Last week I posted about a report from BIG Research on how target audiences are often unconscious of which media are delivering the message, and how they just use the media as an extension of their senses. Now we have a perfect example of how this works, and the challenging facing us as marketers to integrate messages across many media channels at once.

Link: MediaPost Email Insider newsletter for June 13, 2005 by David Baker

I recently asked a very senior executive at a large U.S. organization, "What does a good customer experience mean to you as a consumer and business person?" This executive is a true consumer – not overly tech savvy, not an advertising guru. But he definitely had an opinion on how he should be treated as a consumer and he projects that to his business. He proceeded to walk me through his day from the morning coffee to the drive to work and used a story to describe this. He illustrated his point by describing his wife’s desire to upgrade their Lexus automobile and described the different messages and ad impressions he was exposed to through his traditional day. He heard a radio commercial while getting ready for work, a television ad on CSPAN, another commercial on his car radio on his drive, a billboard on the side of the road, a magazine ad on his favorite business publication for executives, a banner ad on his CNN.com homepage, an e-mail responder text message on his PDA, and an e-mail from the dealership in his personal e-mail account. The story went on from there.

His idea of complete customer experience is that it has continuity; regardless of the communication medium, the message and story continued the experience. It continued his impression of what the car would mean to his life and the personal decisions involved, yet it also reinforced his belief that his organization should drive these types of experiences in all their efforts.