Digital Brand Ecosystem

Corporations must think about the digital environment as an essential part of the overall brand ecosystem. We have to invest just as heavily in our digital spaces and brand on screen as we do with our physical brand: buildings, offices, packaging, trade show booths, and products. Similar care and attention for the visual brand must also take place in places where our brand is presented on screen.

 

When we look at our customer journey, in particular with our visual brand, you can imagine all the touch points a client received with our brand via a screen. Increasingly, due to COVID, this touchpoint is increasing.

 

As we move into more remote, digital selling our digital ecosystem becomes more and more important. Clients and users are spending much more time in these environments. Now, more than ever, our digital spaces are become gateways to our brand. What does that current gateway say about us? Is the space they are entering lifeless and cluttered or is it helpful and well-designed?

 

Think of our digital ecosystem like a city. Some cities take great care to maintain how it looks and functions. Attention is spent on what storefronts can and cannot do, flowers planted on sidewalks, even using cobblestone instead of asphalt. Our cities are not siloed—they are a vast interconnected ecosystem. Infrastructure like sidewalks, roads, and bike paths connect all the places in a city. Underneath the city there is a vast network of utilities that are carefully laid out and help our cities function.

 

Do we have the same care and understanding of our digital brand?Absolutely not, there are no clear connections between all the digital touchpoints. A text here, an email there, a handful of different URLs. Our digital ecosystems have not been set up, let alone maintained. They are a city with dead ends and one-way streets.

 

Brands need to have a team in place to plan for their digital future. Similar to a city planner, the digital brand team needs to build infrastructure that will help the brand grow in a digital space. You wouldn’t let an electrical contractor build a street in your city, but we let marketers, designers, sales, and IT build digital outlets with no sense for how it fits into an existing ecosystem.How does our client navigate in our ecosystem? It’s like sending someone into our office with no map, signage, or directions. You would expect them to get lost. This is exactly what happens in our digital spaces all the time.