Imagine this scenario: Sunday afternoon, with not much to do, you decide to turn on the television. "I'll watch Netflix." You spend a few minutes browsing the platform, going from one category to another, from "If you watched X, you'll like Y," to the list of saved content to watch later, recommendations by genre, categories of series, movies, musicals, reality shows—everything separated, and you're ready to "press play." You decide to watch a series you've already started. After the third episode, the message "Hello, are you still there?" appears, or something similar. A very recognizable scenario, right? The question remains: were you watching a series or consuming Netflix?

Now, try watching series on the digital platforms of traditional cable TV companies. The difference is evident; these companies still have the mental model of simply displaying content, they put all their available catalog out there and leave you to figure out what to watch.

When we watch content on Netflix, we connect with the brand because of all the attention they dedicate to understanding our behavior, and this is key to understanding the value of a well-constructed experience, which goes far beyond the catalog, the new releases that appear every day, or the price. It seems like Netflix knows you. It creates the simplest shortcuts for you to reach the content you want to watch, makes recommendations based on your taste, answers your questions and messages on social media, and becomes part of your life. When the question changes from "Shall we watch a movie?" to "Shall we watch Netflix?", we are facing a unique and memorable experience.

Surely you've heard that money can't buy happiness, right? Our moments of pleasure, happiness, and well-being are associated with the experiences we live. Whether traveling, using a product or service, at a restaurant, watching a movie, or even working, money may be part of the process. However, the moment of the transaction, besides being a short time in the journey, is not enough to guarantee a satisfying experience. Most of the time, we value what happens before and after these transactions much more. We are much more attentive to the experiences that brands provide us and how they fulfill and transform our lives, even on a small scale.

When we travel, we're not just buying an airline ticket or a hotel reservation. On the contrary, we're actually paying for the experience that the airline or the accommodation will provide.

One 2019 research This gives us some interesting data. Of the consumers surveyed, 631% expect a customized experience from the service they contract, and 371% would stop doing business with those who did not meet this standard. On the brands' side, market professionals stated that real-time engagement (501%) and understanding the consumer (481%) are the main challenges in offering an exceptional consumer experience.

With this premise in mind, I want to highlight some points that brands need to pay attention to in order to be remembered by consumers based on the experiences they create for them.

The focus should be on your user, not your offer.

Yes, from a business perspective, price and cost-benefit ratio matter a lot. However, we live in a scenario with a growing number of companies competing for consumer attention – and many of them aren't even in the same segment as yours. What we're seeing is that brands are seeking to connect with consumers to increasingly occupy the time we have available, presenting offers and prices of all kinds. Therefore, competing on price is the worst strategy for building value for your business. To avoid this trap, understand what is relevant to your user and shape the experience according to your audience's expectations. Respond to them, surprise them, engage throughout the journey, not just at the moment of purchase. Understand that the time your consumer dedicates to your brand is where the real value lies.

Build your business model with the mindset of offering experiences, not products or services.

Many business models are emerging with this goal. Amazon dedicates all its efforts to improving the shopping experience and has even produced a device for this purpose, the Kindle, which allows you to consume books in a simpler and more direct way, integrated into the shopping platform. Airbnb emerges to offer a travel experience that takes into account much more than a comfortable bed or a place to stay. In addition to visiting a place, the brand encourages you to connect with your host – someone deeply knowledgeable about the place you are visiting. Another example: Uber reduced the waiting time for you to get from one place to another and created, with the promise of simplicity and comfort, an alternative to taxis, which forced the entire category to reinvent itself.

Sure, these are just some of the most famous examples. But my point is that there are countless other companies that orient their businesses toward building experiences. And what they all have in common is putting the person at the center and understanding what that person is actually looking for, what problem the brand is solving, and how it does so. With this clarity, the financial exchange becomes a consequence, not an end in itself. Do you see the difference?

Beyond the financial transaction: every moment matters.

When a company builds its relationship with its consumers solely on the transaction, it ends up neglecting a series of moments that can be relevant to both users and the brand. To summarize: the purchase of a product or the contracting of a service happens long before the financial transaction and lasts much longer than the credit card company's approval. Stop focusing all your efforts on the moment of monetary exchange and start managing your business with a value exchange mindset. Look at the set of moments in which the consumer interacts with your brand, that is, the experience your brand provides, what is unique, what surprises them, what is still weak and needs improvement… Instead of asking “what can I offer my user,” start asking “how can I become part of my user's life and make it better?”.

Experience should be integrated into the branding strategy.

In short: every company needs to build experiences for its users, understanding how to become part of their lives. But that alone is not enough. Caring for the experience is fundamental, but it's important to do so by aligning brand and communication strategies. If the brand strategy is responsible for defining the personality and behavior of your organization through unique attributes and values, communication is responsible for the story you will tell to attract customers, reinforcing the established personality.

Without considering brand personality, experience becomes a commodity. Without considering communication, there is no relevance or recognition in what you offer. Therefore, Branding is the alignment of these three pillars: Brand, Business, and Communication. In other words: who I am, what I do, what I say. Starting from this understanding of Branding, we can see that personality, experience, and narrative are interconnected, and that's how we build value.

Finally, I'll share an interesting statistic. A client of our agency wanted to improve the performance of their products on the marketplace. To do this, we created two pages to test the same product. One contained UX best practices, in addition to all the content to inform the consumer. The other, besides UX best practices, also emphasized the brand's personality, both in visual and verbal elements. The result was that the first page improved performance by 0.64%. The more "branded" page improved by 5.61%. See how experience aligned with the branding strategy brings a positive impact to the business?

And you, are you ready to build relevant, memorable, and unique experiences for your users? Start by understanding who you are, how you communicate, and what you do to achieve that.