This just in…ok, not really

I’d absolutely love to say my experience at the Forrester Customer Experience Forum (East) was remarkable and unmistakeable (along with being trusted and essential—the 4 parts of Forrester’s TRUE brand framework). But, alas, I can’t. I really don’t mean it to be snarky—we’ve been talking about this a lot and are all guilty somewhere along the line—saying not showing. So I guess it was a little disappointing to not see even one innovative experiential activity or touch. Missed opportunity, I think. Or maybe it’s more of a b2b bias—where we focus so heavily on the consumer experience (consumer as end user) that we forget about all those other brand experiences with other businesses. It was nice to see a focus on culture and employees—Steve Cannon of Mercedes Benz did a great job emphasizing its importance and backing it up with the program dollars to prove it. But despite several questions from the audience on the role of brand experience in b2b and the requests of previous attendees to include more of it, the lone b2b session was the very last presentation on the very last day and felt like more of a token than a recognition of its importance. Too bad. Two opportunities missed.