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On Creating Resonant Digital Brand Experiences Today

Digital Brand Experiences

We asked our design team about their point of view on building resonant digital brand experiences today. Here’s what they said.

Historically, brands used to rely heavily on brand marketing and advertising for awareness of their products and services. But in the digital age, many brands are born solely online or as an app. In essence, screen only experience(s). What makes some of these brands good vs. great?

Great digital brands are true utilities. Once you get into someone’s life and seamlessly integrate into their every day, that’s when you find success as a digital brand. Venmo comes to mind first. It’s a brand that made paying people back—something we do every day or every week—fun. PayPal started P2P payments and acquired Venmo as a next generation digital experience. PayPal is good, but Venmo is great. Fun, easy, fresh, and simple.

A testament to a great digital brand is the number of “super users” the brand has acquired, as in the number of people that can’t imagine not using them every day. Moving beyond marketing and advertising, it’s brand awareness through repetition and word of mouth. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google are all very prominent digital brands today. Most people are “super users” of all these experiences. Now that’s true utility.

What’s the real value of being a digital brand today?

Consumers today expect a lot from the brands they buy from and/or show loyalty toward. They expect brands to understand them perfectly. They want personalized experiences and brand experiences that are tailored to their every moment.

And digital brands have the opportunity to give just that—to get down to that person, that place, and that unique moment. They have the data to serve up relevant content and experiences in a personalized way—essentially wrapping around a person and his/her environment at the perfect point in time. That’s what it’s all about. And when you pair that kind of deep knowledge of the audience and what they’re doing with utility, you have a very powerful thing.

The question every digital brand should be asking is, “In today’s busy world, what value does this thing add to a person’s life, right now?”

Where do you see digital branding headed in the future?

There’s absolutely no doubt that digital experiences are going to become way more powerful over time. That means less paper, fewer stores, more connectivity, more automation, and more machine learning. But it’s important to remember that as brands get more advanced and even more connected, they also need to behave more humanly. We see a lot of attempts to humanize the digital customer experience for a reason. Chat/Messenger bots are an example. People, for the most part, don’t want to talk to computers or be trapped in a world that feels separated from their own.

Moving beyond sites and apps, VR/AR is here, but not here yet. It’s going to be a long transition to truly integrate these digital experiences into our lives at scale and in meaningful ways. No matter what the form factor, digital brands can champion the human side of technology as it gets more powerful. SnapChat is a perfect example of using AR in a fun and simple way before we even knew what AR was.

Another fast-moving area is IoT and AI-connected devices and services. Think Amazon’s Alexa—she’s basically becoming a brand within her digital self. The Amazon brand has a digital voice that can have real conversations with us. Apple’s Siri has new friends. Our TVs are smart and we can control things in our homes like our cable, thermostat, light bulbs, door locks, etc. from anywhere. Brands will need to be confident, trusted, and safe in their design, feel, language, and approach.

What are some tactics that brands succeeding in the digital space are adapting?

Today, with more mass in the digital space it’s harder for people to remember who to go back to and why. It’s a crowded space and building brand equity is a big challenge. Everyone’s advertising and spending and it sometimes seems near impossible to gain that mass adoption. That explains why loyalty programs are finding a lot of success in the digital space.

The Nike Plus platform is a great example of this. It basically lifts a physical act such as a sport and surrounds it with a digital layer of data, engagement, competitive feel, and game aspect. It’s a non-commerce loyalty play that can eventually lead to commerce. It can also be considered a utility as well—your digital companion to your everyday fitness.

In the end, it’s the brands who’ve figured out strategically how to make people feel good and give them some sort of differentiated value that end up on top. So it’s about the emotional coupled with the rational.

Speaking of challenges, what are some other challenges brands trying to build resonant digital experiences are facing right now?

A lot of the times when brands fail in the digital space it’s simply about too many people trying to do the same thing. Like circling in on too small of a segment or trying to solve something that never really needed solving. The home delivery meals category is a good example of a category that is simply too competitive and brands are struggling to stand apart.

As designers, the big challenge is creating a brand story and experience in these predefined, digital spaces. The brand needs to work and be compelling screen after screen, frame after frame, pixel after pixel. And the thing is that people don’t look at it for very long. We have very short digital attention spans. Our hands are moving faster than we can even process. It’s a real challenge to stop a user in their tracks, but that’s the goal.

Then there’s also the challenge of balancing how much you push your digital experience into the future. Digital brands always have to be one step ahead. But at the same time, the experiences have to resonate with people. You can’t push too far or not far enough.

As a designer, what’s the most exciting part of building digital brand experiences?

