Experience Manifesto

Stop Listening to the BS - You Do Control the Message!

I saw a headline come across Twitter today that said Social Media for brands: "You no longer control the message. And that's OK." And it hit me for the first time how completely wrong this thought is. In fact, it's utter bullshit if I may be so bold.

Now, what they might be saying is that the traditional use of a 30 or 60 second spot might be fading away, although I'm not even sure that's true. But today, the truth is, you control the message more then you ever have. AND EVERYTHING YOU DO IS YOUR MESSAGE. I put that in all caps and bold because it's important. So read it again. Go ahead, I'll wait.

For the most part, consumers aren't creating their own messages for you, they're passing along or amplifying the message they're getting from you. So, when:

• I go into your store and no one there can help me or they know less about your product then I do, you're delivering a message.
• I try to use your web site and I can't figure out your navigation, you're delivering a message.
• Your return policy is as complicated as possible to deter people from returning products they don't like, you're delivering a message.
• You use those horrible voicemail systems where it takes forever to try to figure out how to speak to a real person, you're delivering a message.
• You put the needs of the company ahead of the needs of your consumer, you're delivering a message.

And thanks to all of the social media tools out there, when you deliver your message, we, the consumer, use those tools to pass along your message. We amplify your message, both good & bad, and pass it along. You may not control what I pass along, but you sure control the message that's delivered in the first place. But thanks to the silo'd world of brands and advertising, brand managers are so far removed from the actual delivery of the brand message, they they have no idea what's actually being delivered at the point of interaction with the brand. I'll place a good bet that most brand managers don't spend much time in retail watching people interact with their brands.

Tonight I saw the new Domino's commercial and visited their new web site, New Domino's Pizza - Oh Yes We Did. This is the world we live in. Companies listening to people saying good and bad things about their brand and then making adjustments as needed. Clearly, their brand experience was not delivering on their message. And unless it's all a put on, they're being transparent about how they're dealing with the gap between message and experience.

That's why I say that today, more then perhaps ever, you do control your message. You, the brand, should be more concerned today about truly making every connection with the consumer work. Stop listening to all of this crap that you don't control the message. People who say that really don't get the world we live in. The world where it's actually more important for you to control the message by delivering compelling, authentic and relevant experiences. So stop listening to this crap and start really controlling your message.

Here are 5 starting points:

1. Make it compelling.
2. Deliver on your message.
3. Don’t use slogans to deliver an empty promise.
4. Make it a movement.
5. Be authentic.

Click on the link below to download a piece I wrote with a little more detail about those points.

Remember, you're delivering a great message when people want to hear it, tell it, and participate in it. You can create a story that people will want to share in—once you do, your brand won’t just be a product.

Don't listen to people saying you don't control the message. You're just controlling the message in ways you've never thought of before.

Download Are You Just Hunting.

MIT's Sixth Sense

This was one of the talks at TED earlier this year that got everyone talking about what the future of AR can look like.

This demo -- from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry -- was the buzz of TED. It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine "Minority Report" and then some.

Think about technology that allows information to be projected onto the real world and you start to realize how important this can be. Imagine that I have a peanut allergy and, as I walk through the grocery store, the Sixth Sense automatically tells me which foods are made with peanuts. Could be pretty powerful, eh?

But it also means direct information at the point of brand interaction. It means that no matter what your ad campaign says, when I walk into a store and see all kinds of information projected onto your product, from professional ratings to consumer reviews, right there, can make or break the purchase decision.

The Sixth Sense is going open source and we'll see many more developments on this technology in the future.

An Involving Brand Experience

Going through some old files today and found the first newsletter I wrote for Location Based Branding, my previous company, back in July of 2001. If you don't mind me giving myself a little credit, I was saying the same things in 2001 that I'm saying today. How's that for a consistent message.

Maybe this economy will get us back to basics of creating great products, that people really want and wrapping it in a great experience. That's my holiday wish for brands!

From that first newsletter:

In today's economy, the biggest risk that companies face is having their products or services turned into commodities, with consumers using price as their only criteria for selection. The internet and other emerging technologies can make this situation even worse, by allowing consumers to shop across multiple stores at once and to compare prices for the same product before purchasing.

