Customer Experience and Omnichannel Marketing

It’s quite amazing when you stop and realize how much has marketing evolved throughout the years, especially thinking about channel marketing.

Today, industries traditionally centered in physical stores, like retail, for example, have already started making a switch to adapt to the new shopping behaviors of the digital era consumers, merging analog and digital worlds to create an integrated, omnichannel experience.

I recently attended the Digital Branding Analytics Miami 2019 Conference #DBAmiami and while listening to Kathy Mayor, CMO of Boxy Charm and former SVP & Chief Digital Officer of Carnival Cruise Lines, this whole concept of omnichannel marketing and customer experience really started to take form. Kathy spoke about her experience on Carnival and referred to a “7 part framework” highly focused on the consumer, their thought process, passions, experiences, and how to use this knowledge to find the best ways to approach them.

Brands that work with omnichannel strategies focus on understanding their audience, their customer journey and how the right combination of channels, campaigns, and content can finally influence purchases. As Kathy pointed out, they want to be able to reach all kinds of segments in the market, that’s why Carnival works not only through multiple channels, like social media, events, and activations, but with different partners like Amazon, Buzzfeed or celebrities like Ellen Degeneres or Guy Fieri and leverage the associations and distribution of these brands to help them tell their story and relate to their audience.  

Kathy mentioned a great example of how Carnival incorporated partnership into actual parts of their product with their work with Guy Fieri. Not only is he a spokesperson for the brand, but they have worked together in several campaigns, like “Carnival’s Kids BBQ Challenge” in Texas, the “#thankyouburger” campaign in support of the military and the launch of the “Guy’s Burger Joint” restaurant on board their ships, bringing all the positive associations with the celebrity’s brand into an actual experience for consumers.

Understanding their audience, and the benefits of each channel can help brands craft stronger strategies that will ultimately allow them to engage with their customers and offer them a far more rich and unique shopping experience.

You can watch Kathy’s incredibly insightful presentation in the video below.