We’ve got some news that will sweeten the deal for any brand that wants to elevate digital experiences: Jam3 is joining MediaMonks! Based in Toronto and servicing forward-thinking brands around the world, the highly decorated experience agency shares our maker’s mindset—and reinforces an end-to-end approach that combines cultural insights with creativity and technology to connect people to brands, to each other and to the world.

Founded in 2004 by Mark McQuillan, Pablo Vio and Adrian Belin above a Toronto garage, Jam3 started from humble beginnings—and has since grown to Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Montevideo, expanding our presence into Uruguay and bringing S4Capital to a total of 31 countries. Shared clients include Google, Facebook, Spotify, Netflix and more.

As Jam3 gained ground around the world, the team has also joined us in claiming space on the digital craft award leaderboards. They became Campaign’s US Digital Agency of the Year (Gold), adding to our recent EMEA Agency of the Year (Gold) award and other Campaign wins, and were named alongside MediaMonks in Forrester’s “10 Digital Agencies to Supercharge Your Marketing.” Finally, they join us in the FWA Club 100—an achievement shared by only 10 teams.

“The work that Jam3 and our team does is some of the most iconic digital work over the last decade,” MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar told Ad Age. “This makes it easier for our clients. Rather than putting us in competitive spaces, clients can put us into combined efforts.”

Scaling Up Innovation Together

By joining forces, Jam3 and MediaMonks blend together two teams of cross-border, multidisciplinary talent—making us better equipped to scale up innovation and best in class customer experiences (CX) around the world. With our unitary structure in place, brands will have seamless access to the world’s leading talent in creativity and technology.

In fact, this model has been key to both of our growth over the decades. Like us, Jam3 has maintained a single P&L model that embraces friction and brings together diverse disciplines, which lay the foundation for groundbreaking work that resonates on both a cultural and individual level. In that sense, you could say our teams were made for each other like peanut butter and jelly.

“When we’re talking about being unitary or one P&L, we don’t turn up to the pitch with the same T-shirt,” says Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder and Executive Director at S4Capital. “We are bringing companies together as one. Clients want us executing on the creation, production, and distribution of content. MediaMonks and Jam3 are two competitors who have had great respect for one another, and it’s been interesting from my point of view to bring the two together.”

Trailblazing a Shortcut to Transform at Speed

Perhaps more urgently for brands, our unitary approach is key to unlocking transformation at speed. When faced with social distancing and the need to serve audiences at home, many brands were ill-prepared to show up within a digital-first landscape. They had long placed their faith in consultancies who burned their hours consulting rather than doing—an approach that was never sustainable and failed brands when they needed to compress years’ worth of innovation into just weeks or months.

A longtime Jam3 mantra encapsulates this thinking: “Never trust an idea from anyone who doesn’t make the end project.” By cross-pollinating learnings across a vast global network of talent, we’re better able to pinpoint the fastest path to transformation while pushing technology to its creative limits, a process that has become essential for brands as consumer behaviors continually evolve.

We achieve this by zeroing our focus on building impactful, individual experiences—a purpose Jam3 is ideally suited for, as validated in its work and accolades. “When we looked into Jam3’s future, we were seeking a superpower partner of our own who understands the value we bring to the table and allows us to really excel at what we do best, which is the CX work, this high digital work,” says Mark McQuillan, President and Founder of Jam3.

Once rivals on the digital craft leaderboards, MediaMonks and Jam3 are now better together—and soon, our clients will be, too. “S4Capital is an amazing platform with lots of relationships, and we’re already seeing opportunities with our clients,” says McQuillan.

It’s fitting that the premier digital experience conference went all-digital this year, as just one of many tech conferences that have rapidly adapted their strategies in light of the COVID-19 pandemic—building the on-demand streaming alternative in just a month. Pictured above, you’ll see MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar speaking at Adobe’s last tentpole event, Adobe MAX.

This urgency for stronger digital experiences served as a key theme for the conference. “We are clearly living in unprecedented times,” said Adobe Chairman, President and CEO Shantanu Narayen. “COVID-19 is changing everything about life and work as we know it. Now more than ever, we must come together as a community to share best practices to digitally engage with customers.”

