likes of Vans, Smirnoff and Netflix.

Vans: House of Vans

The House of Vans event spaces are located in Brooklyn, New York, Chicago and London but also appear as pop-ups in various locations. The shoe retailer has created these event spaces for the skateboarding community to get together and enjoy shared passions like music, film, and sports.

On International Women’s Day this year, Vans used its spaces to promote women in skateboarding , hosting skate sessions, documentary screenings and live music. This immersive experience brought members of the skate community together to promote female visibility within the scene, part of an overarching marketing strategy for the brand.

The events spaces not only lent themselves well to the International Women’s Day activities but have also been used to promote the launch of a line of Vans x David Bowie trainers. The launch party for the line included music, art, and fashion to celebrate the music icon.

Smirnoff: ‘We’re open’

Supporting an initiative by Westminster Council and LGBT Foundation, vodka brand Smirnoff deployed groups of helpers to ensure that everyone got home safe throughout the festive period. These ‘Soho Angels’, based primarily in London’s West End, were trained to recognize those most vulnerable and provide support and guidance. This was part of a wider appeal across London to ensure nighttime safety throughout the city, yet this particular initiative was focused on the LGBTQ+ community, who are often attacked due to their sexual orientation.

The ‘Soho Angels’ were part of Smirnoff’s wider ‘We’re Open’ campaign which looks to promote inclusivity and equality. In supporting this initiative and improving nightlife safety for the queer community, Smirnoff ensured the wellbeing of its patrons in a less intrusive manner. It remains experiential marketing, providing a valuable experience without pushing the product in consumers' faces.

Xbox: Survival Billboard

To promote the exclusive Xbox game ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’, in 2015 the console brand challenged eight members of the public to an endurance test in a stunt dubbed ‘Survival Billboard’. The concept was created by m:united and McCann London, and saw the group try to withstand some of the world’s most extreme weather conditions for 24 hours, as chosen by Twitter followers. The winner would receive a holiday, inspired by the game.

WWF: #StopWildlifeTrafficking

In a move to raise awareness among the public around the issue of animal trafficking, WWF and The People’s Postcode Lottery produced a life-size elephant hologram that roamed the streets of London for a week. The animal charity looked to tackle the out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude that people tend to adapt over issues like this. This was part of a wider marketing campaign that also saw the design of a number of pedestrian crossings with prints of marine turtles, snow leopards and tigers, the animals most affected by the trade.

This particular activity was effective as it not only educated the public on the difficulties faced by these animals, but also physically placed them into the paths of the public. In doing so it bridged the gap between our modern world and the wild, helping us to understand the loss and knock-on effect this activity has on all of us.

Amnesty International: ‘Glass Box’

As part of another attention-grabbing campaign by a charity, Amnesty International looked to raise awareness of the inhumane treatment of refugees and their children at the hands of the UK government. To bring this issue to public light, Amnesty asked various families to spend the weekend in a glass box in London.

This activation was simple but effective, highlighting the aspects of family life that we so often take for granted, yet are denied to refugees. In a similar campaign, Amnesty introduced a ‘Family-free zone’ , where parents were told they had to be separated from their children, causing much distress.

Paddy Power: ‘Sinner to Winner’

Paddy Power never misses the opportunity to poke fun at prominent events, and Pope Francis’ visit to Ireland in 2018 was no exception. While the bookmaker is no stranger to courting controversy, this activation was one that really got people talking - literally.

To give the Irish people the chance to absolve their sins and clear their conscience before the Pope arrived, Paddy Power erected a massive Drive Thru confessional box outside Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

This example of experiential marketing is highly memorable and serves to entwine Paddy Power with such a high-profile event, increasing brand awareness long after the experience has passed. This is just one example of how Paddy Power leverages its signature humor in marketing campaigns; the brand, in fact, has a track record of ruffling a few feathers.

Netflix: Luke’s Diners

To promote the 16th anniversary of Gilmore Girls and the release of its four-part reunion season, ‘A Year in the Life’, Netflix launched a nationwide campaign that converted 200 US coffee shops into Luke’s Diners.

Choosing to engage only independent coffee shops (very Stars Hollow), Netflix kept its budget low but brand awareness high; coffee shops reported crowds queuing around the corner before they had opened. This activation kept costs low, while also promoting the season in a way that fans of the show would really appreciate. As such, Netflix was able to generate a lot of personalized content on social media and brand awareness.

Ikea: Bath Boats Drive

In order to promote its newly opened and sustainable Greenwich store, the homewares giant sent two large boats made from the brand’s Smakryp bath model along London’s rivers to collect plastic and rubbish . When collected, this waste was then upcycled to make a sculpture that would stand in the new store.

Ikea positioned itself in this marketing ploy as an eco-warrior, driving not only positive sentiment around the brand but no doubt footfall to its latest store.

Desperados: ‘Epic Parties Imagined by You’

As part of the beer brand’s ‘Epic parties imagined by you’ series, Desperados claimed to have launched the largest-ever video light show. The unplugged party was the brainchild of Karolina Gilob, who felt that people’s dependency on their phones was negatively impacting their socialization at parties. Upon arrival, guests handed over their mobile in exchange for a beer. Following this, the phones were linked up and played synchronized animations in time with the music.

Different from the experiential marketing of today as it removes the element of social media to share the experience online, this activation succeeds in creating an entirely immersive experience that has been designed by consumers.

