The Brand Experience Principle no longer applies. Customer sensitivities and expectations can best be met with an individually-tailored Smart Communication architecture, which should be designed with a customer experience focus.

1. © 2018 by Andreas Weber, Frankfurt am Main | Blog. www.valuetrendradar.com | LinkedIn-Profile Page of 1 8
Brand Experience vs. Customer Experience
What does a brand mean to a consumer? What does a consumer mean to a brand?
By Andreas Weber, Head of Value

2. Brand Experience vs. Customer Experience:
What does a brand mean to a consumer?
What does a consumer mean to a brand?
By Andreas Weber, Head of Value
Many brands boast that they “create worlds of experience
for our customers.” The question I ask myself is: do brands
still meet the momentum which really determines customer
needs, or rather: customer satisfaction? Or does an
increasingly enforced brand experience approach not just
miss the mark, but create more frustration than enjoyment?
Preliminary remark: learn from the best! Before any initial
questions can be answered, looking back will help to bring us
forward (‘Back to the Future’ style). Apple is a prime example
to learn from. In the mid-90s, the company was at an all-time
low, almost to the point of bankruptcy. Despite this, they
managed a turnaround. Today, Apple has been the world’s
most valuable brand for years. How was this possible? —
“Communication first” was a central statement of the
legendary Steve Jobs at the ‘Apple confidential meeting’
on September 23, 1997.
With the “Think Different” Campaign he launched shortly
afterwards, he initiated a tremendous upheaval in the
industrial industry. 10 years later, they went on to break the
sound barrier with the release of the iPhone. Since then,
Apple as been making a higher per capita profit than most
companies in terms of per capita sales.
Although Jobs emphasized that products, marketing and
distribution are important, he put smart communication
above all else and made it a top priority. With his iPhone
presentation on January 9, 2007, he achieved an ad-hoc gain
of around $1 billion (media coverage, share price growth)
before the product was even on the shelves. The trick: Jobs
personally demonstrated the new device in great detail, and
thus made himself identifiable with his customers and their
new experience possibilities.
The credo: Smart Communication puts the central focus
on the customer experience. This has made the pioneer
Apple the number one premium brand to date. As an iCEO,
Jobs was also a dedicated Chief Communications Officer,
which enabled his ideas to become part of the DNA of Apple,
its partners and, in particular, its customers. This is a principle
to which other companies, such as Berkshire Hathaway by
Warren Buffett or Virgin by Richard Branson presumably
also owe their success.
© 2018 by Andreas Weber, Frankfurt am Main | Blog. www.valuetrendradar.com | LinkedIn-Profile Page of 2 8

3. In my opinion, Apple is by far the most capable Smart
Communication Company — and that includes maximum
loyalty to their customers around the globe.
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Personal note: Anyone who buys an Apple product can experience
this — I’ve just bought the new iMac 27” with a Retina 5K Display and
a MagicTrackPad. From (online) procurement including leasing to
free-of-charge delivery, the incredibly easy setup (just unpacking the iMac
is a beautifully designed experience) up to the iCloud registration following
Apple’s welcome email — which offered the very best professional support —
the new computer seamlessly became a part of both my personal and
professional life. This includes marvelous surprises, numerous technical
innovations and quality features at the highest level. In conclusion:
benchmark!
So let’s ask ourselves:
What distinguishes customer experience
from brand experience?
Learning from the best: If you take a closer look, Apple
and many other of the world’s most valuable brands follow
a similar principle. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Uber and
Airbnb - all of which are highly successful companies of
recent times - have internalized and practiced the customer
experience principle.
Experts like to claim that their success is due to the superior
innovative platform business model. To an extent, in my
opinion, this is true: exponential growth is possible with
this model, as you are able to address millions, even billions,
of customers directly. However, business model innovations,
as well as new digital technologies, are ‘only’ a means to
an end — and not necessarily a guarantee of success.
Think different!
© 2018 by Andreas Weber, Frankfurt am Main | Blog. www.valuetrendradar.com | LinkedIn-Profile Page of 3 8