During the keynote address, Adobe unveiled new tools and updated features that can help brands provide a better customer experience and reach their business goals: most notable is the Digital Economy Index, a tool that analyzes more than a trillion online transactions across 100 million product sales to help brands understand, act on and anticipate digital commerce trends. In addition to that and new updates to Adobe Experience Cloud Manager, Narayen called for a stronger relationship between CMOs and CIOs as brands spend 2020 refocusing their digital strategies and seek new ways to connect all known user data across the customer journey.

Digital is Table Stakes, and Brands Need to Adapt

 “Whether you’re replacing an in-person conference with a digital event, or working to engage with your customers virtually, the theme is the same: digital is revolutionizing how we interact with each other,” said Narayen. This sentiment has become all the more obvious in the past month, in which social distancing policies have shed a spotlight on the gaps that brands must fill in their digital transformation efforts and the need for emotionally resonant creative digital experiences.

Today, customer experiences are much more than just delivering delightful and relevant experiences in real time, it is supporting the users’ needs in an almost completely digital world. From e-commerce services bringing products to our door, to paperless contracts and virtual offices, or digital tools enabling students to continue with their education, “digital isn’t only changing and reshaping our daily lives, it’s driving the economy,” says Narayen.

This change isn’t exactly new, but has become a moment of reckoning for brands. “Everything has been moving remote and online in one way, shape or form over the years,” says Henry Cowling, Managing Director at MediaMonks San Francisco, in our most recent report on reactivating customer obsession. “This is the chance for brands to really look at that, and reinvent how the digital experience looks and feels, because they’ll need to do it eventually.” 

The Moment for Real-Time CX is Here

Prioritizing customer experience management has become fundamental in a world dominated by digital interactions. Users expect more and demand more from brands, and they do not have the patience to wait for it, they want it all right now. Brands need to understand and use their data to craft a personalized and relevant experience that their users will enjoy in real time.

In one breakout session, Adobe Principal Product Manager Trevor Paulson reassured audiences, “Almost everyone is trying to better understand the entire customer journey across all their channels … So, if you think you’re behind your competition, chances are you’re probably not.” Among the top challenges in customer journey analytics he identified are disconnected data, not enough data expertise and inability to action insights—each of which inhibit a brand’s ability to meet its audience’s needs throughout the full, end-to-end brand experience.

Cross-functional collaboration helps brands gather together diverse knowledge and expertise to bridge these gaps. Successfully achieving data-driven creative workstreams is key to building the creatively differentiated experiences that build brand love, assisting consumers wherever and whenever it’s most needed along the CDJ.

Get Ready for a Cookie-less Future

Third-party cookies have been a key part of digital experiences for a long time, but that is coming to an end. With browsers having banned them gradually over the last years, Google announced a few months ago that it will eliminate all third-party cookies in 24 months. We are entering a new era of cross-domain personalization enabled only for known users.

“Cookies aren’t that good for marketing, they overstate how many people brands are actually reaching, they lead to wrong demographic targeting, they miss conversions that are happening, and they overrepresent the individual you are trying to target,” said Justin Merickel, VP of Adobe Advertising Cloud. “They haven’t been great at providing the value that they were set out to do.”

“Delivering personalized experiences at scale requires rethinking the approach to data,” says Pari Sawant, Director of Product Management at Adobe. First, they must remember that personalization should aim to truly help consumers; and to execute on that need, they must realize the power of context over relentless retargeting.

Knowing that brands will soon not be able to use third-party data, which today may make up a good portion of all their data points, they need to rethink how they use it to build truly valuable experiences by owning, operating and maximizing first-party data. Data clean rooms offer one interesting solution; as brands aim to reinvent their CX strategies or digitally transform in a fast-changing digital landscape, brands can lean on their creative partners to highlight new technologies as they emerge and determine which make the best fit.

Customers Expect Control All Across their Journey

For decades consumers were forced to stay static and receive an experience where they had no input whatsoever, but with the emergence of digital and mobile environments, they have become empowered, and they know it. Consumers expect to have a say on everything, from the decisions they make, to the content they consume, at every single touch point. 

