This article discusses the importance of strategic marketing and experiential campaigns to build brand loyalty and influence consumer purchasing decisions. It notes that nearly half of purchasing decisions at one telecom company were influenced by customer interactions rather than advertising. The article advocates for an approach that immerses the brand in the consumer's world through face-to-face touchpoints to build an emotional bond with the brand. It also warns against losing brand integrity through poor execution of marketing campaigns or disinterested sales staff.

1. This article hosted at this address:
http://www.jigsawexp.co.za/visionfutureframe.htm
A View to the Future
A look at the pitfalls of modern consumer
communication.
9th February 2007
by Zane Van Rooyen
Marketing by its very nature demands vision-driven
initiatives. It is a foundation upon which all sales activities are
built.
Sustainable business growth can only be achieved through
planned marketing strategies and the execution of managed and monitored
activities, the latter being my territory.
Good money is thrown after bad when an ad hoc approach is applied. Time is
wasted and monitoring and measurement is impossible. Without a solid execution
plan, businesses leave themselves open to diluting consumer interpretation and
rollercoaster sales, often losing out to their sharper competitors. In the crowded
marketplace of today’s consumer economy, fitting in is FAILING.
According to a new report by consulting firm McKinsey in the United States, 44% of
purchasing decisions at one telecom company were influenced by customer
interaction rather than (above the line) advertising. Yes, almost half made the
decision only after interacting with the brand and not by what it said. Can you
afford to have 44% of your audience have a bad experience with your brand?
As a dedicated experiential marketer, I align myself with companies that require
our professional, focused approach to creating a consumer journey that will
kinesthetically immerse our client brand into the consumer’s world and builds an
emotional bond of long-term adoration to that brand. Here we see brand growth
objectives being met through consumer driven touch points – going face to face.
One of the biggest and most frequent mistakes witnessed with consumer message
management is that a brand company will spend large sums of money in the
conceptualization phase of a brand plan, often spending months on finalizing the
details, and then seem to dry up on focus just before the finish line and hand over
badly and with deadly short deadlines, to an outsourced company to activate.
My clients benefit from my involvement much earlier on in the design and
conceptual phases and our up to the minute grassroots participation in the various
consumer segments provides an invaluable resource of what works successfully
and what doesn’t. This allowing client to save priceless time by creating a
messaging campaign that works first time.
No amount of glossy full page spreads are going to build an adorer of your brand if
the face to face contact the consumer has with your brand is tarnished by poor
delivery, sloppy sales activators, or a disinterested store sales staff member who
doesn’t much care whether the product is sold or not, let alone what the brand
stands for emotionally.
STOP the brand integrity loss – start adopting experiential campaigns that work.
Zane Van Rooyen – National Strategic Director – Brand Ambient Marketing BAM
– creator of Unlocking the Power of XM workshop.