Bridge the Gap Between Physical Products and Digital Experiences
Our company’s name – Brij – has all the hallmarks of a savvy tech startup. Short and shareable? Check. Quirky spelling variation? Check. Unique enough to raise an eyebrow or two? Check.
But the offbeat spelling of “bridge” was no accident or creative flourish.
Brij was born out of the realization that there was no… ahem… BRIDGE… between the physical products that we know, buy, and love and the digital experiences that keep getting richer and more immersive with every year that passes.
Armed with this insight, and after more coffee than we’d like to admit, our research showed that this lapse was largely due to the antiquated belief that these two worlds simply weren’t compatible. There was the physical realm, and separately, there was the digital realm – or at least that’s how marketing teams behaved.
The bridge analogy goes well beyond this surface level, however. Physical products are often out of their creators’ reach once they’re sold. Today, when a brand sells a jacket or a case of hard seltzer, the customer interaction typically stops there. But what if there was a way, perhaps through the use of QR codes, to allow that jacket or hard seltzer to serve as a bridge between the brand and the consumer? From asking ourselves this question, we recognized an opportunity to allow brands to gather deeper feedback about their customers, and to likewise equip consumers with a direct channel of communication back to their favorite brands. That felt like a bridge worth building to us!
Furthering our belief in Brij’s value was the role of first-party data. As we’ve noted before, this exclusive information should drive brand decisions regarding future product rollouts, marketing campaigns, and customer communications. Prescient product managers understand that third-party cookies – what we call the “old bridge” – are becoming increasingly constrained and decreasingly fruitful, and that a new, first-party bridge needs to be built in order for brands to continue making prudent decisions that are backed by the numbers. Without a reliable path across this gully of data, brands will risk getting flooded out by the rising tide.
Given all of these dots that needed connecting, we knew we were onto something with our name. Our early conviction allowed us to quickly focus on building our product rather than testing – and overthinking – what we should call ourselves, and we look forward to witnessing all of the transformative interactions that are soon to travel along our bridge!