For decades, consumers have had little control over how their data was used by brands. But with brands focused on a need for building first-party relationships a cookie-less world, an opportunity emerges for them to empower customers. to become active participants in the creative experiences they consume. There needs to be a clear value exchange for users to part with their data, further driving home the need for content to be assistive. This approach requires brands to take ownership of the customer relationship.

The bar has been raised for consumers and brands alike, particularly when it comes to digital native newcomers who have forged deep relationships with consumers by aligning purpose with data-driven creativity. “The experiences they receive in the applications and services they use online every day have led them to demand the same from every brand they deal with,” said Nick McLachlan, Product Marketing lead for Advertising Cloud in APAC at Adobe. Between 65% and 70% of consumers expect highly contextual, personalized experiences in real time.

Brands face a unique challenge in order to fulfill the customers’ expectations; they need to create strategies that cater to those needs across every channel, taking a user-centered approach to how they do business. These challenges have come to a head in a year where fractures in brands’ existing digital strategies are apparent. Thankfully, the Adobe Summit streaming platform goes live at the perfect time for brands to begin refocusing their strategies for the rest of the year and beyond.

Hay una estadística que nadie en la industria de viajes puede ignorar: el turismo generó un ingreso de US $1.7 trillones en 2018, según la Organización Mundial del Turismo. Desde hoteles, hasta casinos o aerolíneas, abundan las oportunidades disponibles para la gran cantidad de jugadores en esta industria, y en una región en particular esto es claro como el agua: América Latina. En nuestro más reciente reporte Destination América Latina: Tendencias que dan forma a la experiencia del cliente de viajes en la región, nos centramos en esta parte del mundo para resaltar las principales tendencias que están dando forma al presente y el futuro del turismo a través de una enfoque regional pero con una perspectiva global.

Las nuevas tecnologías, la transformación digital y los nuevos jugadores disruptivos son sólo algunas de las tendencias que están revolucionando la industria de viajes en todo el mundo. Pero hay una cosa que los une a todos: estar enfocados en brindar la mejor y más innovadora experiencia al cliente.

Si las marcas quieren sobrevivir en esta industria cada vez más competitiva, necesitan comprender mejor y abordar las necesidades de sus clientes, y luego entregarles experiencias digitales diferenciadas y de primer nivel. Pero lograr esto es una tarea compleja que requiere adoptar nuevas estrategias de contenido y producción que estén mejor equipadas para la personalización y posicionadas para satisfacer a los usuarios en todo el ecosistema digital.

La transformación es un desafío enorme no sólo para los recién llegados que tienen un presupuesto limitado, sino también para las marcas establecidas. La inversión necesaria para lograr esto pondrá a prueba sus capacidades en todos los niveles de la organización. Querer satisfacer las necesidades del cliente no será suficiente, las marcas deben desarrollar procesos ágiles y forjar asociaciones repartidas en el recorrido más amplio del consumidor, para que puedan apoyar mejor las necesidades de viaje de sus usuarios.

Teniendo en cuenta la experiencia del usuario, las marcas pueden comenzar su transformación digital para que sus usuarios viajen de la mejor manera posible, al tiempo que mejoran su negocio.

Descubre cómo impacta y mueve la experiencia del cliente a la industria de viajes en América Latina.

There is one statistic that no one in the travel industry can ignore: tourism generated a revenue of US $1.7 trillion in 2018, according to the World Tourism Organization. From hotels, to casinos or airlines, the opportunities available for the myriad of players in this industry abound, and in one region in particular this is crystal clear: Latin America. In our most recent report, Destination LatAm: Trends Shaping the Travel Customer Experience in the Region, we focused on this part of the world to highlight the main trends that are shaping the present and future of tourism through a regional lens—viewed with a global perspective.

New technologies, digital transformation and disruptive new players are just some of the trends that are revolutionizing the travel industry all around the globe. But there is one thing that unites them all: a focus on delivering the best, most innovative customer experience. 

If brands want to survive in this increasingly competitive industry, they must better understand and address their customers’ needs, then deliver upon them with premier, differentiated digital experiences. But achieving this is a complex task that requires adopting new content and production strategies that are better equipped for personalization, positioned to meet users across the digital ecosystem.

