Our Brand Philosophy: SaaS & "Web Experience Management"

Over the 13 year history of Crownpeak as a company, we’ve focused on one thing – making our customers successful. It’s important for us to understand their expectations of us as a company and of our SaaS platform. We share the common goal of making their website projects and digital customer experiences successful, and hope that along the way we surprise and delight them every once in a while.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the Crownpeak brand. Now talking about “brand” is like talking about God. It seems that each of us has a slightly unique definition of just what a brand is. (One thing it isn’t is just a logo and tagline.) I like the definition favored by a lot of digital marketers: Your brand is what your customers believe about you.

The best brands have both relevance and resonance with their customers. They don’t just exchange money for goods and services. The best companies share the same values as their customers and strive to express these common goals in the marketplace. A vendor like Crownpeak cannot buy its brand. We’ve earned our reputation. Our brand has been created over time by our (hopefully) consistent behavior in service of customer needs and objectives. Do we deliver as advertised? Do we make the customer’s pain go away?

As it turns out, a great brand and its ideal customers often share a similar organizational philosophy. Think about the best brands. Apple values intuitive device design that inspires creativity, and so do its users. Salesforce believes using the cloud can unify sales, marketing and service operations. Its customers agree. So what do Crownpeak’s best customers believe? What philosophy do they share with us as a company?

Recently we worked through an exercise to better understand this shared philosophy as well as what “reasonable alternative” philosophy might exist at some other organizations.  These poor lost souls are the companies that don’t become our customers!  There are myriad ways to get WEM projects done.  In other words, a reasonable alternative will and does exist to the approach Crownpeak and our customers take to Web Experience Management. 

Here it is…

Now here at Crownpeak we realize that we have some larger competitors. They have engineered the heck out of some pretty whiz-bang Web Experience Management software suites. They’ve integrated proprietary solutions and will even deliver them in the cloud if you want. But their philosophy is that when it comes to digital marketing, budget should be no object. Implementation cycles might be longer and more involved on their suite than a native SaaS WEM platform, but that’s what you have your IT department or technology outsourcer for.  Don’t worry, they’ll handle it.

Crownpeak customers don’t play that. They believe that Marketing should own the customer experience, and fully control the WEM solution that delivers it. They don’t have time to wait when it comes to launching new web properties, and are willing to trade some of the whiz-bang functionality (that they will never use) for greater speed and affordability. Crownpeak customers may not focus on ecommerce, but they still need to serve customers in a complex market environment. They value their agility when it comes to delivering great web experiences, and would rather not be dependent on IT for that. 

If I can sum up the philosophy that we share with our customers in one word – it’s INDEPENDENCE. Here in our second decade, Crownpeak is still a fiercely independent vendor in a market full of bloated WEM suites assembled by consolidation.

Our customers are also independent thinkers. They want to control their own destiny – using self-reliant teams to create self-sufficient websites. They are leaders who aren’t afraid to be change agents at their own companies. Maybe not the most technology savvy marketers, they want to be free from the constant headaches of on premise software. They want the freedom to choose their own cloud services. Curious about “experience management” strategy, they want the creative freedom to surprise and delight their own customers, time and again.

So do you share the same philosophy as Crownpeak and our customers? Do your websites also yearn to be free?! It’s a question only you and your organization can answer.