Brand Experience and Customer Experience: Toms Shoes
We’re now operating in an environment where brand experience and customer experiences are blending together. Brand values with memorable experiences are no longer nice to have, they’re required. We’re at the point now where experiences and values are the product. But has anyone actually told you and your teams how to design experiences, or state what the standard for memorable experiences are? Understandably, each business is unique to designing experiences for, yet the following brands are certainly making a determined effort in defining the standard. I've identified a handful of brands to share with you in this blog series, starting with Toms Shoes.
Memorable, meaningful, and emotional
For many retailers, customers shopping online do not have the same memorable experience as when visiting brick and mortar stores, and Toms shoes is keenly aware of this. Despite their responsive web design, easy navigation, and well-articulated brand narrative throughout the website, their in-store experience is just as thoughtfully fashioned.
While the store layout and displays are aesthetically pleasing, Toms customers are not sharing and talking about the warm greetings they receive when walking into stores, rather they are sharing the brand’s story of giving and their well-crafted VR videos. In each of Toms stores is a Oculus Rift headset with virtual 360 narratives of how their shoes are helping out underserved communities. If you get a chance, don’t bother watching the video online (A Walk in Their Shoes). Go into a Toms, take a seat in their plush lounge chair, put on the VR headset and watch their quick 5-minute story. As the cool kids say, “the feels.”
