MESH Experience has always believed that experiences build brands and grow customer engagement and that is why we always frame our data and insight through an experience-driven marketing lens. And so it was a pleasure to work with Starcom in Australia to explore the importance of consumer experience.
In the past Starcoms’s Media Futures report has primarily been a forecast spend barometer showing differences in Advertiser vs. Media predictions. Over the last couple of years, in line with its positioning as the Human Experience Company, they have pivoted to incorporate a viewpoint on Consumer Experience (CX) and its importance to Australian business as well as including a consumer point of view around experiences. They needed to get an up to date view of the consumer experiences in the market.
The solution MESH Experience offered was a tailored research program of Real-Time Experience tracking across 4 categories (Automotive, FMCG, Finance and Electronics) to give a representative view of the Australian consumer’s behaviour and interaction with touchpoints. Over 2,600 experiences were shared in real-time by 400 consumers via mobile diary over the course of a week, enriched with Pre & Post diary surveys to deep-dive into category attitudes, touchpoints and future technologies. This gave us a holistic view of the media landscape whilst enabling us to see differences across the categories.
In conjunction, Starcom conducted a survey amongst Australian marketers to get their perspective on brands’ performance and perceptions in this area. An online survey of 189 senior marketing decision makers, was drawn from AANA members and Valued Opinions panel.
MESH Experience worked together with Starcom to create an industry leading view of the market for the annual Starcom Media Futures conference.
Highlights of key findings:
- As the gap between CX capability and customer expectations widens, it is important to focus on the Power of Positive Experience. Very Positive Experiences create significant shifts in brand choice – on average 10x the impact. And “Real life” experiences are 2.4x more likely to be positive than other types.
- People want to feel Valued, Connected and Excited – but the last of these two are typically under-rated by marketers, who instead prioritise other areas.
- Media can have a strong role to connect experiences, and thus further drive positivity. Furthermore, it can amplify those super positive real life experiences.
- One of the main outputs of the project was a framework through which marketers can maximise their Return on Experience, by aligning Human and Business outcomes to create connected experiences designed to close the expectation gap.
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