THE BRAND EXPERIENCE DISCONNECT
What it is, and why it matters.
In its most simple form, brand experience is how a customer feels throughout their interaction with your brand. It’s about how they feel before, during, and after buying a product, or investing in a service.
Much like many other things in branding, brand experience is something that can go consciously unnoticed, but subconsciously it has a huge impact on a customer’s likelihood to rave about you, or to leave feeling ‘meh’.
It’s also something that becomes more noticeable when brands get it all wrong.
You never pay any attention if you’re served a wine in a perfectly polished glass, but you will definitely notice if it’s cloudy with finger marks and lipstick on the rim.
The golden key with brand experience, is that you want the way your business looks from the outside (the branding) to be perfectly aligned with the way the customer feels (the brand experience). So, if your branding and website looks very casual, laidback, and chill, then you wouldn’t have your retail staff dressed in suits.
I had an experience with a (not-to-be-named) pilates studio recently that sums this up perfectly.
I’m going to break this down through every phase of the brand experience:
Before:
I was on the hunt for a new pilates studio to try, and came across a local one that just looked ace.
Looking at their socials and website, their logo and branding is really minimal and elevated. I don’t want to name names, so I’m not going to show you their logo, but it feels very of-the-moment, with a minimal cream & charcoal colour palette. While scrolling on their Instagram I was seeing images of the studio with beautiful sheer curtains, a backlit mirror, and a polished concrete floor, surrounded by white walls and some plants in the corner. An absolutely beautiful space, that looked super stunning, sleek, and profesh.
I was also subconsciously taking the little things into account, like the fact that it appeared as though all mats were provided - as you would expect from a premium pilates studio - compared to those that are BYO mat.
To book in, obviously I took their pricing into account, and they were noticeably pricing themselves on the upper end of the market. From their branding, to their imagery on their socials, it was definitely feeling like a semi-premium pilates studio. Probably more premium than what I had anticipated to find. But, no problem. I was keen to try this studio and it looked super beautiful, so I was happy to pay the price.
I was all booked in and hadn’t yet stepped foot inside the studio, so at this point I was expecting quite an elevated experience during the class.
During:
The day comes, I get to the studio, walk in, take off my shoes and put my stuff down in the waiting area. I walked into the mat room to see everyone else going to grab their mat from a store room in the corner. Immediately this felt a bit off, because this isn’t what I had expected based on all the information I was given prior via their website and socials. Since the mats are supplied my instant reaction was ‘Why don’t they have the mats already set up?’.
Because, having the mats already set up would mean that:
a) the customers don’t have to set up their mats themselves
b) as I expected an elevated experience, I naturally expected the mats to already be set up, and,
c) if the mats were set up by the staff, the mats would be perfectly spaced out in even rows.
This studio didn’t even have marks on the floor to guide the placement of the mat, it was quite literally a free for all. Although the rows turned out fairly even once we’d all set up our mats, they weren’t perfectly aligned or perfectly spaced out, again taking away from that premium customer experience that had been established in the before phase of the brand experience.
This was a quite a clunky first 5 minutes given that this was my very first in-person interaction with the brand. But it wasn’t a big deal. All of that left my mind very quickly once the class started.
However when the class was in session, I couldn’t help but notice a couple more things too.
Firstly, the instructor was using her phone as a timer. And she wasn’t just using it as a timer on the floor next to the mat - that would’ve at least been a bit better. She was actually holding her phone while she walked around the class giving prompts and cues. I could even see the timer screen on her phone. Numbers, orange button and all. Which, again, because I expected quite an elevated experience, this felt quite odd.
The way that my expectations had been built, I would’ve instead expected to see a more discreet handheld or waistband sports timer in place of this. The phone waving around was also quite distracting. And if you’ve learnt a thing or two about public speaking, you’ll understand how much of a difference it makes when you hold your phone in your hand, vs putting it out of sight. Just as Simon Sinek explains here.
By now, my brand experience is really cracking. But, I was too focussed on my glutes burning like crazy to care that much. I locked these thoughts away knowing I’d use them for a blog post later. We push on.
And then there was a moment that really sealed the deal for me. The instructor then began changing the music on the iPad that was up the front during the middle of the class. Quite literally scrolling through playlists and selecting a different song. Now I have done pilates long enough to know that music makes such a big impact on the class, and how important it is for the music to have the right vibe and be at the right tempo for a particular phase of the workout. Just like you wouldn’t play Crazy in Love by Beyoncé during a cool down and stretch at the end. Because the vibes would be totally off. And that is coming from someone who is an avid Beyhive member.
I’ve also done pilates long enough to know that this is something the instructors are often very particular about. So why didn’t this class have a pre-planned playlist to match the length and intensity of the workout? Especially for an elevated and premium pilates studio? I asked myself that too.
After:
The whole before experience built me up to expect a really premium, professional and elevated experience, but that’s not how I felt while I was there. That’s the disconnect. The crack in the brand experience where the expectations start to fall apart. And in branding, that is the total opposite of what you want.
You want the brand experience to be completely aligned in every single possible way, down to every tiny moment and detail.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not me having a whinge about having to go and grab my own mat, or that the instructor didn’t feel present. But being someone who works in branding every day, what I care about is the brand experience. And for a brand that had so strongly built me to expect a premium experience, it did not feel that way at all.
And perhaps the instructor was just having a bad day. Everyone can’t be 100% their best 100% of the time. But it was the fact that there were a handful tiny moments that made it feel this way.
And you may be thinking, maybe the instructor just isn’t that passionate about her job? Maybe she just doesn’t care that much? That could’ve been the case, but the instructor was the owner of the pilates studio. Soooo….
I finished my trial membership and didn’t sign on to continue. And by now you can hopefully see why.
Consumers are SMART. Much smarter than they are probably often given credit for. They will notice all of these tiny, tiny moments. Even if they don't consciously realise it.
You know those times that you've walked out of a restaurant or a cafe after your meal and didn't totally love your experience, but you can't exactly put your finger on the reason behind it? I can guarantee you a disconnected brand experience was that reason.
If you promise your customers one thing, you have to deliver it in every single way possible. Throughout the whole entire experience, and down to every tiny detail.
