Why value matters
Customers are the life blood of a business. Creating more valuable experiences for customers creates more value for brands. With this in mind, customer experience should not be a siloed discipline; it should actually be the lens through which everything is viewed.
In context
Negative customer experiences are on the rise, so much so that one of the words of 2024 was “enshittification”, a term coined by Cory Doctorow to explain the demise in quality experiences, particularly in the digital realm.
This trend was noted in WARC’s annual Marketer’s Toolkit report, which found the decline in customer service quality is now a critical issue for marketers. Even established brands like Nike and Starbucks can get it wrong when they prioritise efficiency and transaction over quality customer experience.
To address this, marketers need to broaden their definition of creativity, writes Shaun McIlrath, an award-winning CCO, in a new best practice paper for WARC.
Takeaways
- Value comes in many different forms – financial (monetary), practical (ease), emotional (feels), and social (belonging). Even novelty (newness) is value and entertainment (fun).
- Every brand should be asking, “how can we create a more valuable experience for our customers?” versus “how can we extract more value from the consumer?”
- There’s a secondary commercial imperative that relates directly to comms, especially today. Value is viral – people socialise it. So, crucially, it travels without a media budget.
Key quote
“At our core, we exist as a creative intermediary between brands and consumers. Our purpose is to use creativity to bring the two together” – Shaun McIllrath.
Source: warc.com
