DESIGNING BRANDS AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Contact: wisteria.cheung@cityu.edu.hk – Wisteria Cheung

Class activities 35%

Quiz 25% (26 mars 12h30 to 14h30 – LT4 YEUNG)
Project 40% (9 et 16 April – 20 minutes) – report for 22 April (no more than 3 000 words)
 select an organization, evaluate their brand and customer experience, and then make
recommendations.
 OR select one brand and develop a pop-up store for this brand to revamp their brand
image, create new brand and customer experience to attract a new segment of customers
(need to be approved before week 5).
 both online and offline experiences must be covered

Pop-up store is a shop that is deliberately temporary to achieve a particular goal, can look
like a regular store or different and is more and more popular.

LECTURE 1: COURSE INTRODUCTION, UNDERSTANDING BRAND AND CUSTOMER

EXPERIENCE

3 major topics in this course: CX (customer experience) + Brand experience (BX) + Design
thinking

We are experiencing brands every day, every minute, everywhere.

*Brand: a brand is a name, sign, symbol, or design or a combination of them, intended to

identify the goods or series of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from
those of competitors.
A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company.

3 functions:
- Navigation – help consumer choose.
- Reassurance – communicate the intrinsic quality and assure customers that they
have made the right choice.
- Engagement – use distinctive imagery, language, and associations to encourage
customers to identify with the brand.

Design plays an essential role in created and building brands.

Interesting statistics:
It takes 5-7 impressions for people to remember a brand.
Presenting a brand consistently across all platforms can increase revenue by 23%.
89% of shoppers stay loyal to brands that share their values.
82% of consumers feel more positive about a brand after reading customized content.
73% of consumers love a brand because of helpful customer service.
*Branding: disciplined process used to build awareness and extend customer loyalty. It
requires a mandate from the top (most of the time is top-down). Branding is about seizing
every opportunity to express why people should choose one brand over another.
Branding is about the desire to lead, outpace the competition…
Types of branding:
- Co-branding: partnering with another brand to achieve reach (ex: UNIQLO x Kaws).
 increase sales.
 enhance images especially with high quality/renowned brand.
 extend customer base.

- Digital branding: web, social media, search engine optimization, driving commerce on
the web.

- Personal branding: the way an individual builds their reputation (ex: a celebrity).
 not only applicable to artists/performers.

- Cause branding: aligning your brand with the charitable cause or corporate social
responsibility (ex: H&M foundation).

- Country branding: efforts to attract tourists and business (ex: Australia tourism board,
global competition to win the dream job).

*Brand identity: set of tangible elements to create image.

You can see it, touch it, hold it, hear it, etc. It creates a personality and a life for your
products/services. It fuels recognition, amplifies differentiation, and makes big ideas and
meaning accessible. It takes disparate elements and unifies them into the whole system.

Summary:
- Brand: overall perceptions.
- Branding: process to build a brand.
- Brand identity: tangible elements to create image.

Branding is needed when:

- New company
- Name change
- Revitalize a brand (rebranding)  customers try new things and if the company is not
successful then it won’t affect the original brand.
- Create an integrated system (as some companies don’t communicate to customers
coherently…or just every division does its own thing).
- Companies merge
- Or simply anytime

BX
*BRAND EXPERIENCE (BX): is conceptualized as sensations, feelings, cognitions, and
behavioral responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part of a brand’s design and
identity, package, communications, and environments. It’s the holistic perceptions that the
world at large has about your company and it(s) product(s). Brand experience affects
customer satisfaction and loyalty.
 Four dimensions: sensory (what they see, hear, smell, etc.), affective (what they feel),
intellectual (what they think) and behavioral (what they do).

*Brand touchpoints = a touch point is any time a potential customer or customer comes in
contact with your brand before, during or after they purchase something from you.
Each touch point is an opportunity to increase awareness and build customer loyalty.
Product is just one touch over 33 touchpoints.

