Brand experience: Reconnecting a company's current reality with society

"Just polishing the website doesn't seem to make a difference anymore."

Ten years since taking over the family business. New equipment installed. New ventures launched. Internally, the company has visibly changed. And yet, the labels coming from outside remain stubbornly the same: "subcontractor," "old-fashioned firm."

The company has changed, but society's perception has not. This gap cannot be closed simply by changing logos or rebuilding websites — because the gap is not in the visuals. It is distributed across every touchpoint where the company meets society.

The concept now being discussed among executives facing this challenge is Brand Experience (BX). BX is often misread as "customer experience design," but its actual scope is much broader. BX is the managerial architecture that runs a single brand context through every touchpoint a company has with society.

This article begins from the misalignments SME owners commonly face, and unpacks why BX is becoming a board-level theme in manufacturing.

Why does the current state of a company fail to reach society? The answer is rarely simple. It is not because the website is old. It is not because PR is weak.

The most common cause is that language and behavior have gone out of sync across touchpoints.

· The vision the CEO speaks does not connect to the company description in sales materials.

· The language on the careers page differs in temperature from how employees actually speak.

· The factory tour experience and the tone of the corporate site do not match.

· Communication about new ventures is not positioned within the context of the existing business.

Each individual gap may be small, but summed together they produce the impression that "I don't really understand what this company is." Recipients integrate touchpoints to form their image of a company — so when the touchpoints are fragmented, so is the image they hold.

Peter F. Drucker, on why young people lost interest in corporations, wrote:

This was framed as a hiring discussion, but the same applies to customers, partners, and local communities. Society is not adversarial to companies. It simply lacks cues to read the current reality, so past images go unupdated.

BX, UX, CX. The terms sound alike, but their scope differs.

UX (User Experience)

Concerns the experience of using a product or service. The subject is the user; the starting point is usability and task completion.

CX (Customer Experience)

Concerns the total experience of transactions with customers. The subject is the customer; the starting point is relationship, satisfaction, and LTV.

BX (Brand Experience)

Concerns every touchpoint between a company and society. The subject is every stakeholder; the starting point is the company's philosophy and reason for being.

What distinguishes BX from UX/CX is that its scope extends beyond "customers" to include employees, candidates, partners, community, shareholders, alumni, and society at large. As such, BX cannot be owned by marketing or PR alone — it is a managerial domain.

If BX is treated as merely "customer touchpoint design," the work shrinks into campaigns and reception manuals, and the real goal — rearticulating the company's current reality to society — remains out of reach.

In BOEL's conversations with manufacturing executives, three "misalignments" consistently appear, especially SME owners who have taken over an existing business.

Misalignment ①: Internal — leadership and field speak different languages

Executives speak of "transformation" and "future orientation," while floor employees say "we're an old-school company." Both describe the same firm, but paint completely different pictures.

Misalignment ②: Temporal — past images have not been overwritten

Customers who ended their relationship a decade ago, or classmates who joined other companies twenty years back, still describe the firm as it was then. New equipment, new ventures, new talent have not yet reached societal perception.

Misalignment ③: Intent vs. expression — "we changed" has not landed

The executive believes the company has changed. But if the website structure, company brochure photos, business cards, and factory entrance all remain as they were ten years ago, society receives no cues to read the change.

DIAMOND Harvard Business Review notes on organizational culture and attractiveness:

Organizational culture looks like an internal matter, yet it is tightly coupled with how the company is seen from outside. How employees speak about their firm is a powerful signal for how society perceives it.

BX may sound abstract. For BtoB manufacturers, however, it ties directly to concrete competitiveness.

James C. Anderson and James A. Narus, on how manufacturers achieve high profitability:

"Service" here is not about maintenance or installation. It refers to the entire relationship — from the moment a product reaches the customer through use, evaluation, and the next order.

BX has the same structure. Rather than product features, it treats "what is it like to engage with this company" as the design object. The first inquiry response, the quotation format, the greeting at delivery, the way trouble is communicated — all of these constitute "this company's brand."

For an SME owner in manufacturing, BX means "intentionally designing the experiences that exist outside the product."

The means of implementing BX are not always large in scale. In fact, the most effective levers are usually "words" and "behaviors."

Wharton professor Jonah Berger on the power of organizationally shared language:

When rearticulating a company's current reality to society, the first thing to change is language. But not by overwriting it with trending copy. The starting point is "selecting, from the words already used internally, which ones deserve to be carried outside."

The other lever is behavior. For example:

· The speed and tone of responses to inquiry forms.

· The weight, paper quality, and margins of materials distributed in meetings.

· The choreography of greeting and seeing off visitors.

· Where employees start when describing their own company.

These are often not recognized as "branding," yet for the recipient, they are all cues to "what this company is like." BX is the act of tending to the parts that are easy to overlook.

For an executive reading this far and thinking "we should take on BX too," there is just one place to start.

It is to sort through "what to change and what to keep."

Rearticulating a company's current reality to society does not mean overhauling everything. On the contrary, clearly defining what is kept makes what is changed stand out.

Sample questions

· Among values inherited from the founding, which must remain unchanged?

· What has become a symbol of the past but no longer fits the present?

· What do employees take pride in but is not transmitted outside?

· What did the new generation of leadership intentionally change — or intentionally keep?

Renewing the website or relogoing without first answering these questions only updates the surface and confuses internal and external perception.

BX is not a design technique or PR method. It is "how a company rebuilds its relationship with society" — a managerial decision in itself.

For SME owners, BX is:

· The act of restating, in contemporary language, values built by their father's or grandfather's generation.

· The act of intentionally designing new touchpoints that overwrite past images.

· The act of binding management, hiring, sales, PR, and the field into a single brand context.

What communicates "the company has changed" to society is not a logo, a new website, or a PR video. It is the words each employee uses to describe their company, a single quotation reaching a partner, the first sentence the receptionist offers a visitor — the accumulation of small touchpoints eventually forms the perception that "that company has changed."

Reweaving the relationship between company and society, in a way that feels right and feels good. That, we believe, is what it means to engage with BX.

References

1. Peter F. Drucker, "Making Business Attractive — Living Up to the Expectations of Promising Youth," DIAMOND Harvard Business Review (online), August 1, 2025.

2. Takeshi Kojima, "Becoming a Company That Attracts People — Editor's Blog," DIAMOND Harvard Business Review Editorial, November 10, 2023.

3. James C. Anderson and James A. Narus, "High-Profit Manufacturers Sell Services — Lessons from Microsoft and ABB," DIAMOND Harvard Business Review, September 19, 2024.

4. Lucy Swedberg, "The Power of Language — The Power of Multilingualism," DIAMOND Harvard Business Review, September 30, 2023.