The CMO of Nissan said something in our interview this morning that I haven't been able to stop thinking about (full interview coming soon).
We were talking about younger buyers — Gen Z and younger Millennials — and how they experience brands. Here's how Allyson Witherspoon put it:
"They have zero tolerance or patience for friction. If you have to repeat steps, re-enter information, get pushed into something that you're not ready to do — that's it. They will abandon and you'll lose them."
Nissan's mandate, she said, is to make every consumer experience "as frictionless as possible."
I believe every brand leader reading this would say the same thing. Nobody is out here deliberately designing friction into their customer experience. No one is in a strategy session saying, "You know what would be great? If people had to work harder to give us their money."
And yet — friction is everywhere.
Especially for consumers from underrepresented and underserved communities.
Not because brands are malicious. But because friction is often the byproduct of a much quieter failure: not considering identity when designing the experience.
When identity is missing from the design process, friction fills the gap.
Here’s an example.
Over a long weekend, I was on a road trip with family and friends. We stopped at one of those famous travel centers — the kind known for having an almost overwhelming amount of food options. It's practically a destination stop. People talk about it.
My husband and I are both gluten-free. And we spent time roaming around trying to find anything we could eat.
While everyone else in our group walked out with sandwiches, fried chicken, and fries they were raving about — we got a salad. One option. The experience was not designed with us in mind, and we felt it.
Our satisfaction with that stop? Nowhere close to the people around us who could fully engage with everything on offer. And practically speaking? There's no compelling reason for us to choose that travel center over any other gas station or rest stop on our next road trip. They brand had the chance to earn our loyalty, but didn’t step up to the plate to do it. And so loyalty wasn’t earned.
Now scale that.
Imagine that same dynamic for a customer navigating a brand experience that wasn't designed with their disability in mind. Or their preferred language. Or their neurodivergence. Or their body type. Or their religious practices that shape how and where they can participate.
The friction looks different. But the outcome is the same.
Confusion. Effort. Fatigue. And eventually — a quiet exit.
Here's what makes this so costly and so easy to miss: friction-filled customers rarely complain loudly. They don't write the one-star review explaining that the experience wasn't designed for people like them. They just don't come back. They don't refer. They make a different choice next time without ever explaining why.
And in your data? They look like churn. Like low engagement. Like a segment that "just doesn't convert as well."
But it's not a segment problem. It's a design problem.
Witherspoon is right that younger consumers have zero tolerance for friction. But she was also clear it goes beyond any single generation:
"There isn't a one-size-fits-all. You have to understand what your audiences are looking for, how they want to engage — and you need to meet them there instead of expecting them to listen when you're shouting a message. That's not gonna work anymore."
That expectation isn't a trend. It's a permanent shift in how people decide where to spend their money and attention.
So here's the question worth sitting with this week:
Where in your customer experience are people encountering friction — not because you failed at execution, but because you never designed for them in the first place?
That's not a hypothetical. It's happening right now, somewhere in your funnel. In your onboarding. In your communications. In your product. In your physical or digital experience.
The brands winning in 2026 aren't just optimizing faster. They're designing more completely — for real people with real identities, not an imagined average customer.
And the ones that don't? They'll keep wondering why certain segments feel so hard to crack — never realizing the door was locked from their side the whole time.
Want to see what this looks like when a brand gets it right? Check this out: Relevance over Reach: The Growth Marketing Playbook for 2026 (Dense Bean Salad Girl Case Study)
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Talk soon,
Sonia