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Brand Experience Analytics - A Guide For Brand Marketers

Brand experience is the overall sentiment a customer feels with regard to his engagement with a brand. It is one of the biggest contributors to customer acquisition and brand loyalty. In this article, we talk about what brand experience means in new-age marketing techniques and what machine learning (ML) processes are involved in brand experience analytics. We will also explore four customer brand experience case studies that showcase the strategic insights you can extract with the help of an AI-driven sentiment analysis platform for driving business growth through effective branding.

What Is Brand Experience?

As the name suggests, brand experience is the sum of all the feelings that entail during a consumer’s engagement with a brand during the buying cycle. As a marketing function, brand experience is based on product experience, customer experience, and brand management, and therefore is often-times used to predict consumer behavior. That’s why you can identify key opportunities for brand amplification through voice of customer analysis .

On an overall business level, customer brand experience constitutes brand involvement, brand personality, the customer’s personal feelings - delight, passion, or familiarity - with a brand, which ultimately translates into sales conversions.

Why Is Brand Experience Important?

A powerful and engaging brand experience can lead to key advantages for both a growing business and an established one. Some of them are as below.

1. Better sales conversions

A great brand experience leads to increased sales conversions. Take, for example, the iconic Lufthansa . Word-of-mouth referrals yield better results as people talk about their positive experience with a brand and this encourages other customers to trust the brand and make purchases.

2. Increased brand awareness

When a customer experiences the brand in a way that touches them, they are happy to leave positive remarks on your social brand channels, and refer friends and family. Some even post comments and user-generated videos on their social profiles to mention their experience, thus creating a buzz for your brand.

3. Nurturing brand loyalty

A meaningful brand experience encourages customer loyalty. Customer experience analysis can tell you how connected a consumer feels to a brand, which can give you the direction to develop strategies to build a brand strategy that fosters brand loyalty.

4. Raise in brand equity

When a customer has a powerful brand experience with a product or service, they use that as a benchmark when engaging with other brands, whether in the same category or otherwise. Thus a great customer brand experience raises your brand’s perceived value, which ultimately leads to higher brand equity which is instrumental in helping a company hike product prices, while still being competitively priced.

5. Brand differentiation

It is said that people forget many things but never how something made them feel. A brand experience can speak to a customer in such a way that it builds a persona in itself that immediately differentiates your product from the competition. This is something that brands like Old Spice have leveraged, and gained from.

Learn more about Brand Experience driven Marketing .

How Can We Analyze Brand Experience?

We analyze customer brand experience by identifying and analyzing sentiment in customer experience data through machine learning algorithms. This data is gathered through various sources like social media listening, review platforms, blogs, and ofcourse, survey data.

An AI-driven customer experience platform analyzes brand experience using many ML subtasks such as natural language processing (NLP), named entity recognition (NER), etc., in the following steps.

Step 1 - Data collection

Customer experience data is first gathered from relevant sources. This could be directly using Live APIs for social media such as for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc. Or, you can also manually upload it onto the sentiment analysis platform in an excel file. Once the relevant data is collated, it is annotated.

Step 2 - Data processing

In the second step, all the data that has been cleaned and prepped in the previous step is processed. Since the data can be in many formats, various ML algorithms work in tandem to process it in order to extract relevant information. These are, as follow.

• Audio - All podcast data and social media videos are transcribed through speech to text software so that it is all turned into a text format
• Captions - ML algorithms engage in identifying and extracting text from any caption overlays that may occur in the data using video content analysis
• Images - The platform captures images in the data, say from Facebook or Instagram, or text data through optical character recognition (OCR), which it maps with its knowledge graph for relevancy
• Logos - All logos that may occur in a video or image are identified, analyzed, and extracted
• Text - All text data from comments, reviews, etc. is assimilated including all the audio files that were transcribed. It is important to note that Repustate IQ’s sentiment analysis platform for customer experience analytics also extracts emojis and hashtags from social media like Twitter or TikTok as well. This ensures that emojis are never ignored during analysis as that could lead to false positives or negatives.

Step 3 - Data analysis

There are various elements to analyzing the brand experience data, the key of which are listed below.

• Training the model - The first and foremost element is the data that is used to train the sentiment analysis model. This dataset is pre-processed, manually labeled, and then applied to train the model. Once the results are received, they are compared against a validation dataset, which is data that is correctly labeled. This process is repeated a couple of times, which eventually leads to the most optimal results. The model is now ready to be used.
• Multilingual data analysis - Part-of-speech taggers are used for every language that is automatically detected in the data by the algorithms. Repustate has speech taggers for each of the 23 languages it conducts sentiment analysis in. Using native language models to analyze different languages leads to more accurate insights as the meanings are not lost in translation.
• Custom tagging - Custom tags are created for various aspects and themes that are found in the customer brand experience data. Once the model has been trained, it will automatically segregate text based on these custom-created tags.
• Topic Classification - The topic classifier attaches a theme to a text such as price, food, convenience, etc.
• Sentiment Analysis - The sentiment analysis API isolates each aspect and theme, and processes it for sentiment. It then assigns a sentiment score in the range of -1 to +1. Ultimately, once all the aspects are analyzed for sentiment, an overall sentiment score of the brand experience is created in percentile form.

Sentiment scores gained through such a process can be in 3 types - aspect-based sentiment analysis, which is the most granular; topic-based sentiment analysis; and document-based sentiment analysis.

