By Manoj Kumar
1. WHAT ARE YOU SELLING? WHAT IS A CUSTOMER BUYING? It is no longer just about delivering integrated communication and channels, instead a brand proposition itself is a 360 consumer experience! Eg., an artisanal ice-cream brand that has expanded its portfolio to include sugar free and vegan ranges to enormous success. Furthermore, to bring more excitement for stay-at-home customers, it is selling ready-to-make ice-cream kits with a churner while supporting it with video sessions to give gourmet tips.
2. FADING LINES OF DISTINCTION between a product and a service. People are collecting experiences, not possessions. Even products need to be embedded with memories of experiences, stories and lasting connections. Similarly, pure services can be re-thought as products as well. eg., a restaurant or a cafe getting into productisation for home consumption.
3. OMNI BRAND SHOULD BE ROOTED IN YOUR ERA. Reimagine your ERA (Tip # 2) and let it guide you to create your Omni Brand when you work on the Value-Market Fit (Tip #3). All products, services and experiences offered by your Omni brand should consistently reinforce and build it’s ERA with consumers.
4. TRUST IS A BIG NEW CUSTOMER ENTRY POINT. The consumers will be more picky in their choices now and since trust is critical, there is opportunity for already trusted brands to re-evaluate their value propositions and bring it to the consumers in a more holistic way. This is a great time for sensible brand extensions, without losing the essence of your brand proposition, to other categories.
5. OMNI CHANNEL IS INTEGRAL TO AN OMNI BRAND. It was already challenging for organisations to implement the idea of omni channel successfully, as most often even though the brand might be distributed through multiple online and offline channels, there would be little or no integration in the consumer experience. Going forward, an integrated 360 delivery of consumer experience will be essential to building Omni Brands. Sometimes, the channel choices could be surprisingly simple like WhatsApp and Instagram.
6. AN OMNI BRAND NEEDS AN IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE. As lines between product, service and experience vanish, it is imperative that next generation Omni Brands think of integrating bleeding edge experiential tools at the points of sale. Tools that can help customers engage with the brand more personally and emotionally. We will talk more about this in our next Tip #8.
Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Anchal Jain for his contributions.