Scott Bedbury, former senior VP of marketing at Starbucks and former head of advertising at Nike, writes in his fascinating book, A New Brand World, about the astronomical shift of power to the consumer. This book was written in 2002 and its themes are getting stronger all the time.

In the book, Bedbury quotes University of Michigan Business School professors C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy as saying the swing of the power pendulum to the consumer makes the product

“no more than an artifact around which consumers have experiences.”

Bedbury goes on to say that brands will be defined by the sum total of these experiences, rather than by the products or services themselves.

Which begs the question, have we as marketers really made this shift with our branding efforts? Is customer experience defining brands today, or do advertisers really still believe the product is king?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Brand Basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.