Hasta La Creative!

While connected consumers are busy completely redefining how they engage with brands, marketers’ response has been iterative — a tweak here or there, with the latest being an emphasis on creating an eye-catching customer experience. That’s a half-measure that doesn’t close the gap between how people live and how companies attempt to do business with them. What’s needed is an altogether systemic change to customer engagement.

An experience is something that happens to you. Engagement is something you choose and pursue. That’s a real dividing line in the connected era. Customer experience is a campaign model measured in eyeballs. Customer engagement is a business model measured in growth. It involves, strengthens and connects every business discipline.

Customer engagement is akin to Formula One racing. F1 enterprises undertake massive preparation and intelligence gathering long before a race starts, so they can start in the best position possible. Then they sync interdependent teams to real-time data feeds throughout the race. They don’t win because they do something magical once; they win because they start the race in a better position than competitors and tweak everything continually, consciously and in a coordinated way.

Continue reading at AdAge.com