Digital Experience (DX) And the Re-invention of Marketing

The Post War World of the '50s and '60s saw a massive explosion in marketing as companies tried to force feed Baby Boomers mass produced electro mechanical goods, encased in plastic. They did this by trying to create desire and brainwash people into needing their brands. This was the last hurrah for the Henry ford approach, "they can have any colour they like, so long as it is black" and the Taylorist School of management which focused on productivity and costs, whilst paying lip service to quality.

It took the massive economic melt down of the late seventies and early eighties for the Quality led management, pioneered largely by Japanese companies to gain acceptance in Europe and America, which at the same time was accompanied by the angst of Punk, as Generation X turned on mass consumerism and the break down of "A Job for Life". Customer Care, based on the concept of listening to and delighting customers, came to the forefront. New technologies like CADCAM and philosophies like Flexible Manufacturing made it possible to design, prototype and evolve products to meet customer needs and gradually Design Thinking came into being.

At the same time, the '80s saw the birth of the PC and take up of lower cost client server technology, which usurped proprietary mainframes whilst Rapid Application Development (the forerunner to Agile) sparked the first steps to evolving the Digital Ecosystem that we see today. This has pushed marketing evolution to the extent that the modern marketing function is digitally obsessed with Customer Behaviour Data, Customer Experience and Agile Marketing. So much so, that most digital conversations inevitable involve talking about Customer Experience and the Customer Journey.

So it was great to see Nimbus Ninety publish "The CX Manifesto" which sets out over 30 recommendations under the 5 headings of Personalisation, Experimentation, Trust, Data and Loyalty in its latest  quarterly publication of the Chief Disruptor magazine. This is well worth a read as it has been compiled by practitioners from London's vibrant digital scene over the first 6 months of 2018 and is based on sound experience.