IN OUR HEADS
August 28, 2024
Kamala Harris outlined her “unlikely journey” in her speech last week and it got me thinking about how very few journeys actually follow a completely likely path. If you asked me a few years ago to bet on the likelihood of me ending up living in Texas, I don’t think I’d have put much money on it. Yet here I am from London, with front-row seats for the upcoming election, much more invested than I thought I could be in another country’s politics.
We’re all on unlikely journeys. Most are more unlikely than not. So as marketers when we talk about “the customer journey” we need to check ourselves. We’re often just fantasizing about one linear likely journey while in reality, customers are taking much more complex and nuanced individual paths.
There are actually 8 billion journeys with your brand—one for every human on the planet. Some will never really go anywhere, but many will take potentially valuable twists and turns and if you’re there at the right moment, you can make a real difference. The trick is being able to recognize the potential value of each of those moments, and show up for every customer, wherever they are on their journey, whether they are likely or not.
But how do you keep track of 8 billion journeys? You can’t map that out neatly on a PowerPoint slide, a massive Figma board, or even an intricate wall chart. You can’t design a campaign for the needs of 8 billion people. But what you can do, is use modern marketing capabilities to start covering more ground more thoughtfully.
The starting point is to map the data signals available that tell you that someone has taken a step towards or away from your brand. Every signal is a chance to shine. Real behavioral data points are the most powerful, but modeled data can fill in significant gaps and third-party or primary research can point you in the right general direction. Creating a hierarchy and matrix of available signals, and the value of acting on them in different ways, is the beginning of moving from a one-size-fits-all campaign mindset to an always-on personalized impact approach.
Politicians have long been leveraging this way of thinking. My social feeds are full of political content that has been triggered by my historical behavior. What I’ve noticed more recently though is that a lot of that content has even been crafted not just to reinforce political policy understanding and drive donations or votes, but also to spark some joy in consuming it.
On both sides of the political fence (because yes, I actively try to break free of my echo chamber and engage widely on key political issues) I have noticed more humor, more fun, more lighthearted commentary designed to reinforce my worldview or draw me in. And if there ever was a more serious issue than electing the next leader of the free world, I don’t know what it could be (the fact I don’t actually have a vote doesn’t seem to have registered—but I guess I, myself, am “unlikely” in that regard).
Brands can learn a lot from how politics are conducted, especially at key pivotal moments in history like the present. The journeys that bring us even fleeting moments of joy are the ones we lean into. So even if you have all the data in the world, knowing how to use it to create joy is what will drive a competitive advantage in the future. AI can surface the data. AI can orchestrate the most valuable interactions. But AI doesn’t yet really know joy.
So, if you’re struggling to have an impact with fake linear journeys and laborious content strategies full of product messages and deals; consider asking yourself, “What if every time we see someone take a step towards or away from our brand, we join them to share a moment of joy, to see them on their way to whatever unlikely place they might end up next?”