Transformation is an enormous challenge not only for small, budget-limited newcomers but for established brands too. The investment needed to achieve this will test their capabilities at every level of the organization. Wanting to satisfy the customer’s needs will not be enough, as brands must develop agile processes and forge partnerships spread across the wider consumer journey to better support their users’ every travel need.

With customer experience in mind, brands can begin their digital transformation to make their travel as smooth as possible while enhancing their business.

Find out how customer experience is impacting and moving the travel industry in Latin America.

What separates your brand from competitors? Across industries, brands are increasingly investing and allocating resources to improving the customer experience (CX). While that’s great news for customers and the audiences they serve, for brands, it means they’ll have to work much harder to stand out. With a sea of sameness looming over the horizon, brands must hone in on their key, unique qualities that differentiate them from the rest through best-in-class creative experiences. 

Creative differentiation is more than simply raising awareness or traditional notions of driving customer loyalty. In his Forrester report “The Cost of Losing Creativity,” Jay Pattisall writes that “every brand offers the same digital experience because they all address the same customer needs.” Rather than fulfill the same KPIs as their competition, organizations must seek out opportunities that fulfill a unique brand promise and offer memorable creative experiences.

MediaMonks Founder and COO Wesley ter Haar notes that what separates average or even good creative from truly exceptional work is impact. “It’s not just about big ideas. If you have the right idea, you have to go really big on the idea itself,” he says. “The scale of those ideas–the way you commit to them to have real impact–defines the pinnacle of creative work.”

One way brands can begin thinking about this is through purpose. Look at it this way: while you might know your brand’s purpose, what really matters is whether consumers do. 76% of brands may think their organizations have a defined purpose, but only one in ten have actually defined a purpose statement that they’ve put into action, according to the ANA. 

When faced with competition from digitally-native brands that have integrated purpose well within their platforms (like making it easier to get a ride in a couple of taps at a guaranteed rate), brands must likewise ensure their promise is fulfilled through the creative user experience. It’s through these experiences, if done right, that brands can strike an emotional connection and build brand love in the mind of consumers.

Creativity as a Key Factor

The challenge of creative differentiation is felt across all industries these days, though it’s especially relevant to industries that push traditional strategies around growing loyalty–retailers, travel brands, and fintech are just some of the industries that could benefit most by embracing creative differentiation. As part of a digital transformation process, MediaMonks worked with leading Mexican airline brand Aeroméxico to revamp their app, turning the typical ticket-booking experience into a space for wanderlust and travel inspiration.

“What differentiates one brand from another nowadays?” asks Carlos Rivera, Consulting and Platforms Lead at MediaMonks Mexico. “Loyalty is not easily achieved unless through experiences that result in habits or small moments that inject emotion to the customer journey.”

Craft alone doesn’t solve the challenge. Brands must leverage consumer insights and data to address and solve the primary needs of customers, aligning the essence of their brand with a strategy that reacts to those needs. This makes all the difference between novelty and designing truly differentiated experiences that cultivate lasting emotional and business impact. “Differentiated creative combines an understanding of culture with real, heavy-lifting business impact that drives real bottom line value,” says ter Haar.

The process must begin with placing the human at the center of your creative focus. Working with Aeroméxico, MediaMonks put this idea into practice, helping the brand creatively differentiate by striving to truly transform the full scope of the customer experience. 

“Often it’s not about the place you’re going; it’s about the person you’re visiting,” says ter Haar. “This insight bubbled up, can we build people into the app as a destination? That’s a really nice message and normally if you look at the siloed nature of our industry, that’d be it–with some shiny creative around it. Instead, we’re filling the gaps. Yes, there’s creative and an app, but what’s happening in between?”

This question sparked the development of “People are the Places” for Aeroméxico, a state-of-the-art platform that enables the brand to build meaningful relationships by letting travelers experience places like never before: linking them to the people actually living there. This experience was recognized with the Gold Cannes Lion 2019 in Brand Experience & Activation.

What separates the best from the rest?