Step 4 - Data visualization

In this step, all the brand experience insights derived from the above steps are showcased on to a customer experience dashboard in the form of graphs and charts. The dashboard allows you to set alerts for any specific keywords, say, if you need to monitor a brand for Instagram sentiment analysis . In such a case, the dashboard will send you alerts via email or phone messenger every time there is a hike in the mention or the keyword appears.

Brand Experience Case Studies

• MAC Cosmetics

We conducted a customer brand experience case study of MAC cosmetics where we analyzed sentiment for the brand’s viral YouTube video by international makeup artist Hindash. The analysis gave us deep insights into why the video had received such positive ratings and how it had single-handedly increased social mentions of the brand when it was launched.

The Repustate IQ sentiment analysis platform also showed the reasons behind the negative sentiment, which turned out to be caused not because there was anything wrong with the product. Interestingly, it was the opposite. The product had become so popular, thanks to the high brand engagement propelled by the video, that it was selling faster than anticipated, hence leading to a shortage in supply. And it was this fact that was leading to negative sentiment.

Read the MAC cosmetics brand experience case study.

Social media video content analysis for a viral McDonald TikTok video project we did, highlighted the importance of sentiment analysis in social media analytics. Unlike sentiment analysis of comments that can give reasons behind buyer behavior, mere social media metrics, such as the total number of likes, comments, shares, videos, etc. only give a superficial view of social engagement.

As the case study showed, even though the video had gained popularity because it was driven by a humorous take on a self-inspired logo revamp by a graphic designer, sentiment analysis of comments showed that people were talking about much more than just the logo. More precisely, they were talking about onion rings. People hoped that McDonald’s would take note of their desire and add onion rings to their menu.

Read the McDonald’s brand experience case study.

• Toronto Maple Leafs

Brand experience analytics can give us sentiment-driven insights into how we can increase sales conversions, infuse product differentiation, and drive brand loyalty. In a case study of the Toronto Maple Leafs, we analyzed the hashtag #leafsforever on TikTok and Twitter and gained insights into what fans were saying, and what could be done to improve their in-stadium experience.

From the 3936 comments that Repustate IQ pulled up from the two social data sources, elements in the aspects and entities showed granular details that were behind the 60% positive sentiment score. The platform showed how #vegasborn was a term trending in the comments for the original hashtag. Similarly, we saw aspect co-occurrence insights that told us that price was something that was mentioned several times in conjunction with tickets. And so was technology mentioned several times.

Read the Toronto Maple Leafs case study to know more.

Wendy’s customer brand experience analysis showed that even though there was a high positive ranking for the brand, individual location-based sentiment was driven by many factors. Hence, it was fluctuating. Amongst one of the most popular quick-service restaurants (QSRs) in the region, when we compared two popular, high-traffic locations of Wendy’s in downtown Toronto in Google Reviews, we saw that sentiment for both locations was dependent on separate factors.

Brand experience as a whole is what your customers experience when they engage with you throughout the buying stages. Repustate IQ insights showed that in both cases, people loved the food, and did not mind waiting, yet were thrown off by bad customer service and the lack of a seating arrangement. This goes to show that even though a brand’s overall sentiment may be positive, there are many factors that can contribute to a changing sentiment trend.

Read the Wendy’s brand experience case study.

Customer brand experience can be a very powerful way to influence buying decisions amongst customers. AI-driven sentiment analysis of user experience data can give you granular brand experience insights to help improve your brand value and brand recognition.

Leverage Repustate IQ and boost your branding strategies with precise, targeted, actionable insights. With built-in capabilities like search inside video , semantic clustering, and multilingual data analysis across a wide array of sources including surveys, you get all the right marketing directions you need right at your fingertips.

Join leading companies using Repustate

The implementation was seamless thanks to their developer friendly API and great documentation. Whenever our team had questions, Repustate provided fast, responsive support to ensure our questions and concerns were never left hanging.

We tried many vendors whose speed and accuracy were not as good as Repustate's. Arabic text data is not easy to mine for insight, but with Repustate we have found a technology partner who is a true expert in the field.

We are very satisfied with the accuracy of Repustate's Arabic sentiment analysis, as well as their and support which helped us to successfully deliver the requirements of our clients in the government and private sector.

We were blown away by the fact that they were able to put together a demo using our own YouTube channels on just a couple of days notice. What really stood out was the built-in semantic search capability.

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How brand experience, satisfaction, trust, and commitment affect loyalty: a reexamination and reconciliation

• Original Article
• Published: 30 November 2021
• Volume 2022 , pages 203–231, ( 2022 )

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• Beichen Liang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9020-379X 1  

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This study investigates how brand experience, satisfaction, trust, and commitment influence brand loyalty. The results show that when these drivers separately affect brand loyalty, brand satisfaction and brand trust have a stronger effect on attitudinal loyalty than on behavioral loyalty, while brand experience and brand commitment have a stronger effect on behavioral loyalty than on attitudinal loyalty. When they are combined, however, their effects on brand loyalty are at least partially mediated. Moreover, brand satisfaction has the strongest effect on attitudinal loyalty, and brand commitment has the strongest effect on brand loyalty, whether they separately or jointly affect brand loyalty. Finally, research and managerial implications and limitations are also discussed.

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Liang, B. How brand experience, satisfaction, trust, and commitment affect loyalty: a reexamination and reconciliation. Ital. J. Mark. 2022 , 203–231 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43039-021-00042-9

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9 Case Studies That Prove Experiential Retail Is The Future

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What is a pop-up shop? Everything you need to know to try short-term retail  > 23 Smart Pop-Up Shop Ideas to Steal From These Successful Brands > 9 Case Studies That Prove Experiential Retail Is The Future

What is experiential retail, and how can experiential retail benefit your business?