CX
*CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX): the sum of all interactions between the individual (in
general, the customer) and the brand.
Every customer contact provided an opportunity to enhance an emotional connection. A
good experience generates positive business, a bad experience becomes a lost opportunity
sabotaging the brand. Building loyalty and lifelong relationships are each point of contact.

Benefits of CX:
- drive revenue and Customer Lifestyle Value (CLV) = measurement of how valuable a
customer is to your company not just on a purchase-by-purchase basis but across
entire customer relationships  average value/transaction x nb of transaction per
year x nb of years of relationship
- Increase brand value.
- Boost customer loyalty and advocacy.
- Keep close to customers’ changing behaviors.
- Reduce costs and invest in the right things.

UX
*USER EXPERIENCE (UX): user experience is how a user interacts with and experiences a
product, system, or service. It includes a person’s perceptions of utility, ease of use, and
efficiency (subjective). It focuses on having a deep understanding of users, what the need,
what they value, their abilities, and also their limitations.

LECTURE 2: BRAND ELEMENTS AND PYRAMID

Differences between BX and CX:

BX is more affective and CX is more realistic!

Differences between CX and UX:

CX can help to recover the poor UX  Service recovery: BAD UX + GOOD CX = GOOD BX.
UX can’t help to recover the poor CX  GOOD UX + BAD CX = BAD BX.

BRAND PYRAMID
*Brand pyramid is a tool to answer the essential questions related to the brand and its
operations in the market. It covers the stages in developing a brand together with objectives
and key marketing actions. It highlights different characteristics of the brand that will help a
company in grabbing a larger share of the market.
Stage 1: Brand salience  Identify.
- Brand color
- Logo
- Name/pronunciation
- Product shape and appearance
- Advertising/promotion/event/PR
- Slogan

Stage 2: Brand performance/Imagery  Meaning.

Performance:
- Ingredients/features (attributes)
- Reliability/durability/service (quality)
- Effectiveness/efficiency/empathy (outcomes)
- Style/design (appearance)
- Price
Imagery:
- User profiles
- Purchase/usage situations
- Personality
- History/heritage

Stage 3: Brand judgements/feelings  Response.

Judgements:
- Quality (value & satisfaction)
- Credibility (expertise, trust)
- Consideration (consider buying and use)
- Superiority (unique)
Feelings:
- Warmth/ calm
- Fun/ amuse.
- Excitement/ energized.
- Security/ assured, comfortable.
- Social approval/ respect by others.
- Self-respect/ fulfilled.

Stage 4: Brand resonance  Relationships.

- Loyalty
- Attachment
- Engagement
- Community

KEY BRAND ELEMENTS

Brand Identity: name, logo, tagline…

Brand name  key element in branding, most of the time the first image of the brand.
A well-chosen name is an essential brand asset.
It’s a choice: be different or follow the lead? What do you want to express?

Types of brand naming:

- Founder’s name.
- Descriptive – business nature.
- Fabricated – made-up name.
- Metaphor – things, places, animals, mythological names or foreign words.
- Magic spell – some names alter a world’s spelling in order to create a distinctive,
protectable name.

Criteria of good name: easy to pronounce, memorable, related to the business or company’s
promise, fairy short.

Brand logo  symbol or design adopted by a company to identify its products.

How? Color, format, words, cartoon.

Criteria of effective logo design: simple, distinctive, memorable, timeless, appropriate.

Brand color  there’s a reason to use certain colors in your logo design to convey a specific
message.

Tagline  slogan, clarifier, mantra, company statement, or guiding principle that describes,
synopsizes, or helps create an interest.

Its meaning should be accessible to all customers.

Tagline has a shorter life span than logo.
Criteria of effective tagline: captures the brand essence and positioning, differentiate from
competitors, evokes an emotional response and easy to remember.

Types of taglines:
- Imperative – commands action.
- Descriptive – describes the products/services or brand promise.
- Superlative – positions as best in class.
 - Provocative – provoking thought.
- Specific – reveals the business category.

