A comment on comments about Digital Strategy

My pal and co-worker Noah put up an interesting post about "digital" strategy versus other types of strategy. I wrote a fairly lengthy comment that may or may not deserve to be read out of context. Either way check out Noah's post here....

My comment:

I think part of the issue is focusing too much on the differences between advertising strategy and digital strategy or any other subset... I think this discussion should shift its focus to the overarching customer experience, not digital vs ad. By that I mean the sum off all experiences a person has with a brand. These different experiences manifest as "touchpoints." Touchpoints can be advertisements, physical stores, digital services, products etc. When brands are at their best their touch points are well orchestrated. By that I mean two things....

1) Their is continuity of experience between each touchpoint. You feel the presence of the brand viscerally and behaviorally from touch point to touchpoint as if you are in the same "place."

2) Their is harmony between the experiences at each touchpoint. In other words, the sum of all the touchpoints adds up to something more important to the customer than the experience at a single touchpoint.

I think orchestrating the harmony and continuity of customer experiences falls in the hand of a strategist of some sorts. The presence of "digital" in our lives has magnified this need for orchestration. We are interacting with brands at so many different levels and mediums these days. But the second we stop paying attention to the advertising touch points or customer service touch points, or any "digital" touchpoints we screw ourselves as a strategist.

Most of this thinking rubbed off on me from a certain school of people that tend to talk a lot about "DESIGN" ... so I offer up another HOT job title of late, just to perpetuate the semantic soupiness...

Design Strategist (because what does "digital" really mean these days?)