“Focusing on brand awareness first enables you to deeply understand your customers…I learned a very hard lesson at Contour. The best product doesn’t always win, the product everyone knows about does.”

So says the man who got driven out of business by GoPro — now a household name brand worth billions — that launched a similar (yet inferior) product at the same time as Contour.

And yet, I see posts all the time along these lines:

Advertising is the price you pay for an ordinary product or customer experience. You should take the money you spend on advertising and invest it in CX improvements instead. Customer experience is the most powerful form of marketing. Customer experience is your brand.

In the real world, following this delusional advice will most likely end in tears — especially if you are launching a new venture.

You can sell a lot of products and services that have an inferior customer experience if you have high awarenesss and great advertising. You can’t sell a single product with a great customer experience if nobody has heard of it. Ideally you want both...

See this post on LinkedIn