Brand Promise: The single most important thing your organization promises to deliver every
time.
Brand Personality: What you want your brand to be known for (fun, serious, magical,
forceful, etc.).
Brand Associations: Colors, taglines, images, fonts, uniforms, equipment, etc.

LECTURE 3: DESIGN THINKING AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PT.1

DESIGN THINKING
 a human centered and collaborative approach to problem solving that is creative,
iterative and practical. (Brown 2008)
 It is a form of solution-based, or solution-focused thinking, starting with a goal (a better
future situation) instead of solving a specific problem. By considering both present and
future conditions and parameters of the problem, alternative solutions may be explored
simultaneously.

Goals of DT: to generate solutions that are desirable for user/viable for business/technology
feasible.

schéma

PROCESS OF DESIGN THINKING

5 STEPS
- Empathise: learn about the audience for whom you are designing by observation
interview and stories (Who is the users? What matters to this person? What are their
characteristics?).
- Define: create a point of view/problem statement that is based on user needs and
insights (What are their needs? Identify something worth working on).
- Ideate: brainstorm and develop as many creative solutions as possible (Wide ideas
encouraged).
- Prototype: build a representation of one or more of your ideas to show to others
(How can I show my idea? It’s a cost-effective way to collect feedback).
- Test: share your prototyped idea with original user to collect feedback (What
worked? What didn’t?).

Benefits of DT: teaches people how to innovate and solve problems, fosters teamwork and
collaboration, identity opportunities for organizations and offer a proven competitive
advantage.
Design Thinking can be applied to product innovation, services innovation, experiences
innovation and social innovation.

LECTURE 4: DESIGN THINKING AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PT.2

How to empathize?
- Observe and engage.
 observe what actions are being taken.
 how about their facial expressions, body language…
 why, guess the motives and reasons behind.
 notice any disconnection from what someone says and what he does.
- Interview (get deep understanding on user/customer).
How to conduct an interview?
 create a customer interview.
 create an interview outline + list of questions.
 conduct the interview.
 capture: taking notes, recording…
 review the interview.
 search for pattern.
TIPS = use open-end questions, apply “funnel theory”, observe body language, ask behavior
and feelings.
- Stimulate to get first-hand experience (ex: *body storming = understand difficulties
and problems by living the same situation with same characteristics as customer).

Question model  STAR (Situation Task Action/Achievement Result)

*USER PERSONA
= Is a semi-fictitious representation of your target customers. In general, one persona
represents an entire group and it’s framed from real customer discovery and research.
Why? Build empathy, set aside assumptions about users/customers, easy to visualize the
user.
How to build? Conduct user research such as interviews, organizer and analyze the research
data, build the profile.

User persona describes:

Who is the user? What are their characteristics?
What are their goals? their motivations?
How do they behave?
What are their pain points/frustrations?
What is the context in which they operate?
Any quotes? Any stories?

*EMPATHY MAP = collaborative visualization used to articulate what designers know about
a particular type of user.
It externalizes knowledge about users in order to create a shared understanding of user
needs and aid in decision making. It is built on data collected from interviews, focus groups
or another ethnographic research. It was invented by Dave Gray and his team.

4 key quadrants in an Empathy Map

Says: direct quotes on what the user has said
Does: look at concrete actions the user takes
Thinks: consider what the user might be thinking
Feels: consider what emotions the user is experiencing

From above, uncover the insights of user:

Gains: results or benefits that the user desires
Pains: user’s frustrations or challenges

 business actions: selling

organic/sustainable coffee,
review the production
process speedy…

SAYS/DOES = generate
through observation,
interviews, or other field
research methods
THINKS/FEELS = generate
from what you hear and
observe
*CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE is the sum of impressions associated with a brand for a particular
customer. It’s built over different stages of the customer journey and encompasses all
interactions. It may include both positive and negative feelings, incidents, and expectations.