The challenge in embedding such emotive experiences in a platform lies in “trying to communicate different experiences to different audiences,” says Aeroméxico’s Angélica Romero, UX and Web Optimization Lead. Brands must design strategies to create personalized experiences that impact users directly and make those experiences memorable. For example, once a user fills in their profile in the Aeromexico app, their name appears throughout the reservation flow, along with geolocalization and recent searches, which anticipate their needs and require fewer taps for them to take.

Redesigning the Customer Experience

Nowadays, many brands are redesigning their corporate image, but these tweaks are often a matter of brand identity. True transformation requires balancing commercial goals with experiences that resonate with consumers. The challenge with the Aeroméxico app was clear from the start: establish a strategy to increase ticket sales by improving the experience of buying a ticket in mobile format. This prompted the team to study the booking process, looking for opportunities to redesign the process as a whole, from discovering flights to inspiring users to act on a destination–a strategy that we’ve taken with subsequent campaigns for the brand, too.

The focus was put not only on helping the user find flights, but also on inspiring them to travel. “And so we launched the complete redesign of the reservations section with a user-thought experience process,” says Carlos Rivera. “We carried out prototypes, interviews and even testing sessions to ensure that every button made sense and to determine what information to show at what time during the reservation flow.” From color choice to animations, each element in the process serves a specific purpose to impact the user experience. Through ongoing analysis, MediaMonks and the Aeroméxico team can tweak and adjust the app to enhance the CX even further and continuously iterate.

González notes that the centerpiece of the design is how visual elements change and conform as the user follows the flow. From the background image that changes when you select the destination, to the copy and image that indicate the step in which you are in the header of each screen, the design builds a sense of excitement and anticipation before culminating in an animated message that lets you know that “Your trip is ready!”

“We know that buying a plane ticket is a rational decision,” says González. “But that carries a very important emotional load because, in the end, it materializes in your next trip: It’s happening!” 

Creating user-centered experiences goes a long way to help brands make their purpose clear and to establish the differentiator that will make them stand out from the crowd. Addressing customer’s needs is something any brand can do, but doing it in a relevant and unique way is something only brands with defined purposes can aspire to achieve.

Dive into the latest Cannes Titanium Trends.

This week, marketers descended upon San Diego for ANA’s Digital & Social Media Conference, where representatives from top brands within their respective industries spoke about their approaches to digital marketing. An over-arching theme of the event was how digital experience (DX)—through a combination of investments in emerging tech, supporting cultural moments and delivering authentic social content—builds brand love in an era where consumers are increasingly critical (and annoyed by) online advertising.

From machine learning to influencer marketing to programmatic, ANA’s speakers covered it all. We’ve cherrypicked the highlights to keep you up-to-date on where top brands have met success, and the learnings they’ve taken from it.

Being a “Challenger” Brand Isn’t About Size—It’s Attitude

When you think of challenger brands, you probably think of smaller, up-and-coming brands that have sprung onto the scene with disruptive strategies that upend their respective industries. But even established, legacy brands can be challengers in their own right. Sharing the stage with representatives from VMLY&R in the talk “How Inventive Brand Experiences Are Powering New Balance’s Success,” New Balance Global Consumer Marketing Director Allie Tsavdarides positioned the athletic brand as a challenger dedicated to seeking out ways to do things smarter.

Amplify your team’s DX capabilities across the full customer journey.

One way to do this? Injecting the brand with some cultural relevance by “looking to engage in a cultural point in time.” Going far beyond tweeting a message acknowledging a holiday or event, New Balance’s interest lies in taking a more strategic approach to cultural moments. Both the brand and its agency showcased their Runaway Pub, a pub opened in the lead-up to the London Marathon, where runners could pay for drinks with digital points earned by succeeding in a series of running challenges.

The campaign leveraged a cultural moment that inspired many to achieve their running and fitness goals, giving runners a space not only to train, but to connect and unwind over a couple of (free!) pints. MediaMonks helped bring the experience to life by enabling the integration between fitness app Strava—which measured users’ running progress—and the digital wallet, and by producing a clever bartender web app to ensure simple, seamless service.

