Experiences Created By Brands
Brands Can't Buy Happiness
“Although experiences themselves lack tangibility, people greatly desire them because the value of experience lies within them, where again it remains long afterward.”[1] – J.Sundbo, Handbook on the experience economy
You’ve probably been told that “money can’t buy happiness”[2] and society* is proving this by “choosing to have enriching experiences instead of purchasing things”[3].
This is because as Professor Thomas D. Gilovich of Cornell has proven “we remember experiences long afterwards…we also enjoy the anticipation of having an experience more than the anticipation of owning a possession.”[4] It is also because whilst “new things are exciting to us at first…we adapt to them”[5] and as the excitement fades so does the joy we feel upon the point of purchase. It has also been written that “happiness is a complex, nebulous state that is fed by transient simple pleasures,”[6] why else do videos of cute animals[7] go viral?
Barclaycard – April 2017[11]
Approximately half of Britain’s credit and card transactions are processed by Barclaycard.
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(% rises in spending from April 2016 – April 2017)
*Is society “continuing to spend less money on buying thing and more on doing things”[10]?
This data from Barclaycard shows how British society has increased it’s spending on impermeant goods and decreased spending on items that would be physically present for longer showing how there has been a rise in the pursuit of experience.
“If we look on a global basis, in the west we have probably hit peak stuff”[8] – Steve Howard, Head of Sustainability at Ikea in 2016.
If the western world has reached consumer peak in terms of owning possessions and experiences are the new currency, then people will “behave differently as consumers. Transformation from goods that are useful or functional to needing goods that deliver an individual experience.”[9] This would explain why Barclaycard customers spending habits have changed.
Do you remember the experience of the memory?
“our experiencing self is different to our remembering self. We don’t remember experiences, but highly truncated stories of the memories…it is the remembering self that makes the decisions.”[12] -Faris Yakob, 2018
Howard Pyle, the head of customer experience at MetLife says that “brands are actually collections of experiences. We’re not in an era where people remember logos or advertisements.”[13] This means that consumers are unlikely to consciously remember a brand or advertisement based on product recognition. Instead the unconscious part of our mind pushes us towards certain products based on incredibly subtly signals and an “emotional response [becomes] the most powerful way that a brand can impact its audience.”[14]
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These signals can be as unconscious as the gentle emergence of an emotion that is triggered by the deeply buried memory of an experience we have had and are subconsciously associating with that brand or product. This subconscious association was coined as a “psychic load”[15] attached to products where the greater the load the more successful that product or service will become.
Experience Providers
As consumers are now more likely “to acquire memorable and distinctive experiences that enhance their lives”[16] that influence their purchasing habits the importance of positioning a brand as an experience provider has never been more apparent. As Sundbo has argued the long-lasting effect of an experience can influence our decision-making process in the future where “the autopilot frames decisions without us noticing.”[17]
Ed Daly, the managing director of Seeper, a digital events company, aims to create experiences that can “transform real world spaces”[18] and ingrain themselves into the habitat of a population and therefore have greater impact upon our subconscious choices. This shall become an even more relevant marketing technique with the coming of 5G and the internet of things where campaigns will have to holistically surround us with a narrative as we move about the new connect world.
Many brands have started “to maximise the value of experiential activity…extending the life of one-off stunts by …encouraging further brand interactions following the event”[19] and positioning the event as a segment of the overall brand journey and narrative. This is important as it has the potential to reposition the brand as the experience which will inflate physic load and influence the subconscious for longer.
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In order to create better experiences some brands have begun to look at the work created by immersive theatre companies who often enjoy a level of commercial success through the experiences they provide for their audiences. One way is to sponsor an experience such as Copper Head Gin’s sponsorship of The Great Gatsby. When our researchers attended Gatsby took a group of us into his study before telling us that “copperhead sipping gin is the best gin” before handing out free samples, it was a bit of an abrasive sales pitch to be honest.
Other brands have hired theatre companies to create experiences on their behalf such as:
Silverpoint campaign
Absolut vodka and Punchdrunk
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A successful example of this was the collaboration between Absolut vodka and Punchdrunk[20] on the 2015 Silverpoint campaign.
They developed a digital game, played by 13,000 people which revealed a plot the more you played and eventually directed players to real world locations where they received more plot and free drinks. Two and a half thousand people attended the live real-world events.
If you played the game to the conclusion you were invited to a private cocktail event and received limited edition bottle. The campaign reached one million people and the Silverpoint sold out six weeks earlier than predicted.[21]
Absolute senior brand manager Rick Bennett-Baggs says that it is important to “create a consumer experience that isn’t too heavy-handed from the brand”[22] as this would make the experience feel false and disingenuous.
Create your own immersive
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Some companies are creating their own immersive experiences without the use of theatre companies to create or develop it for them. The importance of this is that whilst an immersive theatre company may create some fantastic work for you it will probably have a flavour of their style of work about it and attract audiences who care about the theatre not your brand.
If a brand can create its own successful experiences then it will hopefully be unique to them and reflect the character of the brand without having to share any of that space with a theatre company.
Case Study - PD3
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The creative agency PD3[23] wanted to promote its service of creating powerful events for brands and promoted their company though devising their own immersive show where audiences bought tickets.
PD3’s creative director Cat Botibol explains “Rather than create something in response to a brief from a brand, we have developed the show ourselves. Having taken it to proof of concept we are now in talks with a number of brands.”[24]
PD3 turned themselves into an immersive experience for brands by positioning themselves as a successful immersive theatre production company that put on an immersive show that had a sell out run, proving their expertise in the field of experience.