Characteristics of experience:
- Holistics = all-encompassing, including actions, thoughts, feelings.
- Personal
- Situational
- That means, it’s subjective.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM) = approach focusses on the optimization

of the company processes that are related to the customer.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT (CEM) = approach focusses on the quality of
customer interactions through the customer journey.

How to map experiences?

- Identify key journeys
 Not all journeys and touch points are of equivalent value to customers, example:
reporting loss of credit cards.
- Understanding current performance
 Get frontline and customer involved to know what happens.
- Redesigning the experience and engaging the frontline
 Conduct research and observations, brainstorm what can be created or
redesigned.
- Changing mind-sets and sustaining the initiatives at scale
 Modifying the organization and its process.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MAPPING TOOLS:

There are diagrammatic tools which are used to identify needs and analyze experiences.
- Journey Map (CJM) – chronological
- Service Blueprint (SBP) – hierarchical
*CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP (CJM) = visual representation of a customer’s experience with
a brand. It illustrates the experiences of an individual as customer of an organization. These
visuals tell a story about how a customer moves through each phrase of interaction and
experiences each phrase.
At least four stages in a customer journey:
- Awareness (Inquiry)
- Consideration (Comparison)
- Decision (Purchase)
- Service (Installation) + Loyalty

Benefits:
- Help organization to build empathy and view from outside-in.
- Give employees a common big picture.
- Align across all levels and departments.
- Bring focus to organization.
- Point out opportunities for improvement and innovation.

How to use Design Thinking to design CJM:

- Empathize
 think from the customer’s perspective.
 Listen to the “voice of customer” by interview, employee’s feedback…
 Identify any pain point.
 Use Empathy Map to identify Pains and Gains.
- Ideate
 Brainstorm/create many possible solutions.
- Prototype and test
 Fail fast
LECTURE 5: DESIGN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE BY SERVICE BLUEPRINT

*Service blueprint = a diagram that visualizes the relationships between different service
components — people, props (physical or digital evidence), and processes — that are
directly tied to touchpoints in a specific customer journey.
The objective is to accurately portray the service process so that different people involved in
providing can understand and deal with it objectively regardless of their roles or their
individual points of view.
It is a very useful tool to design customer experience or journey.

BUILDING A SERVICE BLUEPRINT

Step 1  Identify the process to be blueprinted.
Step 2  Identify the customer or customer segment.
Step 3  Map the process from the customer’s point of view.
Step 4  Map contact employee actions, onstage and backstage.
Step 5  Link customer and contact person activities to needed support functions.
Step 6  Add evidence of service at each customer action step.

Benefits:
- Recognizes roles and interdependencies among functions, people, and organizations.
- Suggests critical points for measurement and feedback in the service process.
- Clarifies competitive positioning.
- Provides understanding of the ideal customer experience.

SERVICE STANDARDS
*Standardization = based on establishing a set of rules and procedures and being sure that
they are implemented consistently.
Service Standard is a set of guidelines for employees so that they can deliver consistent and
quality service to meet customer expectations.
It helps to define what a customer can expect from a service and how it should be delivered
by the service provider. e.g. speed, accuracy.

Why: Most companies have mission statements and quality policy that show concerns for
customers but
- these concerns cannot reach the employee level, especially frontline.
- different employees have different interpretation.

2 TYPES OF SERVICE STANDARDS:

“Hard” Customer-defined Standards :
- Things that can be counted, timed, or observed through audits.
- In general, they are related to productivity or efficiency.
- e.g. resolve a client problem within 24 hours, time for delivery, loading speed of
website

“Soft” Customer-defined Standards:

- Those related to personal touch.
- Mostly conducted by employees.
- e.g. greet customers by surname, open a new queue if more than 3 customers are
waiting.

