Brand ManageCamp speaker - Dave Norton

Dave_norton Dr. Dave Norton, principal of Stone Mantel, is internationally recognized as the cutting-edge thinker on what makes brand experiences meaningful. He has lectured at Harvard, Columbia Business School and at FORTUNE magazine’s annual summits. His seminar series, Strategies for Creating Meaningful Brand Experiences has been praised by attendees from companies like Microsoft, Royal Caribbean International, Kraft, and Disney.

Dave’s research capabilities have been embraced by entities as diverse as FORTUNE 500 Internet businesses, small countries, and multibillion dollar consumer goods companies. Numerous household brand companies have engaged him for ethnographic research, or have brought him in for team consulting. Stone Mantel, the company he founded, is an insights agency focused on finding the marketing experiences that matter most to customers. The organization helps companies identify the marketing and innovation strategies to create meaning brand experiences

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I'm MCing this year's Brand ManageCamp, so I thought I'd reach out to the incredible lineup of speakers and get their short answers to this very big question:

We all have unique perspectives on the marketplace, given our sources and consumption of information, past experiences, biases, etc.  Based on your perspective as an educator in the fields of branding, marketing, and the customer experience, what one shift in thinking do you believe organizations must make in order to succeed in today's hypercompetitive marketplace?  And is there any organization that you would hold up as an exemplar?

Here's David's response:

"In today’s environment, saturated by media, where messaging is ubiquitous and claims are instantly verified, great brand strategists must shift their roles from making promises to keeping promises. Marketing strategies that rely on advertising to build brand equity are largely ineffective if strategists cannot deliver a truly compelling experience.  And the experience needs to come before the promises are made. Brand strategists - you are first innovators who drive change through the organization and second communication strategists. 

I like Pandora.com, USAA, Toyota, Royal Caribbean International, and China’s Olympic Games. My measure of success: they really make me happy."

Posted September 3, 2008
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Graham Hill

Hi Tom

Very refreshing. Customer experience as branding the 'realistic' experience rather than just experiencing the pumped-up brand.

But it does raise the question of whether customer experience people and the marketing department within which they generally sit, really have the power to walk their branded customer experience talk. How many companies do you know where marketing people have hegemony over innovation (to make the right product in the first place), sales (so that it doesn't get discounted into oblivion), aftersales service (so that the company can get it righter the second time), partner management, and, and, in the brand eco-system.

And on a subtly different track, how many customer experience people and marketers really engage customers as deeply as they should do in all of these things?

I really like what David says - it is a big stride in a customer-centric brand direction - but I find it hard to believe that it gets done all that often.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager

Posted by: Graham Hill | September 03, 2008 at 10:08 AM

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