Remember the creepy Twilight Zone episode, “The After Hours?” It was about a female shopper who is treated badly by some odd salespeople on an otherwise empty department store floor. It turns out that she and the salespeople are all actually mannequins. Now Front, a communication hub for building strong customer relationships on digital channels, has tapped into that eeriness and turned it into hilarity for a new global integrated brand advertising campaign.
According to a Harvard Business Review Analytic Services study sponsored by Front, this kind of internal inefficiency is widespread. Nearly 66 percent of knowledge workers surveyed said that data is not accessible to the right employee at the right time.
Additionally, 64 percent said they lack visibility into the previous conversations the customer has had with other team members. These inefficiencies and others impact a team’s ability to deliver the best possible customer experience, which this campaign’s innovative creative approach makes clear.
‘Human Touch,’ the company’s second brand campaign developed in partnership with full-service creative production company, Los Angeles- and Oakland-based, Where The Buffalo Roam, depicts the challenge of maintaining differentiating customer relationships at scale. Businesses often find that adding people and systems makes customer information harder to find and share.
While hilarious, the spots eerily recall old Twilight Zone episodes. Teams spend more time working through the process than they do communicate with customers. And, as the campaign shows, when a company loses the human touch, customers can feel the difference.
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“The old saying that people buy from people, not businesses, is just as true today. Relationships drive business success more than any other factor,” said Jon Borgese, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Front. “Front’s ‘Human Touch’ campaign highlights the need for humanity in customer relationships. We want businesses to understand that if they find themselves making tradeoffs between operational efficiency and building strong customer relationships, there’s actually a better alternative – Front. We’re excited for this campaign to spark a much-needed conversation on why business relationships need more of the human touch, not less.”
“This campaign riffs on the artificial interactions that arise when a company loses its focus on strong customer relationships,” remarks WTBR Director Adam Avilla. “An office environment filled with mannequins was the perfect visual gag to illustrate the frustration of interacting with robots, essentially, and show how Front emphasizes human-to-human interactions with its customer communication platform.”
The campaign debuts today across digital, paid social, connected TV, Front.com, Front’s social channels along with out-of-home and event activations planned in key media markets across the United States and Europe in coming months.
Colin Costello is the West Coast Editor of Reel 360. Contact him at colin@reel360.com or follow him on Twitter at @colinthewriter1