Process of setting it:

- Identify existing or desired service encounter sequence.
- Translate customer expectations into behaviors/actions.
- Define appropriate standards.
- Develop measurements for standards.
- Track measures against standards

Mesurement:
For “Hard” Customer-defined Standards:
- Consists of counts or audits or timed actions that provide feedback about the
operational performance of a service standard (e.g. on-time rate, loading speed).
For “Soft” Customer-defined Standards:
- Use questionnaires to measure specific service encounters or service journey (e.g.
mystery shoppers survey, posttransaction survey).

MYSTERY SHOPPER SURVEY

* Mystery Shopper Survey = the practice of using trained shoppers to anonymously evaluate
customer service, operations, and merchandising display

Benefits:
- Monitors and measures service performance.
- Make employees aware of what is important in serving customers.
- Reinforces positive employee/management actions with incentive-based reward
systems.
- Allows for competitor analysis.
- Identifies training needs and sales opportunities.
Steps:
1. Setting objectives: Why? What are the important aspects you want to measure.
2. Program and questionnaire design: based on observable behavior.
3. Defining and recruiting mystery shoppers: match with the profile of customers.
4. Data collection and analysis: mystery shoppers conduct the field work → analysis.
5. Reporting.
6. Review findings and repeat Step 3 to 5: should be a continuous process to get
improvement.

Questionnaire design:
- Provide objective, observational feedback.
- Easy for shoppers to complete.
- Ideally, only ask “Yes” and “No” questions.
- Can use multiple response questions for shoppers to check off the features and
benefits that are mentioned during the shop.
- Can apply a point/scoring system for questions, e.g. Likert scale.
- Typically, retail mystery shopper questionnaire covers : Greeting ▪ Customer service
behavior in serving customers ▪ Employee product knowledge ▪ Facility cleanliness
and orderliness ▪ Speed of service.

Analysis of Mystery Shopper Survey:

- Data analysis
 By percentage of achievement (%)
 By scores assigned.
- Use of analysis
 Identify strengths and weaknesses.
 Compare a store performance at different time intervals.
 Compare individual store performance, i.e. outlet A vs. outlet B.
 Compare with competitors.

LECTURE 6: DESIGN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE BY PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

*Physical Evidence (PE) = the environment in which the service is delivered and where the
company and customer interact, and any tangible components that facilitate performance or
communication of the service.
 It covers facilities design, equipment, signage,
employee dress, business cards…

*Servicescape = the actual physical facility where

the service is performed, delivered, or consumed.

Importance of PE:
- Customers rely on tangible cues.
- Customers participate in physical evidence which create and influence the customer
experience.
- Customers use it to evaluate the service/product quality and access their satisfaction.
 - It helps to set expectations of customers (better physical evidence  higher
expectation).

Considerations:
- The store’s atmosphere must be consistent with the brand image and promise.
 Brand experience
- The store design helps influence customers’ shopping enjoyment, their time spent in
browsing, their willingness to converse with personnel and finally customers’ buying
decisions.
- The store needs to maximize the productivity of the retail space.

KEYS ELEMENTS FOR DESIGNING A PHYSICAL STORE

A. Exterior: store front, entrances, display windows, marquee (a sign displays the
store’s name) exterior building heigh, surrounding stores and area.

A store front is the total physical exterior of the store itself.

Tips on designing display windows:

- Develop a story based on a theme.
- Create a focal point.
- Be bold.
- Keep it simple.
- Pay attention to lighting.

B. General Interior: flooring, colors, scent, wall textures, aisle space, lighting, store
cleanliness, sounds (sounds & image match with image), temperature (culture
difference)…

C. Store Layout: Allocation of store space, product groupings, traffic flow, …

 *The way retailers set up their retail stores to direct customer flow.

The key objective of store layout is to influence customer’s buying decision.

 Entice customers to move around the store to browse and purchase more merchandise
than they may have originally planned.
 Provide a balance between giving customers adequate space in which to shop and
productivity drawn from merchandise display.

