Dear Brands: It's Now or Never

Dear brand big and small: as a consumer, I admit this past year in Covid hell hasn’t been kind to my wallet. I got lost in a sea of Amazon boxes, not considering the social and environmental impact of my choices. Every purchase came with a hit of dopamine, which hijacked my brain’s reward system, further molding me into the perfect customer. One of instant gratification, one of “buy, rinse, repeat”. Now, I do hold myself accountable. But I think it’s worth discussing how we got here.

Attention is a commodity. It’s traded between the pockets of brands and advertisers. In a marketing sense, we don’t own who we are. Once collected, our identity is monetized by people other than ourselves. We used to have some control over this; we’d decide what information we’d give up in exchange for a service. But now we have no control over the automated distribution of our demographics and interests. 

Our behaviors, our digital footprints, are tracked. A product we search for will follow us from banner to banner, from a Facebook post to a Youtube ad, and even to our inbox. 

My experience in marketing has taught me that consumer psychology is often manipulated, often not to consumers’ best interests. The next time you feel guilty buying on impulse, remember there are teams of professionals who pore over every decision you make on your customer journey. It’s by design. Their goal is to increase top line growth and make that sale. They know your demographic, your socioeconomic status, your household needs, your sentiments. They analyze the devices you use, the layout of a store, the point of sale, the product placement, the size, color and text of packaging. Independent variables are AB tested and tweaked until they find the bestselling formula. Online, they implement infinite scroll, autoplay and gamification features to create addictive experiences. They even use the same gambling strategies casinos use. It’s the science of capturing attention and spend.

Using the tools above, marketing, CX (customer experience) and UX (user experience) aren’t innately good or bad. But if we go beyond sales-based KPIs, we can do better. Today, the process of falling down a marketing funnel is so frictionless that decisions are made in a blink. Often people don’t feel they own the decision-making—it just happens. I can’t help but wonder…. If instead of reducing friction like we have been, what if we added more friction instead? What would that look like?

It might sound contrarian, but hear me out:

• The lifetime value of a consistent, occasional customer far surpasses one that feels taken advantage of. Brands that champion their customers earn trust and loyalty. With time, it’s easy to tell apart brands that pay lip service from brands that act in earnest.
• Building a sustainable relationship with your base requires looking out for your customer’s best interests, which sometimes conflict with your own business interests. I believe this short term sacrifice is vital to the long term gain of brand equity and goodwill.
• Giving customers choice in a socially engineered environment that strips choice will help them feel ownership of the actions they take with your brand. Giving them space and friction to question themselves during key decision points on their customer journey reinforces this sentiment.

For example, Patagonia is lauded as a brand of integrity. Their core values include unconventionally building the best product, causing no unnecessary harm, and using business to protect nature. The famous 2011 “Don’t Buy This Jacket” ad by Patagonia is a well-cited case study of a campaign that raised environmental issues (and ironically boosted sales by 30%). The friction they created in the customer journey was positively received.

I think there’s a huge opportunity for brands who get this right. Customers are educating themselves and demanding more from businesses. Is a product carbon neutral? What are the environmental costs? Does this support my community?

There are plenty of initiatives out there already like B Corps and cradle-to-cradle design. We’ll see how this plays out and let the markets decide. In the meantime, my goal is to design sustainable experiences, to sell people products and services that help them live a better life.