Embrace Being a Work-in-Progress

New Balance wasn’t the only legacy brand embracing tech in innovative ways. In his talk “From Bad Pizza to Machine Learning,” Domino’s VP of Digital Marketing and Global Ecommerce Christopher Thomas-Moore discussed how important it is for brands to consider themselves as works-in-progress. While many brands might find discomfort in the move-fast-and-break-things attitude popularized by startups, Thomas-Moore suggests the secret to the Domino’s pizza sauce is being an early adopter of emerging tech.

“Being an early adopter allows your brand to understand and refine,” he said. So is Domino’s—who’s prototyped delivery robots, self-driving cars, an order-taking chatbot and was named 2018’s Tech Accelerator of the Year—a tech company, or a pizza company? For Thomas-Moore, everything ties back to the core product; if the pizza weren’t good, after all, no one would want to eat it. “If we could get our product right, then the other pieces would fall in place,” he told the audience.

MediaMonks founder Wesley ter Haar says that “Real innovation lies in learning how to start matching your products and services to evolve with user behavior.” It’s through this desire to constantly iterate that brands like Domino’s and New Balance can adopt a challenger mindset.

You Can’t Beat a Good Story

In her talk “Target: Innovation Driven by the Basics,” Kristi Argyilan—President of Target’s in-house media company Roundel—gave a peek at how the retailer generates results for its partners and itself: relevance. Mentioning shuttered retailers like Toys ‘R’ Us, The Limited and Circuit City, Argilyan noted that “what every failure has in common is that it was preceded by a loss of relevance.” (It’s worth noting that Toys ‘R’ Us may have learned its lesson, with plans to return just in time for the holidays with a renewed focus on experience.)

Retailers—and brands in general—are at a crossroads on delivering more relevant messages and experiences to their consumers, who are spread across many different channels along the path to purchase. Target’s Roundel media company exists to hit a bullseye on consumer needs by pushing relevant content tailor-made for Target guests.

From applying the retailer’s own insights to crafting creative and picking the most relevant channels, Roundel, quite simply, is dedicated to giving people what they want. “People don’t like online ads,” says Argyilan. “They like good stories.”

With user journeys becoming increasingly fragmented, these stories will need to fit within a larger strategic narrative that can be easily reconfigured to different segments and channels. In the conference’s first kickoff session, “From Alligator to Zebra: Digital Storytelling at the San Diego Zoo,” the zoo’s Director of Marketing Debra Erickson discussed how “a great story is great, and it’s platform-agnostic.”

But how do brands envision a platform-agnostic story? Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Joanna O’Connell noted later during the conference that the “big idea” approach is outdated, and that brands must leverage data to address end-to-end customer journeys. Along these means, Argyilan noted the importance of leveraging partnerships—even for in-house media companies like Roundel—to expand a brand’s capabilities for maintaining relevance across channels and from all directions in the decision-making process.

First and Foremost, Social is About People

If anyone understands applying data to achieve relevance, it’s MGM Resorts. Their VP of Social Portfolio Strategy, Beverly Jackson, spoke about how data is key to meeting customers’ expectations. But just as important is authenticity, which the brand maintains through social-first, fit-for-format content.  Some of Jackson’s most interesting ideas were about social: “Selling FOMO is becoming just as important as selling a ticket,” she said.

According to Jackson, “social marketing is on the frontlines of bringing the brand promise to life.” By applying data-driven insights to content that in turn drives experiences, the brand has adopted a lean, nimble approach to social marketing that helps it better deliver upon consumers’ shifting expectations.

One of the key ways that MGM inspires consumers is through strategic influencer partnerships—and they weren’t alone. In her talk “Creating Digital Content That Sparks Engagement,” Emeline Berlind, VP of Content Strategy at Sephora, mentioned that “social was created for people, not brands,” highlighting the unique points of view that influencers offer to brands and their audience. As for how to remain authentic in these partnerships, she said that “It’s a balancing act … We can’t be too prescriptive with the brief. We create guidelines, but are not prescriptive.”

If there’s ever a place that teaches you how decision-making requires careful planning and data, it might as well be Vegas—no one wants to press their luck with a blind bet. This week, marketers and leadership from brands both big and small descended upon the city for Adobe Summit 2019, a three-day conference dedicated to providing best-in-class customer experiences by leveraging consumer data.