Allocation of store space

Selling space = used for displayed merchandise, interactions between salespeople and
customers, demonstrations, and do on (supermarkets, drug stores…).
Merchandise space = used to stock non-displayed items (store-room).
Personnel space = employees to change clothes and taking rest.
Customer space = contributes to the shopping mood (aisle, fitting room).
Determination of traffic flow patterns
1) Grid Layout
 long gondolas in repetitive pattern
 common in grocery and drugstores
  objectives: facilitate an orderly shopping trip, display as much merchandise as
possible to achieve cost efficiency, easy to manage.

2) Loop (racetrack) Layout

 Has a major aisle that loops around the store to guide customer traffic around
different departments within the store.
 Objectives: Draws customers around the store and encourage impulse purchasing.

Aligning Space:
*Planogram = visual (graphical) representation of the space for selling, merchandise,
personnel, and customers – as well as for product categories.
It is commonly used by retailers to assign space for merchandises.

 planogram

D. Interior displays: Assortment, theme-setting, ensemble…

*Visual merchandising = what a retailer/service provider takes a proactive, integrated
approach to atmospherics so as to create a certain “look”, properly display products,
stimulate shopping behavior, and enhance the physical environment.
 It includes everything from store display windows to the width of aisles to the materials
used for fixtures to merchandise presentation.
 It helps to inform customers, turn walk-by-shoppers-buyers, stimulates the senses,
entertains, reinforces the shoppers’ relationship with products and the store, build
competitive edge and defines stores’ personality.

Key tools of Visual Merchandising:

- Window
- General interiors
- Merchandise Presentation (Interior Displays)
- Display elements: props, mannequins, merchandise, color, signage and graphics,
lighting.

Interior Display:
Assortment Display (Style/Item Presentation): merchandise displayed by same items or
styles.
Theme-setting Display (Idea-Oriented Presentation): merchandise is grouped and displayed
together to form a theme/story.
Ensemble Display: coordinated merchandise is grouped and displayed together.
Color Organization: merchandise is grouped and displayed by same color.
Price Lining Presentation: merchandise is grouped and displayed by same price level.

Other Atmospheric Tools: lighting, color, music, scent, temperature.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR WEB DESIGN

Visual Hierarchy - establishes a focal point for visitors to see the most important
information.
Consistency – fonts, design, color, button, layout…
Responsive – Hide unnecessary elements, make button size large enough to work on mobile.
Simplicity – white space so that not overly cluttered and complex which prevent user from
taking action.
Hick’s Law – decision fatigue: every additional choice available will increase the amount of
time it takes to make a decision.
Golden ratio – around 1.618

GUEST LECTURE

Ricky Ng - Brand study for luxury watch

Functions of watch: sign of status, accessories and reading of time.

Luxury for emotional and social needs.
Low-end watch will be cheaper, luxury watch will be more expensive (price increasing).
Superb service experience: now more emphasized as before as it differentiates from
online/mid-range segments.
More touchpoints enhancements via VIP events, personalized souvenirs, birthday party,
limited editions, instore POPs & so on.

Customer screening: classify their customers into various segments for offering different
level of services (more personalized for target customers), but also deliberately refusing
unwanted customers as no stock available.

Maintain brand building.

Brand value = benefit (physical, emotional, social) / cost (price, time, effort, scarcity).
For luxury brands, you don’t have to put a lot of efforts and time acquiring a product (no
queue…).

Why don’t the brand simply mark up the price to the marketplace? Create demand.

Why don’t the brands just increase the production volume? Would deteriorate the brand
value, would limit the market share, it’s hard to increase (handmade)

Stores are very detailed and cleaned (flowers changed 3 times a week)
 If you don’t follow the rules, they cut the stock so you cannot have profit.

