When the Brand

Your brand can be perfectly defined in a PowerPoint, across ten pages, or on a napkin. The consumer does not care where you wrote it. They will judge it by what they experience.

According to Qualtrics, after a very negative experience consumers reduce their spending in 38% of cases and stop spending altogether in another 15%. Taken together, more than half of these negative experiences have a direct impact on purchasing behavior. Globally, Qualtrics estimated that US$3.8 trillion in sales were at risk due to poor experiences in 2025.

Customer experience is no longer just a service issue. It is marketing, Brand Experience, and business.

A person discovers a brand on Instagram, sees it in a supermarket, visits its website, buys the product, speaks with a salesperson, receives a promotion, and months later encounters the brand again at an activation.

To the consumer, all of this belongs to the same relationship.

That raises an uncomfortable question for those of us working in advertising:

What happens when the Brand Promise meets reality?

01A brand is more than what it says

For a long time, we have thought about communication in terms of campaigns, assets, media, and content. But the relationship with a brand is much broader.

We can think of it as a journey:

At each stage, there are different touchpoints. Some are completely controllable. Others are not. But all of them can shape perception.

That is what makes the Customer Journey so interesting: it helps us understand not only what the consumer does, but also what they experience and what they learn about the brand at each moment.

The problem appears when companies manage these moments as independent actions. Marketing develops the campaign. Trade Marketing prepares the activation. Sales creates the promotion. Customer Service responds. Operations designs the space.

Everyone can be doing their job well and, even so, the overall experience can feel completely disconnected.

Why?

Because the consumer does not see departments. They see a brand.

02Every touchpoint puts the Brand Promise to the test

In advertising, we often say that “everything communicates.” I would take it one step further:

Every touchpoint is an opportunity to confirm — or contradict — what a brand says it is.

A brand that communicates wellbeing can invest heavily in building that territory and, at the same time, appear in an activation alongside brands that completely contradict its positioning.

This is not only a perception issue. It can also be a business issue.

We are putting budget behind an experience that may not be building the brand equity we need.

The same happens with a premium brand that makes discounts the center of its communication. A discount can drive conversion, but if it becomes the main argument, it can also change perceptions of value.

Or with a brand aimed at fitness consumers that jumps on every trend because it is working on social media, even when it has no connection to the personality it has built.

The strategic question should not only be does it work? It should also be: does it build the brand we want to build?

Because not all visibility is Brand Building.

03When Brand Identity and Brand Experience do not tell the same story

A company can have its values, personality, tone, target audience, and positioning perfectly defined. It can have an impeccable Brand Platform.

But identity does not live in a document. It lives in the experience.

Kevin Lane Keller developed the concept of Customer-Based Brand Equity, which proposes that brand value depends on the associations held in consumers’ memories and on how strong, favorable, and differentiated those associations are.

This introduces a fundamental tension:

What a company wants to communicate is not necessarily what the consumer ultimately perceives.

Jean-Noël Kapferer approaches this through brand identity and his well-known Brand Identity Prism, which examines how a brand expresses its identity and how that identity reaches the receiver.

We can simplify it like this:

The company can design the identity. But the consumer builds the perception. And between the two lies a gap that needs to be managed.

04Loyalty no longer means never exploring

For years, we have assumed that older consumers are loyal while younger consumers constantly switch brands. The reality is more interesting.

McKinsey found that weakening loyalty and exploration of new brands are happening across generations. Even older consumers, traditionally considered more loyal, are open to new brands and retailers.

Younger consumers do show a greater propensity to switch.

According to Salesforce, 74% of shoppers had switched brands during the previous year. Gen Z and Millennials did so at a rate 1.3 times higher than Baby Boomers.

This suggests an idea I find more useful than simply saying “consumers are no longer loyal”: modern loyalty does not necessarily mean never exploring.

A person can have a preferred brand and, at the same time, be willing to try another. They might think:

“I always buy this one, but I want to see what this other one is like.”

