An Austin technology entrepreneur, Ryan Wuerch engages as CEO and chairman of the Dosh app, which rewards people for digitally purchasing items through cash back to individual bank accounts. Ryan Wuerch recently posted a company blog article on the topic “Why We Don’t Have Relationships with Brands Anymore.”
The background is a dramatic shift in how consumers relate with brands, with the product-focused Marketing 1.0 giving way to the targeted, data-informed and consumer-focused strategies of Marketing 2.0.
The emerging Marketing 3.0 paradigm is described as “values-focused,” with an emphasis on the concept that the client inhabits a complex and changing world in which brand preferences reflect shifting needs, finances, and relationships with products.
In many cases, this involves doing away with engrained barriers. For example, Lyft has expanded by minimizing traditional taxi driver/passenger distinctions and emphasizing a human, peer-to-peer “friend/friend” experience. Similarly, Starbucks has ubiquitously expanded through understanding that customers are not simply product consumers.
Through pursuing omnichannel strategies, Starbucks has been able to engage customers holistically and enrich their lives in personal ways, including through social responsibility channels that reach them emotionally. Data has transitioned from being a way of targeting products to specific demographics to one of integrating products and corresponding values within a person’s daily life.
