Lou Carbone on a new understanding of brand

About this episode

Lou Carbone discusses the evolving understanding of brand as the sum of customer experiences rather than just company messaging.

If a brand is no longer what a company says it is, but the sum of every experience a customer has, what does that mean for the marketing department's role in the organization? Agility requires more than just adapting to market changes; it demands a fundamental shift from broadcasting a message to engineering an experience. It requires a willingness to unlearn old definitions of brand and embrace a new reality where customer perception is the ultimate truth. Today, we're going to talk about what some are calling a "reformation" in branding. It’s a move away from the traditional model of logos, slogans, and campaigns, and toward a new understanding where the brand is the cumulative effect of every single customer interaction. This shift has massive implications for organizational structure, strategy, and how we measure success. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Lou Carbone, Professor of Practice, Michigan State University & Founder/Chief Experience Officer at Experience Engineering. About Lou Carbone Lou Carbone, often called the "Godfather of Experience Management," has been a pioneer in experience engineering since the 1980s. He’s a globally recognized…

People in this episode

Host: Greg Kihlström

Guest: Lou Carbone

Topics covered

• branding
• customer experience
• marketing strategy
• organizational change
• experience engineering

Keywords

• brand
• customer experience
• marketing
• experience engineering
• organizational strategy
• perception
• agility

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Michigan State University, Experience Engineering, Microsoft, IBM, John Deere, Pizza Hut UK, Allstate

More episodes of The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CX

• Linnworks CMO Hilary Smith on the manual work hiding inside "automated" operations · September 11, 2026 · 24 min
• Georgia-Pacific's Melissa Blunte on consumer understanding at scale: why data gives you precision, not understanding · September 9, 2026 · 21 min
• Marketing AI Institute's Mike Kaput on AI pilots vs. AI capability: only about 25% of organizations are scaling with a strategy · September 8, 2026 · 27 min
• From Opticon 2026: Federated Hermes' Melissa Ryan on what a replatform exposes in your content · September 7, 2026 · 17 min
• From Opticon 2026: IFPA's Jim Rucinski on running a global digital experience with two people · September 4, 2026 · 17 min
• Optimizely's Greg Heinz on rebranding an AI platform: AI scaled the work, but every input stayed human · September 3, 2026 · 22 min