Journey mapping without contextual insights doesn’t result in full brand engagement with customers.

Marketing designed around customer journeys is not a new idea. But the prevailing view may be the transaction-oriented “funnel”. It isn’t wrong, but it is incomplete. It assumes the customer's objective is to buy a product or service, and it stops short of acknowledging the emotional need that drives their behavior in the first place.

A more complete (and useful) view is that customer journeys begin as the desired emotional outcome of an event or occasion and end with the realization of it. What lies between the beginning and the end is a series of functional activities necessary to realize the objective. Applied as a concept, contextual journeys link emotional needs to more functional ones in a way that yields content relevance and time and place significance for marketing activity. Context is the bridge between brand marketing and performance marketing.