The importance of the constant experience
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These case studies show that whilst a brand may create a unique experience the reality is that a brand that can position itself as a constant experience will inevitably be more successful than one that does not. This is because an experience that is spread across an entire brand then the emotional influence will be constant and ingrained within an audience’s psyche. It is also important that there is a narrative that connects your experiences together as “in a study carried out by Jennifer Aaker, at Stanford Graduate School of Business, it was proven that stories are 22 times more memorable than communication based on facts and figures alone.”[25]
The more transformative and different to other experiences this is the more engaged the audience will be as each brand, product and service “will be valued for his or her ability to produce “dreams” for public consumption”[26]
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[1] Sundbo, J (2013) Handbook on the Experience Economy – Research Handbooks in Business and Management Series, e-book, Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260917972_The_experience_economy_past_present_and_future [Accessed 29th May 2019]
[2] The Phrase Finder [2001] Money can’t buy happiness [Online] Available at: https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/10/messages/2.html [Accessed 27th October 2019]
[3] Rote, M [2019] Why Millennials are Choosing Experiences Over Things [Online] Available at: https://www.under30experiences.com/blog/why-millennials-are-choosing-experiences-over-things [Accessed 28th October 2019]
[4] Swift, J [2015] Intriguing Human Behavior [Online] Available at: https://research.cornell.edu/news-features/intriguing-human-behavior#highlight-1443721840052 [Accessed 18th July 2019]
[5] Rampton, J [2017] 7 Reasons Why Spending Money on Experiences Makes Us Happier Than Buying Stuff [Online] Available at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/294163 [Accessed 22nd August 2019]
[6] Stafford, T [2013] Why money can’t buy you happiness [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130326-why-money-cant-buy-you-happiness [Accessed 24th October 2019]
[7]CBC News [2017] Why watching cute animal videos is good for your brain [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZpB7Ken8a8 [Accessed 10th November 2019]
paragraphs & more.
[8] Silver, S [2016] Is business action on climate change believable? – Guardian Live event [Online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/membership/audio/2016/jan/14/is-business-action-on-climate-change-believable-guardian-live-event [Accessed 27th October 2019]
[9] Schulze, G [1993] The Experience Society [Online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Experience_Economy [Accessed 7th June 2019]
[10] Usborne, S [2017] Just do it: the experience economy and how we turned our backs on ‘stuff’ [Online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/13/just-do-it-the-experience-economy-and-how-we-turned-our-backs-on-stuff [Accessed 24th August 2019]
[11] Usborne, S [2017] Just do it: the experience economy and how we turned our backs on ‘stuff’ [Online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/13/just-do-it-the-experience-economy-and-how-we-turned-our-backs-on-stuff [Accessed 24th August 2019]
[12] Yakob, F [2018] WTF is Customer Experience Anyway? Available at: https://medium.com/@faris/wtf-is-customer-experience-anyway-93afd0adb169 [Accessed 12th May 2019]
[13] Liffreing, I [2018] CX is the new UX: MetLife’s first head of customer experience on building brands through personal interaction [Online] Available at: https://digiday.com/marketing/cx-new-ux-metlifes-first-head-customer-experience-building-brands-personal-interaction/ [Accessed: 20th August 2019]
[14] SEEN [2018] How does it make you feel? [Online] https://seenpresents.com/work [Accessed August 8th 2019]
[15] Toffler, A. 1971. FUTURE SHOCK. 4th edition. Bantam Books, New York
[16] Digital Brands In The Experience Age. SEEN THIS. Pg 6. Issue no4, March 2017. file:///C:/Users/emmam/Downloads/SEEN-This---Issue-4%20(1).pdf
[17] Barden, P. 2013. DECODED. 1st edition. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.
[18] Daly, E [2015] Why people love immersive, interactive experiences – and how you can create amazing ones [Online} available at: https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/interactive-design/why-people-love-immersive-interactive-experiences-how-you-can-create-amazing-ones/ [Accessed 16th September 2019]
[19] Rogers, C [2016] How to create lasting impact from immersive brand experiences [Online] Available at: https://www.marketingweek.com/how-to-create-lasting-impact-from-immersive-brand-experiences/ [Accessed 6th November 2019]
[20] Machon, J. 2019. The Punchdrunk Encyclopaedia. 1st edition, Routledge, Abingdon
[21] Rogers, C [2016] How to create lasting impact from immersive brand experiences [Online] Available at: https://www.marketingweek.com/how-to-create-lasting-impact-from-immersive-brand-experiences/ [Accessed 6th November 2019]
[22] Rogers, C [2016] How to create lasting impact from immersive brand experiences [Online] Available at: https://www.marketingweek.com/how-to-create-lasting-impact-from-immersive-brand-experiences/ [Accessed 6th November 2019]
[23]PD3 [2018] PRACTICAL DREAMERS [Online] Available at: http://www.pd3.co.uk/#practicaldreamers [Accessed 22nd October 2019]
[24] Carter, M [2014] How One Company Is Planning To Draw Brands Into Immersive Live Theatre [Online] Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3031896/how-one-company-is-planning-to-draw-brands-into-immersive-live-theater [Accessed 28th October 2019]
[25] Speakman, F & Stevens, L [2017] STORYTELLING [Online] Available at: file:///C:/Users/emmam/Downloads/Seen-This---Feel-The-Experience.pdf [Accessed 5th October 2019]
[26] Jenson, R [1996] The Dream Society. The Futurist. 30 (3)