The summit kicked off with a slew of new features announced for the Adobe Experience Cloud that allow brands to better understand their customers and make decisions backed by user data. In Adobe Analytics Cloud, for example, organizations will now receive real-time customer data—both known and anonymous—to activate profiles across channels throughout the customer journey (including offline). Unveiling the integration of its Magento and Marketo acquisitions, another major theme touted at the conference was a focus on “business to everyone” (B2E) marketing, a trend in which personalization and customer experience will be critical to success.

Ask anyone at the conference what the prevailing, over-arching theme of the sessions has been and they’ll likely say that it’s customer obsession. The focus on customer experience has been so strong as of late that Adobe’s Senior & Strategic Editor for Enterprise Thought Leadership calls it “Digital Transformation 2.0,” and key leadership from Fortune 500 shared how they use data to cultivate strong relationships with their customers (find out what some of them had to say below). The message is clear: with front-end customer experience as a key differentiator, organizations of all sizes must use data smartly and responsibly to maintain relevancy with consumers.

Brands Must Rethink How They Engage with Customers

The brands that lead in customer experience set their sights beyond just product; instead, they seek to provide services that enhance users’ relationships with the brand or its products. When Best Buy faced intense competition with Amazon, for example, the electronics retailer shifted its focus. “We are not in the business of selling products or doing transactions with you,” Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly told the conference audience. “Our purpose is to enrich lives with the help of technology.”

Best Buy now offers several services to help customers along the user journey both in and out of brick-and-mortar stores, but perhaps most interesting is its Tech Advisors service, which provides free, in-home consultations to prospective customers. In a visit, Best Buy’s tech experts hear out customers’ needs and provide advice, whether it be product recommendations or even entire home media setup plans. There’s no commitment to purchase, providing real value to customers without pressure to buy.

This focus doesn’t just help build a relationship with customers; it also anticipates how emerging tech will further prompt brands to seek out new opportunities informed by data. Internet of Things devices, for example, are growing in popularity—and may rapidly proliferate after mass adoption of 5G connections. As the digital ecosystems in consumers’ homes become more complex, so will customers’ questions about them. Such a service will certainly prove useful for helping homeowners get connected and understand how the technology available can improve their lives; likewise, brands should continually seek out the potential of emerging tech to provide new, personalized experiences that build equity and help connect to consumer need.

Provide Value by Using Data Responsibly

Providing this level of personalized service digitally requires a sophisticated understanding of user preferences on an individual level—and that requires smart use of data. Unfortunately, a big challenge that brands face in producing insights-driven content is that their data is often siloed, or there’s simply too much of it to organize or draw conclusions from. “Overcoming organizational and data silos is key to putting customers at the center of your digital business and delivering a leading experience,” said Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen at the summit. By breaking down internal barriers and pulling together stakeholders across an organization, a more holistic view of customers’ engagement with a brand across the customer journey emerges.

Another key takeaway from the conference is that the use of data must come from a place of empathy and transparency. While explaining his vision for innovation, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posed an important question for brand leaders: “What is the real source of inspiration, the necessary conditions to get your strategy and products? One is a sense of purpose and the other is culture.”

Taking those words to heart, businesses seeking to retain and unlock user data must do so with a sense of purpose and a desire to improve lives. “People want to be heard, not overheard,” said MediaMonks co-founder Wesley ter Haar. There’s a lot of consumer unease around collection of data, “which stems from approaching data without empathy,” says ter Haar. “If organizations implemented solutions informed by the empathetic use of data, they’d be far more successful and not creep people out.”

The sky’s the limit with insights-driven content.

Here’s what that level of transparency looks like: when we worked with creative agency GSD&M to redesign the US Air Force website, the platform simply asked readers their gender, education/professional level and goals. The page informs users that their experience with the site is be custom-built from this information, explaining the up-front use and value of the data. The website is powered by Adobe Creative Cloud and dynamically surfaces up content based on readers’ activity, helping them envision what to expect from a military career and how it can help them achieve their professional goals. The result is a website that provides a highly personalized experience populated with relevant content—without asking readers to blindly hand over sensitive or personal data.