Insights from the decoration of 3 boutiques

Patek Philippe  focus on the watch, design, prestige, legacy (successful mature gentleman)
Rolex  sponsorship, storytelling, sport (sport watch)
Cartier  feminine, elegant (focus on VIP customers and events)

Create more touchpoints: loyalty programs…

Brands owns the customers details & know them via customer assessment, event, novelty
preview, purchase history, service maintenance & even factory visits.
Patek Philippe divide customers into 4 categories: statement collector, brand passionate,
goal achiever, status affirmer.
Cartier: VIP/KOL/10A (increase importance)  VIP club, birthday cake, personalized
souvenirs, frequent in-store events, Christmas gifts, more sales oriented.
Rolex: do not own the customer details and rarely do in-store events or promotions due to
too strong demand, organized Grand Sport event, etc. Focus more on instore CXE survey
(offline touchpoints): Ill-mouthers/Disappointed/Unimpressed/Advocate/Ambassador
(importance increase).

LECTURE 7: EMPLOYEE BRANDING

Roles of employees:
- They are the service.
- They are the brand.
- They are marketers.
- Importance is evident in:
 Marketing Mix (People)
  Services Marketing Triangle

 Services Profit Chain

BUILDING EMPLOYEE BRAND

*Employee branding = an internal and external marketing strategy that encourages

employees to develop positive attitudes about the company, empowering them to be more
effective brand ambassadors.

Goal:
- get every employee excited about being part of the organization.
- building effective brand and customer experience.

Benefits:
- Employees, especially frontline, know the customers directly.
- It is more reliable from the customers’ perspective. Employee voice is 3 x more
credible than the CEOs.
- Organizations can save money on advertising or other communications.
- Employees feel more pride and have higher job satisfaction.
 - It supports future recruitment and attract candidates.

How to turn employees into brand ambassadors?

- Treat your employees right.
- Build branding into your company culture.
- Let employees use company time to act as brand ambassadors.
- Incentivize employees to take action.
- Feature employee work as your branding.
- Make them into brand ambassadors by offering things they will actually use.

And maybe:
- Draft social media copy for them to share as brand ambassadors.
- Ask employees to leave company reviews.

ORGANIZATION CULTURE AND EMPLOYEE BRANDING

Why is organization culture important to employee branding?

- Employee’s behaviors are shaped by organization culture.
- Satisfaction of employees is highly linked up with satisfaction of customers.
- When organization aligns and integrates its culture and brand, it creates a powerful
engine of competitive advantage and growth.

*Organization culture = is defined as the underlying beliefs, assumptions, values and ways of
interacting that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an
organization.
It includes the organization’s vision, values, norms, systems, symbols, language assumptions,
beliefs and habits (Needle).

Shared purposes
Vision: why an organization does and what it does
Mission: how an organization does what it does
Values: guiding beliefs and principles
Culture enabler
Environment
Organization structure
Leadership
Communication
Rewards and recognition

LECTURE 8 & 9: DESIGN BRAND EXPERIENCE BY BRAND PERSONALITY, STORY TELLING &
BRAND PROMISES

BRAND AND BRAND EXPERIENCE

*Brand experience is conceptualized as sensations, feelings, cognitions, and behavioral
responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part of a brand’s design and identity,
package, communications, and environments.

4 dimensions of brand experience:

- Sensory = Visual impression + Other senses (e.g. smell, touch, hear, taste).
- Affective = Feeling, sentiments, emotions, incl diverse feelings as like, love, fear, joy,
anxiety…
- Behavioral = Action, bodily movement, lifestyles or interaction with brands.
- Intellectual = Inspirational (engage in a lot of thinking) & Stimulate curiosity and
problem solving.

How to measure brand experience?

BRAND PERSONALITY
*Brand personality is a set of well-defined traits that personify the brand. It is a literal
depiction of a brand as a person, giving a face to the abstract characteristic, values, and
voice that businesses cultivate.
It helps to shape the way people feel about its product, service, or mission.

Benefits:
- Create reliable and realistic representations of your brand.
- Be easily grasped by customers and employees what the brand is all about.
- Establish trust with customers and help maintain their loyalty.
- Build positive impact on sales and brand image.
 - Create brand consistency and greater impression.
- Especially good for eCommerce websites as it makes the brand “tangible”.

