Cristin Cornell Tarr - Innovation Requires Curiosity
This was a fun opportunity for me to speak with a professor about Experiences. Cristin Cornell Tarr is a professor of branding, marketing, and customer experience at the University of Denver.
I wanted to learn more about how branding plays a role in #CX or customer experience, particularly online experiences. I learned that the #CX is only one piece of the #BX or brand experience.
Columbia University defines Brand Experience as:
Brand experience is conceptualized as sensations, feelings, cognitions, and behavioral responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part of a brand's design and identity, packaging, communications, and environments.
Cristin talks about the different stakeholders that must be considered when looking at the whole experience. I found this image which includes some of those stakeholders. I find this somewhat misleading as they are all considered “customers” although they do all play a role in defining the entire Brand Experience.
https://www.manypixels.co/blog/post/what-is-brand-experience
Cristin also talks about how Gen Z will force changes in how businesses, small and large operate, market themselves, and communicate. The oldest of these is 25 now and just entering the “purchasing age”. She shares data on how nearly 3/4 of these Gen Z’ers want to work and purchase from “purpose-driven” companies. If you want to know what that is, listen below!
Auguste Comte, a nineteenth-century French sociologist, and philosopher, famously said that “demography is destiny.”
This idea is as relevant today. Businesses must rethink how they deliver value to the customer and practice what they preach when they add purpose to their mission.
So, I come away with lots to think about and to work on. I hope you enjoy this episode.
A few of the topics we speak about during this interview:
⚜️ What is branding and what is marketing?
⚜️ What is the role of storytelling in this online world?
⚜️ What does CX have to do with branding?
⚜️ What was the outcome of the global feasibility project of the major solar installation in Mozambique?
A couple of follow-up notes:
Clarification on the Mozambique story - IDE and Scetec were discussing opportunities to work together after the introduction- not sure what transpired after our initial contact
A proposal at DU for a customer experience course in the Spring is under review at this time but not on the course schedule yet.
Check out the links below! Also, let me know what you think of this podcast.
Cristin's Links:
Website https://www.bscgroup.biz
IDE - NGO seeds and planting example https://www.ideglobal.org/
Cone Study https://conecomm.com/2017-csr-study/
Scetec https://scatec.com/
Customer Experience Course Provider: https://www.omnitouchinternational.com
ABOUT DIGITAL.DONE.RIGHT.
It was founded at the beginning of the pandemic when I went online looking for small businesses. I found nothing. Today it is an education and consulting platform with a mission to get companies and organisations comfortable engaging with the online world to:
✅ Attract today’s digital consumer
✅ Design more engaging digital experiences
✅ Drive growth, conversion, and sales across the customer/user journey
Our mission is about informing and getting the word out on how the digital divide can be bridged. Working with organizations, small businesses as well as corporations we develop strategies to address the agile customer communications of today and how these can be tamed for maximal business value.