And that begins a new evaluation:

The usual brand has not necessarily lost the consumer. But it cannot assume it has them secured either.

Every new experience puts the relationship back on the table.

05Expectation is also part of the Customer Journey

When someone tries a new brand, they do not arrive without information. They arrive with an expectation.

That expectation is built through advertising, recommendations, price, positioning, previous experiences, and what the brand has explicitly or implicitly promised.

We can see it this way:

When the experience confirms the expectation, the brand strengthens its credibility. When it exceeds it, it can create a memorable experience. But when it strongly contradicts what the person expected, a gap appears. And that gap can lead the consumer to explore again.

Qualtrics found that, after a very negative experience, 38% of consumers reduce their spending and another 15% stop spending with the company altogether.

That is why Customer Experience should not be understood only as an emotional element. It also has commercial consequences.

06Santander Chile: when a benefit becomes Brand Experience

An interesting example of this logic can be found in Chile with Work/Café by Banco Santander Chile.

The proposition changes the traditional expectation of what it means to interact with a bank.

We normally think of a bank as a place we go when we need to solve something financial. Work/Café expands that relationship.

Santander Chile has developed spaces where people can work, meet, have coffee, receive financial advice, and carry out banking procedures. It also offers coworking, Wi-Fi, and meeting rooms.

But there is something particularly interesting from a Customer Experience perspective: the space is not designed solely for a banking transaction.

The experience can become part of everyday life.

For Santander customers, there are also benefits associated with the space, such as café discounts when paying with their cards.

The discount, by itself, is not the story. The experience is the story.

The space. The comfort. The coffee. The coworking. The opportunity to meet. The benefits. The feeling of receiving something of value. All of that builds an association.

The bank no longer appears only when I need an account, a card, or a loan. It also appears when I need a place to work.

And that creates an interesting shift:

That is more than a promotion. It is Brand Experience.

It is not only about communicating modernity. It is about making the customer experience modernity.

And perhaps that is one of the most interesting decisions behind the proposition: the bank creates an experience that generates value even when the consumer is not there to purchase a financial product.

07Business, Brand & Behaviour

This type of example connects with a fundamental idea in brand management: a brand cannot simply declare who it is. It has to behave accordingly.

If it wants to be approachable, its experiences should create a sense of approachability. If it wants to be innovative, its touchpoints should demonstrate innovation. If it wants to be premium, the complete experience should justify that perception. If it wants to build a long-term relationship, it should find ways to create value even when it is not trying to sell.

That is why Brand Management and Customer Experience should not work in silos.

Business, Brand & Behaviour need to move in the same direction.

Strategy defines what we want to represent. The organization’s behavior demonstrates whether we actually represent it. And the experience allows the consumer to verify it.

09Conclusion: when the promise meets reality

A brand can promise wellbeing, innovation, closeness, exclusivity, or community. But the consumer does not evaluate the promise. They evaluate the experience.

A post. A recommendation. A product. A salesperson. An activation. A space. A promotion. A response. A purchase experience.

Each one adds information to the story the consumer is building about the brand.

That is why a brand should not ask only what we want to say, but also: what are we making people experience?

The Customer Journey is not simply a map of the path to purchase. It is the set of experiences through which a brand confirms — or contradicts — the expectations it has created.

And in a context where consumers are increasingly willing to explore new alternatives, consistency becomes even more important.

Loyalty does not mean that consumers will never look elsewhere. It means that, when they do, the experience we have built will have made the relationship valuable enough for them to want to come back.

A campaign can capture attention. A benefit can generate a purchase. But a coherent experience can build trust. And trust is what turns an interaction into a relationship.

About the author

Rafael Peralta es estratega de comunicación y director de One Headlight, estudio creativo y agencia de publicidad. Trabaja en la intersección entre estrategia, creatividad y producción para transformar objetivos de negocio en comunicación.