The digital world is in a perpetual state of redesign. Think about how often Facebook updates its platform. There’s more opportunity for change when everything is happening digitally.

As designers, we constantly fiddle and shift—continually tailoring a brand moment to better fit a person and his/her world. And that’s exciting in a brand world where consumers are at the center of everything.

Also, digital always looks forward. It never looks back. It doesn’t even stay the same. And it’s not slowing down.  It’s a big, growing train, moving forward—full speed. That’s both an inspiring realization and an exciting challenge we have to accept and let fuel our creativity, innovation, and design approaches moving forward. 

Emotive Brand is an Oakland brand strategy and design agency.

Why These Brands Are On Their Best Digital Brand Behavior

All Brands Need Digital

Brand behavior is what brings brand strategy to life. And today, brands that aren’t focusing on digital brand behavior can’t compete. Digitization is becoming the main pathway for consumer journeys across all industries. And the number of digital touch-points for brands is increasing by 20% annually. So digital is an integral part of the overall brand experience. And the brands with the best digital brand behavior are thriving for a reason.

Digital Brand Behavior That We Love

1. Tell a powerful digital brand story: GE

Through story telling, GE invites consumers and businesses into their world. Their photos and visual content on Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, and their website showcase their technology leveraging digital to make their brand more human.

For GE, it’s all about capturing people’s imagination and fostering innovation. Because part of GE’s brand promise is their commitment to innovation, GE tries to be a first-mover on new digital and social platforms. So they experiment to see how a new platform works for them and if it helps tell the story of why they matter.

And this commitment to digital brand behavior has increased GE brand awareness and engagement, especially among younger audiences and technology lovers.

2. Act with transparency through and through: Everlane

Today, digital is the most efficient way for consumers to find the information they are looking for. Everlane built a customer base by being radically transparent about this information – revealing their manufacturing process across digital platforms – something that many  clothing companies often choose to withhold.

On the retailer’s website, consumers can easily find the itemized cost right down to the $.11 for transport to stores. Everlane has featured factories that manufacture its products and prides itself on the behavior of disclosing costs for material, labor, transportation, and even markup.

This kind of transparency within a competitive market like retail makes a brand like Everlane stand out as honest, authentic, and worthy of their consumer’s trust and loyalty – what thriving in the digital world demands.

3. Speak with a clear voice across digital touch-points: Southwest

With endless digital platforms comes the possibility of a disjointed brand voice. And when a brand’s voice isn’t clear across platforms, a brand can easily become less trusted, less recognizable, and less emotionally impactful for the people who matter to its success.

Southwest is finding digital success because it has created a personable, honest, and trustworthy brand voice that rings true across all touch-points. Not just in person or on the pretzels that flight attendants pass out on planes (that say “just because we like you”). But on the website. On social media. And even in their hashtags.

Consistency and clarity with their brand voice is essential for Southwest as a brand. It helps the airline differentiate themselves from competitors as being the most human and trusted choice – never hiding fees or deceiving consumers.

4. Behave responsively: Nike

The more responsive a brand is on their digital platforms, the more people feel connected, engaged, and loyal to that brand. Responsive brands are able to personalize their digital experience to each consumer, and adapt dynamically to how and when people engage with their content.

Take Nike. Nike’s digital responsiveness is two-fold – their digital communication with consumers is direct and fast and their digital design is highly responsive.

On Twitter, Nike’s customer service is gold standard. They reply quickly and directly – engaging with consumers, addressing concerns, celebrating positive engagements, and helping people find what they need.

In terms of responsive design, Nike is constantly innovating new ways to be more responsive. The new Nike+ app provides users with a feed of stories directly based on their inputs of interests. Digital data insights are directly produced from user’s behavior, needs, and wants. The app works to fulfill their brand promise of making athletes better – personalizing its content and bringing people closer to their goals thru smart and dynamic responsiveness.

5. Have a strategy: HipCamp

At then end of the day, the most important thing about digital behavior is having a strategy for it. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of platforms and options. Brands that are succeeding are using their brand promise and strategy to guide their digital behavior.

And HipCamp, for instance, has built its brand around adventure, exploration, and community. Because of this, Instagram is an important community-building and sharing platform. On Instagram, HipCamp focuses on sharing the places that their consumers have explored with their Instagram community. This opens up the world to their users, and brings them in.

It’s All About Trust

The way a brand behaves digitally is key to driving trust, engagement, and loyalty.

So focus on delivering a consistent brand behavior. Adapt the practices above. And build digital trust that positions your brand to thrive no matter what challenges are ahead.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency.