Big name brands cannot rely on their branding alone and must continuously seek to find new ways to ease the journey of their consumers. Despite solidifying their brand identity and being a leader in whatever industry they’ve become a staple in, a consumer-centric brand will always find ways to successfully reach their customers and fulfil their jobs to be done in the best ways they can. 

And that was exactly the case for MMK students taking the Omnichannel Management course as part of their Fashion and Luxury specialisation track. With a brief by CHANEL and mentorship from Professor Marie Taillard and the CHANEL team, five groups had to propose ways to offer the ultimate luxury experience using omnichannel personalisation through all of the brand’s products and services. Their ultimate goal was to improve the customer journey on all touchpoints, with a special focus on marketing communication, e-commerce, and service.

Each group was assigned CHANEL mentor who closely supervised them on this project – the list includes Digital Director Vincent Arcin, Customer Care Director Sylvie Destriau, Platform Evolution E-Business Manager Laurine Tellier Desjardins, Client Engagement and Digital Project Director Deborah Savignon, and Digital Program Manager Xavier Kutalian. Additionally, the students also received tutoring sessions with Professor Marie Taillard. 

While each group successfully presented creative solutions to the CHANEL team, two groups came out victorious – one team being composed of Cristina Barragán, Aayush Gulati, Arunima Jalota, Kate Reichardt Roig, and Emma Schott; and the other team: Prabh Simran Badal, Léa Costa, Nivedita Dhammi, Lucong Jiang, and Blanca Vega. Representatives from each team share their experience on working with CHANEL and what it means to create an omnichannel experience.

Nivedita shares that working with CHANEL “felt nothing short of a privilege. It was only by working with a brand this big that we understood the vastness and complexity of its operations – and that accounted for more responsibility (and consequences), but also a bigger sense of fulfilment when it came to decision-making.”

In order to come up with a winning solution, she and her group put themselves in the place of a potential customer, rather than an existing one. “We wanted to tap into a market that would eventually become loyal customers, taking forward CHANEL’s legacy. Without doing away with the brand’s essence, we wanted to humanise it: less technology on the forefront, and more human contact across all touchpoints,” Nivedita adds.

For Kate, on the other hand, “it was incredible to work for and be mentored by the CHANEL team, as we not only based our proposals on theory and industry standards, but on facts and business goals straight from the brand.” Also hailed as a winning team, her group took a different approach and worked towards finding gaps in the current consumer journey. “We brainstormed improvements based on brand values. From there, we identified two customer profiles for CHANEL, emphasising that these segments meet at several touchpoints at the same time, with the key difference being the experiences in which they do so, based on their jobs to be done,” Kate explains.

She adds that this is how their group came up with “the journey of empowerment, where newly crafted touchpoints and innovations were added to CHANEL’s current journey.” This all ties in with their goal to strengthen the brand’s omnichannel strategy. 

Because heavy focus was placed on making sure customers are guided throughout their journeys and in any way they come into contact with the brand and its products and services, Kate shares that an omnichannel experience is important because “it allows a brand to develop strategies geared toward integrated and seamless experiences for its consumers across all touchpoints in a cohesive, consistent, and reliable way – leading to enhancing consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty.” And for Nivedita, this means “easing out creases throughout the consumer experience, making them feel confident and in-control, which in turn results in brand success.”