A good brand experience can be brought down by a single missing link in marketing automation.

For example, Toyota.

Their current UK advertising had a really unpleasant tagline: ‘Go Fun Yourself’ which has a few nasty connotations.  I assume that it was because I was way outside their young, target audience.

But anyway, thought I’d pitch up at their funky stand at the Goodwood Festival of Speed to test out the availability of follow-on material for prospective buyers. Was impressed that they had iPads to take my details, and everything looked in order for a slick process to follow up.

FAIL: Nothing happened, so I thought I’d reach out to Toyota’s digital marketing Manager to let them know what wasn’t working. He responded quickly and promised that a digital brochure on the Toyota Aygo would be across to me shortly.

FAIL Again. Two weeks later received a good-looking email to hope that I had enjoyed my test drive, and that Toyota’s customer service team would be available to answer any more of my questions!

Simple moral of the story is that having a big brand isn’t good enough any more unless as much effort is spent on downstream digital and social activity within an overall marketing automation programme to make the whole experience a delight.