Physical & Virtual Experiences

Marketing the Physical & Virtual Experience

We seldom leverage our vast knowledge and experience many times choosing (yes choosing because we still are in control) or opting to react rather to stop, think and act.

If we assume that one of the advantages of being a small company is the flexibility and speed at which you can get products or services to market, often with a high degree of innovation involved (depending on the internal level of entrepreneurship), then we can also assume that with brand houses such as Procter & Gamble and Unilever, you should be able to leverage the wealth and knowledge available from within – does that happen though? It’s very much like the sales & marketing war that’s been raging ever since they were invented. Why?

In the The Practice of Management, Peter Drucker sums it all up in one sentence: “The aim of marketing is to make sales superfluous”.

It is important, when analyzing your integrated approach, to map out separately the physical experience and the virtual experience with all the interconnecting features highlighted. This will be your path. If you get a mirrored effect between your physical and virtual experience then you have a pretty funky strategy. At the end of the plan write

Experiential Marketing is NOT the same as Marketing THE Experience.

Business is Theatre I am a true believer and practice the Gilmore & Pine thinking: “It’s only when you charge admission that you will be forced to design an experience that’s worth an admission fee – if it’s worth the fee, guests will have no problem paying it”. So where does price discounting and one night cards come into this? They don’t – when you start using this strategy you should be aware of the path to failure. Why waste so much time on developing these “marketing solutions” when you could be doing the real thing – designing THE experience.

Strategic Horizons is one of those sites you have to reference especially for those in services – and who isn’t in services today? Even if you manufacture a product you should already have introduced services adding value to your consumer base. People have become immune to messages targeted at them and that’s where the need to create an experience within them surges. Faith Popcorn’s book Eve-olution (the 8 truths to marketing to women) touches on this concept of marketing around women as opposed to them whereby you will have to create an experience instead of a one-off cure (connecting vs. selling).

Goodbye Barbie Companies must learn to stage experiences for each one of their individual customers – we have entered the Experience Economy, as per Gilmore & Pine, a new economic era in which all businesses must orchestrate memorable events for their customers that engage each one of them in an inherently personal way. The longer the experience lasts, the more the consumer spends. This can be explained in short by: HOLIDAY! When you go on holiday, isn’t it incredible that you end up spending 3 or 4 times more than you would if you were home – on the same things! The difference? The eXperience – created by the travel; arrival in a different environment (where it’s all new); the emotion (and sometimes fear of communication – being understood) and the absolute delight of the constant changing surroundings.

Cirque du Soleil are an example where they have taken the experience to new realms whereby the eXperience is the marketing – the best way to market your product or service is with an experience so engaging that potential customers can’t help but pay attention – and pay literally.

When I stayed at the Sheraton Hotel (Starwood Hotels) a couple of months ago in Chicago, I saw that on every door where you would normally see “Staff Only”, a different label appeared which read “Cast Members” and when I had to go and sort a problem out in the hotel’s offices, as I went to open the door that lead to the atrium, there was a different sign “You are now entering Stage Area”. Was I aware of this drama? Not at all but I did enjoy my stay there – everything was in the right place at the right time. The staff was very human.

This I later realized was part of their strategy in taking the eXperience of the consumer up a level. Gilmore & Pine discuss the concept that work is theatre and thus we must put on the show – a brilliant book entitled Experience Economy.