Personalisation, data and trust: The role of brand in a data-driven, personalised, experience economy

Smart connected products and services, powered by consumer data, are changing the relationship that brands have with their consumers. If delivered well, experiences are on-brand and enhance the overall trust that consumers have for a brand. Chief marketing officers (CMOs) and marketers need to work alongside product development, IT and legal teams to ensure that the firm is giving consumers a compelling value proposition in exchange for their personal data, and that the experience reinforces the brand promise. An effective way to do this is to build important trust-building moments into the customer journey so that ‘moments of truth’ are augmented by ‘moments of trust’. Marketers need to ensure that their brands’ actions around privacy align with their brand values, and they need to be very deliberate about which brands they partner with, so as not to lose the trust of consumers. Success in the experience economy depends on a brand’s ability to offer relevant, personalised experiences, which in turn depends on consumers being willing to share their personal data with a brand to power that experience. The mission of marketers in the experience economy is to enhance consumer trust in all aspects of a brand experience, taking them well beyond creative communications into service and product design.