It all boils down to trust: “While personalization cannot happen without data and intelligence,” Narayen told his audience, “it should not happen without trust and transparency.” As brands seek to build deeper relationships with their consumers, brands must not only leverage data smarter, but also more responsibly. Used in this way, organizations have the tools in place they need to connect with consumers through value-based, personalized and insight-driven content.

Calling it a “digital diet,” mobile users are making a point to reduce and limit screen time; even Apple and Google are jumping on the bandwagon by integrating features into iOS and Android, that alert users to the amount of time they devote to their apps. While this might seem like bad news in the attention economy, don’t run for the hills just yet.  “With growing user awareness of smartphone addiction and new tools to monitor and limit use,” MediaMonks Co-founder & COO Wesley ter Haar assures developers, “brands will need to switch focus from extending to enriching user engagement.”

In simple terms, don’t try to capture your users’ attention for as long as possible in a single setting. Instead, leverage good design to create a first-class customer experience that will encourage them to keep coming back. “Great UX and design can turn otherwise unremarkable interactions into brand experiences that directly affect customer satisfaction and loyalty,” says ter Haar. One such “unremarkable interaction” is calling for a cab, which Uber has turned into a luxe and frictionless experience that users, it seems, can’t see themselves living without.

Brands hoping to reach that level of customer loyalty and enthusiasm will want to pay special care to how they design digital experiences—which can have a significant impact on the bottom line, too. At a MediaMonks event in Mexico City in February, ter Haar shared industry findings on the business value of good customer experience design: “Companies that use design more effectively enjoy higher revenue growth than those in the same industry that don’t.”

Mobile is the New Wallet

What better place to look for ways to heighten user loyalty through design is there than loyalty apps? Loyalty programs have long prompted customers to make repeat visits or purchases at a store, and today their presence on mobile has made them more akin to marketing platforms. “Mobile is the new wallet,” says ter Haar, “and having the ‘brand at hand’ enables more meaningful data collection for brands and more relevant content to their users.”

Your mobile app should go beyond simply targeting users with sales and promotions (though those certainly help in providing value to them). A truly engaging customer experience is built around small moments that take advantage of the brand’s presence in users’ pockets, enhancing their day-to-day needs and activities.

One great example of this is the Club Premier app, which lets users handle everyday tasks like checking their balance or use the points they’ve saved. But it goes beyond that: through a dynamic design and engaging UX, the app surfaces up personalized content through its Experience Companion feature, which informs users on how they can make the most out of their Club Premier membership. Built around customers’ unique needs and providing convenience when and where it matters most, the app enhances the way customers engage.

See how Club Premier’s app fit within a larger digital transformation strategy.

Catering to Mobile Moments

Delivering a better customer experience through your mobile app begins in identifying its place within a larger ecosystem of interactions with your brand. One area to focus on is optimizing these experiences: a fashion brand might make it easier for users to reserve and purchase items that are high in demand as soon as they release, for example, like the Adidas Confirmed app that we redesigned for a more stable and smooth user experience.

But designing around mobile moments should do more than optimize. Here, it’s the little details that matter, which can be as simple as acknowledging a user on their birthday. One app that shows how a touch of whimsy can build a better experience is ING’s Kudos app. Designed to provide a way for ING employees to compliment and recognize one another’s contributions, the app uses bright colors and badges to gamify workflows and make complimenting more fun. And if you don’t believe us, look at the numbers: over 50% of internal employees shared kudos on the app in the first three months, which is quite good for an internal business tool.

Because gamification features like badges in Kudos encourage a sense of progress, they make as a nice example for how developers can encourage repeat check-ins and actions from users in their mobile design. In addition, they show how apps designed expressly for customer loyalty can extend beyond the obvious offerings of discounts. Insights gained from such apps—like location, time in-store, browsing or purchasing history and more—may then power more personalized content, allowing for a more engaging customer experience. This way, brands can focus less on delivering more quality in the time users spend within an app than focus on the amount of time. This way, the focus isn’t on the amount of time users spend in an app, but the quality of time spent with the brand—the perfect recipe for satiating the digital diet trend.