4. Consideration 1: It is crucial to exploit the innovation and
technology mechanisms in such a way that dialogues or
conversations with customers take place in real time. This
enables us to perfect services and create products that are
tailored to the customer’s needs. Smart Communication
ensures all of this!!
Consideration 2: The brand itself is no longer the center
of attention; instead, it rather becomes a common vehicle for
companies and customers. Mass Marketing becomes
Customized Mass Marketing. The majority of established
brand companies put their focus on brand experience in order
to impress customers with the strongest possible brand
impact. This is a way to impress your customers with the
strongest possible brand experience and thus induce them to
buy your products. However, the best case scenario in this: you
end up covering your costs, but you can barely manage to grow
profitably and organically or achieve double-digit margins.
© 2018 by Andreas Weber, Frankfurt am Main | Blog. www.valuetrendradar.com | LinkedIn-Profile Page of 4 8

5. © 2018 by Andreas Weber, Frankfurt am Main | Blog. www.valuetrendradar.com | LinkedIn-Profile Page of 5 8

6. Consideration 3: Reality is inevitable: customers often feel
more and more disappointed if they feel that brands have lost
personal contact with them..
Adobe’s study, “Reinventing Loyalty: The New Loyalty
Experience” (Fall 2017) found that 75% of CMOs admit that
customer loyalty/customer satisfaction need to be improved,
or that they don’t even know what their customers are dealing
with. “This clearly demonstrates that CMOs feel that there is
huge room for improvement when it comes to implementing
new loyalty dimensions.”
In my opinion,
these new
“loyalty
dimensions”
are entrenched
in “old” values:
trust,
satisfaction,
and relatedness. These values also form the core of Smart
Communication.
—————————————————————————————————————
In this context: The usual “digital” transformation efforts
of many companies miss the point. Instead of focusing on
customer experience, many companies focus instead on
the optimization of internal processes.
While these do save the company time and money, they
tend to drastically increase time and effort for the customer.
Personal, human-to-human consultation opportunities are
thus almost impossible. Anyone who’s spent far too much time
on hold knows what I’m talking about.
© 2018 by Andreas Weber, Frankfurt am Main | Blog. www.valuetrendradar.com | LinkedIn-Profile Page of 6 8

7. © 2018 by Andreas Weber, Frankfurt am Main | Blog. www.valuetrendradar.com | LinkedIn-Profile Page of 7 8

8. Consideration 4: In my view, in order to avoid customer
dissatisfaction and loss of loyalty, it is not necessarily a matter
of changing qualifications, but of changing the mandate
of those responsible for marketing.
Why?
• Brand experience puts the focus on buying. It mainly
uses expensive media and creative services from third
parties (although Nielsen reports that in Germany, Europe’s
premium market in 2017, gross advertising expenditure
declined in some cases, despite high growth in mobile
advertising). The corresponding strategies and measures
are aimed at, almost as if on a hunt, bombarding customers
with advertising, anywhere, anytime. So-called bonus
programs make the hunt all the more dynamic.
• But: Customer Experience, on the other hand, relies on
customer satisfaction and service, through methods of
direct contact and dialogue. Customer Experience follows
the principle of ‘Listen Learn.’ Real-time capturing of
customers experiences is used to continuously improve
products and services. Communication and transaction are
interlinked as closely as possible, preferably seamlessly.
The credo: It’s all about interaction and relatedness
by smart communication.
Consideration 5: The Brand Experience Principle no longer
applies. Customer sensitivities and expectations can best be
met with an individually-tailored Smart Communication
architecture, which should be designed with a customer
experience focus.
If the Smart Communication strategy, which is so successful
for Apple, is structured in a systemic way, adapted to your
company, and precisely understood in detail, the essence of
Smart Communication, you will be able to respond extremely
quickly to individual customer needs. There is no other
choice! ‘Communication first’ thus goes hand in hand with
‘Customer benefits first.’
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Instructions
1. Think different! Put your current branding and customer experience
strategies to the test and discuss your findings with others.
2. Rethink and critically assess the values of your company’s current
communication approach and processes (i. e. via the ValueCheck
questionnaire).
3. Listen Learn. Understand and use the insights that my White Paper
on Smart Communication offers, including specific instructions for
action and organizational models.
4. I am always available for further explanations and support.
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About Andreas Weber, Founder and CEO of Value Communication AG
Since more than 25 years Andreas Weber serves on an international level as a business
communication analyst, influencer and transformer. His activities are dedicated to the
'Transformation for the Digital Age' via presentations, management briefings, coachings,
workshops, analysisreports, strategic advice.
© 2018 by Andreas Weber, Frankfurt am Main | Blog. www.valuetrendradar.com | LinkedIn-Profile Page of 8 8