Experiential retail is a term used to define a type of retailing that aims to provide customers with a unique and memorable experience. Experiential retail is typically characterized by one or more of the following features: the use of unique and interesting spaces, objects, or experiences; high levels of customer engagement; and the use of technology to enhance customer interactions.

One key aspect of experiential retail is the ability to create an attractive and welcoming environment for staff and customers alike. This can be achieved through a combination of factors, including good design, cleanliness, and lighting . Another important factor is how well the store reflects its brand identity.

Although there are many different types of experiential retail outlets, they all share certain common elements: they are designed to provide a memorable experience for their customers; they are focused on creating an enjoyable atmosphere for staff members as well as the public; they offer an appealing mix of products and services, and they use technology to enhance customer interactions.

Finally, experiential retail is not just about selling products or services. It is also about building strong relationships with customers that go beyond transactions.

Experiential retail is the future. For years we’ve heard about the decline of physical retail and the rise of the internet. However, the desire for retail experiences is on the rise with 52% millennials saying of their spending goes on experience-related purchases. This introduces the concept of ‘retailtainment’.

Enter: retailtainment

Because of this, retailers have evolved their offerings. By focusing on so-called ‘ retailtainment’ and immersive retail experiences, brands are able to provide customers with fun, unique and in-person experiences that elevate shopping to new heights.

With retailtainment, the retail industry is shifting attention from a features-and-benefits approach to a focus on immersive shopping and customer experience . To be successful, retailers must offer consumers a desirable retail experience that in turn drives sales.

What is meant by Retailtainment?

The term “retailtainment” is used to describe the trend of retailers using entertainment to attract customers and encourage them to spend more time – and money – in their stores. This can take the form of in-store events, interactive displays, and even simply providing a comfortable and enjoyable environment for customers to shop in. The goal of retailtainment is to create a unique and memorable shopping experience that will keep customers coming back.

With the rise of online shopping and brick-and-mortar retailers have to work harder than ever to compete. By offering an enjoyable and entertaining shopping experience, retailers can attract customers who are looking for more than just a transaction. Retailtainment can be a powerful tool to build customer loyalty and drive sales.

How does retailtainment fit in today’s retail experiential strategy?

As shoppers’ expectations become more demanding, retailers are turning to retailtainment to create a more engaging and memorable shopping experience. By incorporating elements of entertainment into the retail environment, retailers can create a unique and differentiated customer experience that will help them stand out from the competition.

There are a number of ways that retailtainment can be used to improve the customer experience. For example, retailers can use interactive technology to create an immersive shopping experience that engages shoppers on a personal level. Additionally, retailers can use entertainment to add excitement and energy to their store environment, making it more inviting and enjoyable for shoppers.

Ultimately, retailtainment can play a key role in helping retailers create a customer experience that is unique, differentiated, and memorable.

What is the difference between retailtainment and experiential retail?

Both retailtainment and experiential retail are designed to make the shopping experience more enjoyable and engaging. However, experiential retail goes a step further by creating an emotional connection with customers. This emotional connection can lead to brand loyalty and repeat business.

Thus, while both retailtainment and experiential retail are important trends in the retail industry, experiential retail is more focused on creating a lasting impression and emotional connection with customers.

Here are our 8 favorite examples of Experiential Retail and retailtainment in action:

Marvel: Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N provides fans with interactive brand building experience

The Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. is an immersive exhibit that has toured the world since the first Avengers film. It has appeared in key retail areas such as New York Seoul Paris , Beijing, London and Las Vegas, and always pulls in huge crowds. Based on the global box-office film franchise, Marvel’s The Avengers, the store features real life movie props and interactive displays.

There are Marvel-branded items for sale but the goal of the project is not to shift T-shirts and mugs. It is about delivering an in-person experience to fans and bringing the brand to life.

The Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. is a great example of retailtainment and experiential retail in action. Visitors are fully immersed in the fictional world they adore, further cementing their affiliation and love for the Marvel brand.

For a brand as strong and iconic as Marvel, it would be easy to sit back and take popularity for granted. However, through the use of retailtainment they are continuing to delight their customers beyond the screen.

Farfetch: Creating a retail experience of the future

Image via Bloomberg

Farfetch is as an e-commerce portal for luxury boutiques. It’s successfully positioned itself as a technology provider for brands; combining technology and fashion to provide unique in-store experiences.

José Neves, CEO of Farfetch, has spoken about his concern that physical retail is diminishing; it accounts for 93 per cent of sales today, but by 2025 is predicted to account for just 80 per cent.

Enter: Farfetch’s Augmented Retail Solution

Neves’ vision for retailtainment includes advancements in technology to make the consumer experience more human. He produced Farfetch’s Store of the Future, an augmented retail solution that “links the online and offline worlds, using data to enhance the retail experience.” In its retail store in London, Farfetch provided connected clothing racks, touch-screen-enhanced mirrors and sign-in stations that pulled data collected online to use in-store.

Farfetch provided customers with a sign-in screen to search their purchase history and wish list, which provided valuable customer insight for the sales assistants. There was also a smart mirror to request different sizes, alternative products or pay without leaving the dressing room.

This innovation led them to be labeled as “ The Retailer of the Future ”, allowing customers to enjoy an effortless in-person experience that harmonizes the best parts of boutique shopping with the speed and convenience of online shopping.

