Last month, Adobe held its annual global design and creativity conference, Adobe Max. The conference featured hundreds of speakers from a plethora of backgrounds. There were graphic designers, directors, content creators, actors, teachers, artists, marketing executives, and more. 

Listening to many of them speak, a key theme that shone through in both the content and in the mechanism with which the content was presented was the importance of storytelling. The speakers’ lives were all impacted by design in one way or another, and as they spoke about their ups and downs, the challenges they faced, and how they overcame them—they used the art of storytelling to resonate with listeners and capture their attention.

Designing a brand story 

While design is commonly used as a visual aid, it’s true what they say—a picture is worth a thousand words, and when it comes to brand building, design helps tell the brand story. 

Whether it be on a personal or professional level, there has been a focus on curating a brand and growing a digital presence. With the surge in brands, especially digital ones due to the digital transformation of almost every industry, they must find a way to differentiate themselves. 

Is personalized content reaching its peak?

The past few years have seen a rise in personalization in email marketing, customer service tickets, product recommendations, and other customer touchpoints. Personalization is huge. It presents to customers exactly what they want. What better way to convert customers than to make it easier than ever for them to find what they’re looking for? However, with the recent data privacy laws put in place, it may become harder for brands to collect and utilize customer data for personalization purposes. 

While customers do love their minds being read, most are also skeptical of brands tracking their online activity. Brands may need to revert to good old storytelling to help set themselves apart.

Recent trends in social media and the personal brand space are revolutionizing the way people portray themselves. Social media often gets a bad rap for perpetuating unhealthy or unattainable lifestyles and beauty standards. However, there’s something else happening in parallel. Social platforms allow for the creation of online communities where people feel safe and comfortable enough to share the good, the bad, and even the ugly. 

People share real moments of their lives—their challenges, their struggles, their unpopular opinions—and it’s making a real impact. In some cases, this shift is beginning to strengthen communities and act as a catalyst for social change. It’s time brands get on board.

What does design encompass?

We’re past the point of design only encompassing visual design. High-quality, consistent visual branding needs to be a given. Now, design is an umbrella term that refers to the intentional design of branding, interfaces, processes, customer touchpoints, and more to craft a seamless customer experience that aligns with the story a brand wants to tell. This story will, perhaps most obviously, come through in visual branding and marketing material, but it can also be embedded in more subtle ways.

The value of DXPs in crafting a consistent customer experience

Digital experience platforms (DXPs) are a type of software product that incorporate customer data into multiple steps of the customer journey. Thus, they are integral to creating and delivering consistent and personalized customer experiences across channels. 

The chart above shows the ROI reported by users of the top five DXP products on G2. DXPs are most commonly enterprise-level products, thus tend to be expensive. Oftentimes, implementation service costs are more expensive than the product itself. However, despite the cost, the majority of DXP buyers report that their ROI was less than 24 months. This data speaks to the importance of customer experience in the current crowded e-commerce landscape.

With the enormous amount of brands and products on the market and the technology to make purchases with the click of a button, it’s no longer about choosing the efficient option. Consumers no longer want to hide from reality; they want to understand it. 

Buyers want to align themselves with a story that they can relate to. If brands don’t write that story for themselves, buyers are more than happy to do this for them and share it with all their social media followers. Hence, it’s important for brands to get ahead of this and craft their own narratives that are captivating, empathic, and genuine.