5 dimensions of Brand Personality:

Building brand experience by story telling

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make but about the stories you tell” – Godin

*Brand storytelling = is the act of using an emotion-evoking narrative to connect your brand
to customers, with a focus on creating empathy by linking what your brand stands for with
the values you share with your customers.
It is not necessarily about your history or just a series of events (and then, and then, and
then).
It is a journey of suspense where the audience feels the experience.
The best stories are about human experiences that connect back to why your brand exists
and what it values.

Story that sticks:

 Set your storytelling goals/objectives.
 Simple, Concrete, Credible, Emotions, Stories.

Building brand experience by brand promises

*Brand promise is
- telling your customer, either explicitly or implicitly, what customers can expect from the
brand’s product or service.
- the value or experience customers can expect to receive every single time they interact
with the brand.
- unique, enduring idea behind a brand’s purpose

Some brand promises can be used as the tagline or slogan for a company.

WHY?
 - make company stand out
- sets customers’ expectations on the quality of products and/or services.
- forge emotional connections.
- motivate employees to follow company mission and values.
BENEFITS:
- repeat customers.
- less time and energy to acquiring new customers.

CRITERIAS:
An effective brand promise must create distinction for the company’s offerings, and connect
the purpose, positioning, and strategy.
Foundation of a Powerful Brand Promise = Simple ▪ Credible ▪ Unique ▪ Memorable ▪
Inspiring.
Delivering EVERY time, to be FELT.

HOW TO DEVELOP?
- First, ask 3 Key Questions (what do customers expect? What does the brand stand
for? What makes the brand (company) unique?)
- Second, draft few copies and select:
- Evaluate if the company delivers, every day, every touch points, on the brand
promise?

All brands start with Brand Experience: BX  Brand personality  Brand satisfaction 
Brand loyalty.

LECTURE 11: ALIGN BRAND EXPERIENCE AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

In reality, marketing about what the brand ‘is’ and customer experience about what the
brand ‘does’.

- Decisions are conducted by different departments:

▪ Marketing → brand, brand promises, brand experience
▪ Operations/Customer Services → deliver CX
▪ Do they share the same values? mission? Vision

- Brand comes alive through customer interactions.

- Brands need to be consistent across all touch points. Customer experience is part of
the brand experience.

KEY QUESTIONS ABOUT ALIGNMENT

Is your brand delivering on its brand promise to customers through your customer
experience?
How and where do customers interact with your brand?
What do customers say and feel about the brand? About their experience?
How do customers feel about the brand and the experience that it delivers?
Is the brand experience the same at any point in time, at any touch point?
HOW TO ALIGN BX AND CX
- Establish an organization culture align with brand values and promises.
- Build effective communication across different departments.
- Prepare brand stories and brand narratives to be told through the customer
experience.
- Build up the sense that everyone is equally responsible for ‘living the brand’ – inside
and outside of the organization.
- Finally, a high degree of coherence between brand, products, services, sales,
marketing, IT and operations.

FUTURE TREND
Engagement:
- Live events to engage customers, e.g. Reactland.
- Customers need to participate, experience, and enjoy.

Platforms:
- Ride on different platforms, IG, FB, YouTube Live…
- Alignment across different channels and platforms is important.

Customization and Artificial Intelligence

Augmented & Virtual Experience:

- Artificial Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR).
- e.g.: IKEA use AR to assist customer’s decision.
- e.g.: Volvo use VR to let potential customers to have the trial of driving experience.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND AI MARKETING

AI Marketing: use AI technologies to make automated decisions based on data collection,
analysis, and additional observations of audience or economic trends:
- how to communicate better with customers.
- serve them with tailor made messages at the right time without intervention from
marketing team members.
- ensure maximum efficiency.

APPLICATION OF AI IN BX AND CX
- Data analysis
- Natural language processing (NLP)
- Media buying
- Automated decision-making
- Content generation
- Real-time personalization