Read More: Excess Inventory Post-Holiday? Open a Pop-Up Shop

Huda Beauty: Cosmic experience in Covent Garden

Huda Beauty , one of the world’s fastest-growing beauty brands, ran an immersive retail experience pop-up store right in the centre of Covent Garden, London, to launch a new product range and reach new customers.

Huda used the location ( sourced by Storefront pop up space rental ) to deliver a sci-fi themed experience in support of their new eye-shadow palette Mercury Retrograde.

The entire exterior of the pop-up resembled a multi-faceted, metallic mass of geometrical shapes. This was echoed inside with various ‘galactic’ elements, all manner of mirrored surfaces and shimmering fixtures and elements.

As part of the event, visitors could sit on the throne Huda used in her launch material, all set up to encourage as much social media activity and engagement as possible.

Huda Beauty caught the eye and wowed its visitors. Introducing a whole swathe of new customers to the Huda Beauty brand.

Read More: 4 Beauty Brands Who Successfully Launched A Pop-Up Store

Vans: A shopping experience to remember

Image via Skateparks

The House of Vans in London lives up to the company motto of being “off the wall”. A location where art, music, BMX, street culture and fashion converge, you can find almost everything you can imagine across the 30,000 square feet building. Amongst a cinema, café, live music venue and art gallery, the bottom floor holds the most unique feature of the building: the concrete ramp, mini ramp and street course.

Nothing better epitomizes the Vans brand than a space where young people can not only shop but spontaneously socialize. The House of Vans is the perfect example of how experiential retail can be used to empower a shopping experience.

Read More: How The Music Industry Is Making The Most of Pop-Up Stores

Ikea: Using social media to power a unique retail experience

Ikea brought 100 Facebook competition winners to one of its warehouses and let them stay the night. They were able to select the mattress, sheets and pillows to fully give them a fully tailored experience. A sleep expert was on hand with tips for getting a good night’s rest, including how to find the perfect mattress for any sleeping style.

This was a clever and unique way to obtain visibility and get fans to focus on what Ikea has to offer and try it out for themselves.

This idea came from understanding their consumer insights on social media. Lois Blenkinsop, Ikea’s U.K. PR and internal communications manager, said: “Social media has opened up a unique platform for us to interact directly with our customers. Listening to what they want is what we do best, and the Big Sleepover is just one example of how we’re using such instant and open feedback to better inform our marketing activity.”

From using social media they were able to apply experiential marketing to their retail strategy and provide their customers with a memorable event that brought the brand a ton of visibility and engagement.

Space Ninety 8: showcasing the art of retailtainment

Image via @Space90

As a spin-off from Urban Outfitters, Space Ninety 8 is a shared retail space that spans 5 floors, hosting retailers, galleries and even a rooftop restaurant and bar.

Scanning their Instagram, you can see the variety of what Space Ninety 8 offers beyond solely retail. Advertised next to yoga classes is an album signing by Big Boi, alongside pictures of art classes and Lady GaGa merchandise. By reflecting the flexible nature of modern life, the brand created a versatile store that emphasizes experience, perfecting the art of retailtainment.

TOMS: creating an immersive experience through VR

Experiences don’t have to be a permanent feature of a store in order to make an impact on customers. In 2015 TOMS’ placed VR headsets into 100 stores, enabling them to virtually transport players to Peru to see the impact of their One for One giving campaign on local people.

As you walk through the village stores with locals smiling and waving at you, it is impossible not to feel warmed by the friendly atmosphere. Not only did this retail experience improve awareness of their social corporate responsibility and promote their giving campaign, it also gave customers an unforgettable and immersive experience they were unlikely to forget.

[Check out Toms’ continued focus on immersive retail experiences here]

How to Provide Retailtainment that Drives Traffic and Sales

These case studies all stress the importance of providing an in-store experience. By exceeding expectations you drive emotional reactions. There are five consistent elements each use in their stores to ensure a remarkable customer shopping experience:

• Interactiveness: All of these retailers ensure that the senses are connected – memories of what we feel, hear, see, smell, and touch, may last a lifetime.
• Originality: These ideas were all authentic and natural, making the customer feel as if they entered a different world.
• Connectedness: Customers must feel that the experience has been created for them.
• Unexpectedness: These unique experiences are critical to ensure your brand is remembered.
• Reliability: The experience is executed through tested methods to achieve consistency and excellence.

The future of experiential retail

As the world of retail continues to evolve, so too must the way brands create memorable experiences for their customers. With the rise of digital and mobile technologies, consumers now have more choices than ever before when it comes to how they shop and what they buy. To stay ahead of the curve, brands must find new and innovative ways to engage with their customers and create unforgettable shopping experiences.

One way to do this is through experiential retail – using physical spaces to create immersive, one-of-a-kind experiences that cannot be replicated online. This could involve anything from in-store events and workshops to augmented reality and virtual reality experiences.

Experiential marketing isn’t about spending millions on fancy gadgets for your retail store. Sure it can help, but it’s mostly about a personalized shopping experience and providing an unparalleled retail experience for your guests and customers. The brands that delight their customers are the brands that drive loyalty and advocacy. Couple this with excellent customer service and you’re on to a winner. These case studies all demonstrate how it is possible to follow similar steps to overcome the challenges eCommerce has brought.

The brands that use their physical stores to focus on the customer experience are the brands that will do the best. The dynamic between physical and online retail has shifted and the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic has only accentuated this.

