Jingle the Dog was a fun gift from Hallmark. At least, it was for a little while. Much like new marketing solutions out there. As marketers, we are dazzled by the bells and whistles. The furry toy barked along when parents read a special holiday story about doggy adventures to their little one. With every woof from the fuzzy stuffed animal, the story came to life. The child, captivated, clapped his hands in delight.
Until Jingle stopped barking. Bewildered parents tried to console their wailing children and pored over every aspect of the puppy to determine the point of failure. Initial composure turns into rage. The parent turned to her current social media channel of choice and unleashed a battery of wildly negative comments or posted videos that documented their young child mid-tantrum, banging the floor with their fists and whimpering, “Why is Jingle dead?”.
As a last resort, the parent stomped to her local Hallmark store and demanded a replacement. Much to the parent’s dismay, a befuddled store manager offered a meager refund (Jingle is no longer in stock!). The parent fumed, uttered a few expletives intertwined with remarks regarding poor product quality and stormed out of the store.
The above scenario could happen at any business. As marketers, we were so enthralled with the beautiful campaign reports pitched to us during the analytics solutions sales process. Using these reports, we patted ourselves on the proverbial backs when sales for our recently launched “Jingle” (insert your hot product here) in our “mommy” segment (insert most profitable customer segment here) was off the charts. But we failed to notice that we only had a part of the story. And that our brand story extended well beyond the point of purchase.
What can Jingle the Dog teach us? Campaign data visualizations may paint a pretty picture, but often don’t relay a complete understanding of the customer experience. Analytics that only address the magic moment (i.e., purchase or conversion) is no longer sufficient. To effectively build a better relationship with the customer, analytical solutions must provide marketers with the whole story. To truly understand the customer, the marketer must keep tabs on the entire lifecycle, from awareness to consideration to purchase through use. This requires the incorporation of multiple data streams into customer insights analysis, including offline, digital and social.
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