Managing Brand Experience: The Market Contact Audit

Although 90 percent of marketing communication investments are accounted for by investments in brand contacts, i.e., the points at which the consumer and the brand come in contact with each other, until now, there has not been a tool that allows managers to identify, a priori and from a consumer perspective, the most effective set of contacts in which to invest. We describe a tool that we have developed that empowers the brand owners/marketers to (1) identify and select the critical contacts that are relevant for a particular brand, (2) integrate across these key contact points, and (3) deliver brand experience through a relevant and pertinent set of consumer brand encounters at a minimum cost, but with maximal impact. We then discuss how the metrics derived from this tool can be used to inform a variety of important decisions in the context of managing brand contacts. We close with a discussion of some of the regularities that we have uncovered from the over 150 brands that we have audited across numerous markets and categories.