BUILD - Physical vs Digital - Metrics of Success

BUILD - Physical vs Digital - Metrics of Success
Jeffrey Casserino

When starting a project one needs to ask themselves: What are we working backwards from? Do we want to influence one very important specific person? Millions of people? Do we want to be viral? Who do we not want to see it? Many key questions that direct the strategist in different directions.

Brand experiences today manifest themselves through multi-facated reach strategies. Physical pop-up stores, web-campaigns, custom apps, in popular culture (music and movies).

Take for instance Snapchat's pop-up store off 5th avenue. Someone asked me recently what I thought about how the team defined if the idea to build a physical store was a successful one. My first reaction was: "Well the first time someone took a photo of that massive ghost-eye looking down on the Apple store cube, the message was received loud and clear." But that message, carried via online media, is a different one than received by those who visited in person. In person, you'd be waiting in a queue that wound up to a single vending machine (the space was planned to hold 5 machines, though they intentionally deployed 1 at open). This was a message that something is more valuable if you work for it, and that things you need to wait for are inherently more scarce and sacred, and in-turn, worth it.

Through these two channels, the physical store and online press, Snapchat was able to send multiple messages to two different audiences. But - to understand the company's underlying strategy, brand positioning, we must always try to consider the messages communicated through all channels.