((Food for thought; regarding tribal marketing))

Tribal approach for user and customer experience

               Tribes are by no means a new concept for humanity. Ever since human beings became a social entity, tribal behaviors arose. The simplest way to encase what a tribe is, derives from a sense of belonging. It transcends demographic, since the summary of characteristics that define a tribe is what give its members sense of affiliation and inclusion.

               Then, if this is as old as society, why is it that recently it has become a trend when it comes to branding and marketing? Nikki Baird makes a solid argument in her article for Forbes magazine “Tribal Marketing And The Need For A Radical Redefinition Of Brand” exposing that demographic studies and models for consumer behavior need to be redefined and adjusted for the concept of consumer tribes.

               For me, the most on hand example of this, as I am a gamer by hobby, is the now pop concept of “console wars”. For a brief explanation, gamers are a set of consumers that are not defined in its entirety by age, gender expression, sex, race, purchasing power or social status, but are more easily classified and studied, for branding and marketing purposes, by its behavior as consumers.

 The console war is easily summed up by the self-developed customer centered division and trend of “what platform is the game played on”. We have the traditional “Nintendo” like consoles, such as Microsoft´s Xbox, Sony´s PlayStation and Nintendo´s Switch. Then we have the PC advocates (these include laptops), and in the latest years the newcomer, which has developed a whole new set of rules for gaming companies, the mobile gamers, mainly focused on cell phone and tablet entertainment; mobile has become such a huge market that industry titans such as China´s Tencent are currently investing a lot of resources in developing game for this market.

Now, how does this relate to tribal approach for customer and user experience? If you are now to develop or invest a project in the gaming market, a more traditional demographic study, would not be able to segment your data correctly, since the market has been tribalized by the consumer. A more accurate way to generate valid data for a study and paint a faithful landscape of gamers as consumers would be to directly involve this tribal division and the many characteristics that define each of the console war fronts.

There are many possible causes for this new segmentation of markets. I believe the mega influx of information and general ideas and opinions provided by social media along with, in the case of gaming itself, social communities formed within games, has provided the customers a platform to gather around ideas and behaviors rather than products; in lay man´s terms, customers have found each other and now can demand from the market what truly resonates with them.

Companies now must approach its branding as a way to generate identifiers for its targets, and these identifiers, though not a new concept at all, are now shaped by the tribal inclusion of its target clients. To put it as simply as possible, now it’s the time to approach the customer that looks for a “new exciting experience” rather than a new shiny gadget. A “traditional feeling” instead of a classic looking object. Or a “this gives me sense of belonging” kind of sentiment when acquiring a service or product regardless of even durability and technical efficiency.

The clearer the picture we have from customers, the easier it is to create amazing services and product for them to live experiences to the fullest and come back to us!

Angel P