Yesterday I read an article in AdAge that announced AOL is searching for an advertising agency to help it devise a new brand campaign in the hopes of reconnecting with consumers. Citing sources familiar with the issued RFP, they report that AOL wants to remake its image and virally share "why people should care about AOL again".
They highlight the fact that that consumers don't know what AOL is up to today or what value they deliver to their audience.
What?!
You’ve identified that your customers don’t really know you and so you choose to advertise who you are? Here’s a novel concept: try demonstrating it through actions instead of advertising.
There’s a reason that AOL is being clobbered by competitors such as Google and Yahoo. They don’t focus on advertising why their customers should care; they provide a service that makes them care. They concentrate on their customer’s experience with their products and services rather than paying lip service to it.
While social media is often maligned by pundits today, you cannot underestimate the shift it has created in our business landscape. A brand can no longer advertise its way to success nor can it earn customer trust through broadcast messaging.
So here is my unsolicited advice to enterprise businesses such as AOL seeking to establish or re-establish a favorable position with their customers. It’s not about advertising; it’s about the customer experience. Understanding and managing the customer’s experience with the brand, its products, processes and employees is essential to growth in today’s inter-connected marketplace.
Instead of investing in more advertising, invest in your customer’s experience. The logical and emotions connections forged through the customer’s experience with all facets of your brand and service across the customer lifecycle will cement their relationship with you and the resulting advocacy will take care of the advertising.
Being RELEVANT
The AdAge article reports that AOL is looking to tell its story in a way that "captures emotions" and lets consumers see how it is "relevant as a brand." My advice: don’t talk about what makes you relevant, don’t advertise what makes you relevant…BE RELEVANT. You can’t tell a customer what they should feel when engaging your business. You have to allow them to experience it firsthand and then give them the tools to tell you and others what relevance it had to them.
Ensuring you have a unique value proposition is part of the equation too yet for many this is a “sacred cow”, meaning it is set in stone and cannot be challenged or changed. A unique value proposition cannot be what you want it to be or what you advertise it to be; in fact it’s not about the product at all. Today, your unique value proposition must be established through the experience your customers have with your brand and the resulting impact it has on their professional or personal lives.
It seems that many media businesses such as AOL have become obsessed with revenue models rather than customer experience. It’s understandable, given the drastic decline in revenues that media firms have reported post Web 2.0 and social media. But if your customers don’t know what relevance you have in their lives, more advertising is like slapping lipstick on pig. It may catch your attention but it won’t hide the fact that it’s a pig.
Designing a business model to drive up declining revenues will prove fruitless if they are not also created with the customer’s experience in mind. And the customer experience design can only be created with active participation from the customers themselves.
A business that cannot open itself up to customer input and direction will surely fail to keep their business relevant. And advertising is the antithesis of customer engagement.
So, AOL…maybe it’s time you turn away from advertising agencies and consider customer experience management firms?
Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
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