Planning your own experiential retail project and need some help? Drop us a note and we’ll help you out.

For more on launching temporary retail stores and one-off events, download our Ultimate Pop-Up Guide and make your ideas happen.

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• 7 August 2023

6 Examples of Great Brand Strategy Case Studies

What is Brand Strategy?

The term brand strategy relates to the methods a brand will use to market its products or services to consumers. It focuses on how they present and position themselves in the market. There are several strategies a brand can use and here are some of the biggest.

Company Name

This is where a brand will focus on marketing their company/brand name as a whole. They don’t focus on any specific element of their brand, services or products. Their goal is to improve brand awareness through marketing their name alone.

Individual Branding

This is where a brand will focus on a specific element of their brand. This could range from an individual product to a service, or even a person. This form of branding moves away from overall brand marketing and narrows its focus towards a specific element.

Attitude Branding

This is where the brand markets the idea or emotion behind their brand rather than the name or product. A brand will align itself with this idea, emotion or feeling and market their association with this factor.

Brand Extension

Brand extension is when a brand markets a sub-brand rather than the overall parent brand. Many big brands are owned by even bigger brands, but they don’t market the larger parent brand.

Private Label

Not all brands or companies create their own products. The term private label refers to products that are produced for multiple brands from one creator. Private labels offer an in-house version of commonly produced products, and a brand can market this as a lower price alternative, for example.

Brand Strategy Case Studies

There are many successful branding case studies we could use to explain each element of a brand strategy. However, we believe these 7 examples help explain the power and benefits of brand strategy well.

Red Bull – Company Brand Name

Red Bull is somewhat of a powerhouse in the world of brand marketing. Their company-based brand marketing strategy is one of the most complete but does require a lot of budget. Running F1 teams and sponsoring extreme sports athletes doesn’t come cheap but it can lead to virality.

What Has Red Bull Done?

Red Bull has always known their target market and have found a way to communicate with them. Their initial brand marketing involved finding out where their target market would hang out and hand out free products: increasing brand awareness and word-of-mouth exposure.

Now, with a much larger budget, they still perform the same style of marketing. They know where their target market will be online or what sports they enjoy and position themselves there. Be it an F1 race or an 18 year old university student looking at skydiving content on YouTube.

What Can We Learn From Red Bull?

Understanding your target market will help you position your brand correctly. Their brand is so well known most will associate it name with their favourite sport before a canned energy drink.

Apple – Individual

Apple has always pushed their products before their brand name. Hosting large expos to launch a new product and advertising their latest phone before looking to raise brand awareness. The ‘Shot on Iphone’ ad campaigns are a great example of their marketing efforts pushing the quality and ability of their products.

What Have Apple Done?

Apple focuses on the consumer within its marketing efforts and aligns this with their product. Their push towards innovation is clear from their slogan ‘Think Different’. They look to expose their product strengths and do this through TV advertising and tech influencers.

What Can We Learn From Apple?

If we’re looking to market an individual part of our brand, like a product, it’s important that we first understand the benefits. By understanding the benefits we can market these and draw attention to the selling factors. Ensuring the individual element embodies the overall brand message.

Air Jordan – Brand Extension

One of the most recognisable brand extensions is Air Jordan. A sub-brand of Nike, Air Jordans have become some of the most successful and sought after shoes in the market. They currently sell somewhere around $5 billion worth of shoes each year.

What Have Air Jordan Done?

Nike aligned their product with an up and coming basketball superstar. They also moved away from the Nike brand name as, at the time, it wasn’t ‘cool’ within the basketball scene. By focusing on the brand extension, Air Jordan, they were able to market it alongside the athlete.

What Can We Learn From Air Jordan?

Brand extensions don’t need to follow the same brand message as the parent brand. They can be unique and move away from what would be expected of the parent brand, giving them freedom to push in other directions to reach a wider potential customer base.

Aldi – Private Label

Aldi is a European supermarket that has found great success with their private label range. In fact, 90% of Aldi’s products are private label and, as the majority of their products are in-house, they’re able to control price and availability. This flexibility gives them an edge over their larger supermarket competitors.

What Have Aldi Done?

Aldi have run a number of brand marketing campaigns, however, their focus on the quality of their private label stands out. The ‘I also like this one’ campaign is a great example of how they compare themselves to others in the industry. Backing it up with consumer data, they are able to stand out as just as good but less expensive.

What Can We Learn From Aldi?

If you’re a private label brand, it’s important to know your strengths and weaknesses. Perform market research to gather relevant data and market using this information. Part of the 4 Ps of marketing is ‘price’, so it’s important to consumers that the price is competitive.

Jeep – Attitude Branding

Jeep brand themselves alongside the idea of adventure. Jeep’s marketing campaigns are all focused around the idea of the car being a tool to achieve adventures. This is a great example of how a brand can align themselves with an idea and brand the idea with the product.

What Have Jeep Done Well?

Jeep have understood their target market and have in some ways built their target market around their products. They have positioned themselves through advertisement and product placements to be recognised alongside an attitude.

What Can We Learn From Jeep?

Marketing and branding doesn’t always have to be about yourself. Branding can be an idea that you and your products envelop. Marketing this idea can associate you with that idea. You are therefore no longer just Jeep, you are the adventure car.

Enhancing a Brand Strategy

Not every brand is the same and not every strategy works for every brand. It’s important to understand who you and who your customers are before you develop a brand strategy. Knowing this will give you the best chance of success when launching a new campaign.

