• by Karl Greenberg , Staff Writer, January 4, 2016

I know what you were doing last week. If you’re like me, you were probably bringing your gift receipts to stores to get that sweater in the right size. That experience, and a few other ones, came to mind when I was perusing Landor's new report on branding trends for 2016. 

Trevor Wade, who runs global marketing at Landor, made the point that brands are recalibrating this coming year: engagement is not all about digital engagement, although one can be excused for thinking it has become precisely that. After all, the pressure is huge for marketers to figure out how to reach people where they happen to “be,” regardless of where they happen to actually be, physically.    

But as Wade said — and as I've experienced over the past few days — some of the most memorable experiences, good and bad, aren't on screens. Seamlessness, service, and the feeling that the service is actually personal is critical. If you get those elements right, even if your brand was awful on all counts in the past, you can turn things around perceptually, pretty fast. 

I, for example, am a Delta loyalist these days. I'm a big fan, even though some years back I would have flown a carrier pigeon before I flew Delta. But the service has been great, the flights on time, the airport experience vastly improved from days of yore. They have gone out of their way to customize the terminal experience, and to take care of problems I may have quickly. And the digital experience reflects the brand promise quite well.   

Interestingly, what got me back to Delta was a program of theirs I stumbled on a few years back, wherein passengers could apply their per-trip carbon footprint to a tree-planting endeavor. I thought that was pretty cool, and it got me to rethink Delta. 

I was contacted by Apple about an account glitch this week. They called me three times, and spent 45 minutes with me on the phone fixing the problem. The woman who spoke with me, Jennifer, was incredibly helpful, and seemed to take half her day to work with me. Now, when I think of Apple, it's pretty much automatic that my experience with her figures into my perception of the brand. 

Landor also made the point that brands are focusing more on brick-and-mortar. To be clear, Landor is saying that a lot of that has to do with integrating digital touchpoints with retail experience, to make the process quick and seamless. But it is also about the human touch, and that kind of great in-store experience trumps almost everything. 

Back to the gift receipt: I was in the Macy's flagship at Herald Square a few days ago. Wrong coat size. Macy's is kind of old-school when it comes to sales staff: they favor people with years of experience over the opposite of that, which, however one describes it, is easy to find in most stores. And they empower their sales staff to be marketers, and to be the face both of Macy's and of the brand they are selling. Tommy Hilfiger in this case. The key aspect of the experience for me — and Landor actually does make a point about this — the man seemed to love his job, knew all about the apparel, good and not so good, and because of that, I couldn't help but trust his opinion. 

As Wade pointed out, and hopefully brands will remember this: while digital engagement with consumers is sine qua non today, so is a personalized experience. Sometimes even with a person.