For more help and support in creating a brand strategy for your business or company get in contact with Fellow. You can also view our brand strategy page here.

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Reality Reinvented: AR & VR and Case Studies Shaping Brand Experiences

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are two dynamic technologies that have gathered the attention of marketers in the rapidly changing field of digital marketing, redefining the way brands communicate with their audiences. By enabling a fluid dance between the digital and the physical, these technologies are doing more than just changing the rules of the game. Come along on a journey to discover the magic that happens when digital marketing, AR, and VR combine.

Why AR and VR is The Future of Marketing?

Imagine this; when you browse through your preferred social media platform, an augmented reality filter appears, instantly transforming your face into a comical character. This is only a small example of how Augmented Reality is erasing limits between the digital and the real world. By bringing interactive digital elements to real-world experiences, AR improves them beyond VR, which transmits people to completely digital content.

For marketers, AR is a dynamic tool that turns passive content consumption into an engaging interaction. Whether it’s the playful filters on social media, an interactive product packaging experience, or a captivating in-store adventure, AR invites consumers to actively participate in the brand story.

Conversely, VR takes users to a world that is beyond the physical. With VR, users could lose themselves in stories and become more than just viewers—they become an essential part of the narrative. Imagine entering a virtual showroom, using a simulated environment to evaluate products, or even taking a virtual tour to distant locations. The secret to VR’s power is its capacity to create strong feelings, which are the basis of customer loyalty.

The combination of AR and VR is where the real adventure begins. Together, these technologies build an ecosystem that enables brands to provide seamless, comprehensive experiences. Imagine the following: an augmented reality app enables users to scan a product to unlock a virtual reality experience that takes them into the brand’s narrative or takes them on a virtual tour of the product’s development. This combination increases the impact in projects involving digital marketing . Brands may engage viewers across multiple channels and leave an enhanced and lasting impression by adding AR components to traditional commercials or using VR to extend the narrative.

E-commerce has found a particularly sweet spot for AR. Imagine a world in which consumers can virtually try on clothing or see furniture arranged in their living rooms before clicking the “purchase” button. By eliminating doubts and increasing customer confidence, AR turns online buying into an immersive experience. Digital marketers can benefit from a customized and engaging customer experience by integrating AR into e-commerce platforms. The option to “try before you buy” benefits both customers and brands by increasing customer happiness and reducing return rates.

Creating experiences that people will remember is the fundamental goal of the partnership between AR, VR, and digital marketing. It’s about going beyond traditional marketing while creating consumer-lasting moments. A deeper effect is produced by the realistic VR experience and the interactive aspect of AR, which eventually leads to increased brand loyalty.

AR and VR: Numbers in Focus

After briefly talking about AR and VR, and before moving on to the case studies we, as Multiplayer Agency , have examined on this subject, let’s focus on some statistics provided by Statista that have happened in recent years and are expected in the future.

The market for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) is expected to reach US$32.1B in revenue in 2023, indicating significant growth prospects. It is projected that this growth will continue at a remarkable annual rate of 12.60%, with a market volume forecast to reach US$58.1B by 2028. AR Software is the market leader in this industry, with an estimated worth of US$11.9B in 2023. In terms of revenue generation, the US leads the pack with a projected $8,568.0M market volume in 2023. By 2028, the AR and VR markets are projected to have 6,887M global users, reflecting how widely these technologies are being used.

The AR and VR market has experienced significant growth on a global scale, with the US and China leading the standard for innovation and widespread adoption.

When we look at the general map, we can see how AR VR technology has gained momentum and that what it is now is just the beginning of the next short period. When we look at advertising, where our work is supported and focused on with case studies, we will see a leap in this field in the future, just like the general figures.

By 2023, the global AR advertising market is expected to generate an astounding US$4.4B in revenue. It is growing quickly. Between 2023 and 2028, the market is expected to grow at a compound annually growth rate of 11%, putting it on track to reach US$7.5 billion. The US is leading the way, with a significant US$1,054M market volume forecasted in 2023. Globally, AR advertising is expanding rapidly, and the United States and China are also leading the way in creating creative, immersive campaigns. With the growing use of AR by marketers for in-app advertising, the market is expanding rapidly and changing how consumers interact with digital content.

4 Examples of How Brands Are Redefining Customer Experiences with AR and VR

Case study 1: new york times vr campaign.

The New York Times successfully addressed the challenge of attracting Gen Z readers by embracing Virtual Reality (VR) through the NYT VR platform . The initiative involved distributing Google Cardboard viewers to 1.1 million print subscribers and launching a series of VR short films, with the first film, “The Displaced,” focusing on the lives of refugee children. The app recorded over half a million downloads, distributed 1.3 million Google Cardboard sets, and garnered 1.5 million views, with an impressive average engagement time of 6 minutes per session. The campaign earned acclaim, winning the mobile Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2016 for its ability to evoke empathy and excitement, showcasing the power of VR in journalism and storytelling.

Case Study 2: Pizza Hut’s AR Campaign with PAC-MAN

To blend nostalgia with innovative technology, Pizza Hut launched a captivating augmented reality (AR) campaign featuring the iconic video game PAC-MAN. Recognizing the need to innovate in a competitive market dominated by online delivery services, Pizza Hut turned to AR to not only engage customers but also tap into the fond memories associated with its dine-in experience.

The campaign centered around a limited-edition PAC-MAN pizza box, equipped with a QR code that, when scanned with a smartphone, transformed the box into a playable PAC-MAN game. This not only added an interactive element to the pizza experience but also created a bridge between the past and the present, appealing to consumers’ sense of nostalgia.

The initiative involved collaboration with PAC-MAN maker Bandai Namco Entertainment, adding an authentic touch to the campaign. Yutaka Fuse, the head of licensing and branding at Bandai Namco Entertainment, highlighted the synergy, stating that “PAC-MAN’s design and creation was inspired by the shape of a pizza with a slice taken out of it.” This alignment made the partnership not only innovative but also culturally relevant.

The results were impressive, with the AR game recording over 1.5 million views and an average engagement time of 6 minutes per session. Moreover, the campaign extended beyond the digital realm, as Pizza Hut distributed 1.3 million PAC-MAN branded Google Cardboard sets to its print subscribers.

As Pizza Hut continued its “Newstalgia” campaign, promising to revive other favorites from its past, helped customers’ love for Pizza Hut while establishing new connections with younger generations. This case study stands as a testament to the effectiveness of leveraging AR technology to connect with consumers, enhance brand image, and drive business success.

The achievement of the campaign is outstanding: 11,260 hours played, 741 million media impression, 10.6 million Pac-Man boxes sold, 

Remarkably, for the month of March, the Pizza Hut box technically surpassed the combined sales of the Nintendo Switch, Playstation 5, and Xbox Series X, making it the best-selling game console globally.

Case Study 3: The Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Game Changer: FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022

The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 proved to be a historic event not only for the mesmerizing matches on the field but also for the groundbreaking integration of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies by sponsor brands. 

Sponsor brands seized the opportunity to revolutionize fan engagement through AR and VR experiences. The immersive technologies offered fans a new way to interact with the tournament, turning living rooms into 3D data centers and enabling users to focus on specific players or teams. Augmented Reality enhanced coverage allowed fans to experience statistics in real-time, creating a more enriched and personalized viewing experience.

Huge sponsors, including Adidas, Coca-Cola, Hyundai Motors, Qatar Energy, Wanda Group, Chevrolet, Hublot, Peacock and Qatar Airways, embraced AR to market their products. The integration of AR filters, especially on social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, became a trend. Brands created engaging filters targeting the youthful audience, enabling users to connect with the brand in an immersive way.

AR technology extended beyond the digital realm into stadiums, facilitating easy navigation for spectators. Google glasses and AR were utilized to help fans find their seats, discover key locations within the stadium, and enhance the overall customer journey. The interactive experience not only entertained fans but also kept them engaged throughout the tournament.

Brands strategically utilized AR to enhance the shopping experience for fans. Fashion brands, in particular, leveraged AR technology to allow fans to visualize the jerseys and shoes of their favorite players in 3D. This immersive experience personalized services based on individual interests and favorite teams, leading to increased sales and brand loyalty.

The success of AR and VR integration was evident in the massive digital engagement figures. The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 witnessed almost 6 billion engagements on social media, with a cumulative reach of 262 billion across all platforms. Brands effectively tapped into the passion of football fans, offering them novel and interactive experiences beyond traditional marketing methods.

The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 marked a turning point in sports marketing with the widespread adoption of AR and VR technologies by sponsor brands. The success stories of brands leveraging AR filters, enhancing the customer journey, and executing engaging campaigns demonstrate the immense potential of these technologies in capturing the attention and loyalty of fans. As the world eagerly anticipates future sporting events, the Qatar 2022 case study stands as a testament to the transformative power of AR and VR in redefining the fan experience on a global scale.

Case Study 4: Red Bull-Ninja “Win with Ninja!” Campaign

Famous gamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins is the star of an innovative web-based AR campaign that Red Bull has launched to step up its marketing game. The Ninja AR Lens is an immersive experience that distinguishes itself from other apps by not requiring app downloads. Users may access it with any smartphone by just hitting a button on the Red Bull website. Part of the “Win with Ninja” effort, the campaign was first introduced in Germany and invites fans to invite Ninja into their homes, take pictures with him, and enter a lottery to win the opportunity to play games with him at Lollapalooza in Chicago.

The campaign offers fans an interactive avatar of Ninja seamlessly integrated into their surroundings. This user-friendly, instantly accessible AR experience aligns with Red Bull’s broader goals of increasing brand engagement and enhancing its digital presence. Ninja was one of the most followed gamers on Twitch, known for his record-breaking streams in popular games like Halo, PUBG, Apex Legends, and Fortnite.

The campaign’s success is evident in the high engagement it has achieved. Ninja’s video about the collaboration has received over 5 million views and 189,000 likes, while Red Bull’s video has been viewed more than 200,000 times. This reflects the resonance of the AR initiative and its ability to capture the attention of Ninja’s dedicated fan base.

Red Bull’s strategic move in combining AR technology with the popularity of a gaming icon like Ninja demonstrates an innovative strategy in digital marketing, creating memorable experiences and driving brand loyalty. This campaign is evidence of how the marketing industry is changing and how companies are using augmented reality to close the gap between virtual and in-person encounters. In addition to adapting to current users’ preferences, Red Bull’s use of Web-AR demonstrates how AR may be used to increase user participation, engagement, and brand awareness.

The integration of AR, VR, and digital marketing is revolutionizing the way brands connect with their audiences. As we have seen in the case studies presented above, these technologies have the power to create engaging experiences that capture attention, build loyalty, and drive sales.

As AR and VR continue to evolve, we can expect to see even more innovative and effective marketing campaigns appear.

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