However, we've seen over and over again, that companies who compete strictly on price are rarely the survivors. And think about your own buying experiences. Sure, sometimes price is the only thing that you are concerned about. But aren't there other times that you're more concerned about the total experience you are receiving and price becomes a secondary consideration?

The Internet has always been about 'interactive,' and while we discuss these issues as if they are new, the Confucius quote that we use on all of our materials and is below in my e-mail, really sums up what needs to be done to make these mediums successful -- involvement. And involvement is something more then opt in e-mails, cookies that track your online movements and data mining to predict future behavior. It has to do with creating authentic experiences that provide real value to the user. You shouldn't be asking your audience for permission marketing, they should be begging for you to market to them!

Having started in the interactive advertising space in 1991, developing fully immersive, marketing programs using virtual reality, I've seen all the latest and greatest in emerging technologies. Unfortunately, even today, I still hear people speak more about the technology then about the fundamental need to create compelling stories and experiences! I always like to ask the question, "When was the last time someone recommended a book to read by telling you about how the ink was put on the paper?"

The battle cry today is that online advertising will work when broadband and rich media are ubiquitous. Wrong! We see ads touting the ability to watch commercials on our computer. Bull! That's not what this industry is all about. Nor, should it be about simply porting existing experiences and dropping them online.

In our work with clients, we focus on several issues:

Brand Storytelling. It's not about the technology; it's about the story you tell. As long as you are true to who you are and what you stand for, you can build a compelling story and/or experience to reach your audience. One of the exercises that I use is to have people describe their company as if it was a blind date. What would they like? Where would they want me to take them? What kind of people would they hang out with? This really helps people focus on who their company is.

Authenticity. Create authentic experience for your audience. Having cookies simply recording what people are doing online and then regurgitating that information back to them does not create a real experience. Look at the impact aspects of offline experiences and determine how you can reposition those elements in the online experience.

The Experience. Technology must enhance the brand experience from the customers' point of view, not the companies. We've all dealt with endless voicemail and voice recognition systems, only to never be allowed to speak to a person. New CRM technologies should be outlawed if it is only being used to lower costs and add to the bottom line. They should only be used to enhance what the human staff can do to help customers.

Technology. Our work with a number of topline facilities, most notably the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU, gives us a great look into the possible futures of interactive technologies, especially as they relate to brand storytelling. Knowing what is possible will help identify paths that clients should be taking. However, there is a big difference between telling your story with technology and substituting technology for the story. Understand how technology can speak for your brand and when it will speak against your brand as well.

Sociability. No matter what we in the industry think or what technology will be able to do, nothing will ever replace our need to have real social experiences. Just look at the Internet industry -- we have more cocktail parties then any other industry on the planet! Why, because we like to actually speak to people; shake their hands; see their reactions. That's not changing in the near future!

Our Human Nature. Despite all of the tremendous strides that technology has taken in the last few decades, human nature just doesn't change that fast. Stop thinking that the technologies that we are creating today will change people tomorrow. Yes, they will eventually make changes in human nature, but those changes take a long time. I'm not sure that I cam come up with any really massive changes in basic human nature that have been caused by the Internet.

Online Privacy and Consumer information. Who doesn't like to go to a store or restaurant where "everyone knows your name?" In fact, how many times have you paid more for something or driven further to get it, just because a particular place gives you better service by "invading your privacy?" Don't we consider this a positive experience in the offline world? In fact, we get such a warm feeling from the invasion of privacy, that we usually make sure that we take our friends there, just so they can be impressed when the bartender or store clerk knows our name!

We should be focusing our efforts on how can we bring a value to the consumer that translates into a better online experience? What will make the consumer feel as though everyone just called their name when they walked in? How can we create an experience where the 'owner' comes out to greet each visitor and thanks them for being there, while pointing out that they know what the consumer likes?

You see, all too frequently, branding is screaming and yelling "Hey, you gotta' use us, we're the best!" and all too infrequently on creating involving experiences that that make people really want to be with our brand. And more and more today, we¹re letting technology take the place of an engaging experience. The more we lose real touch with our consumers and replace it with "data mining," the more we risk losing the brand completely. After all, many items we consume today are commodities, only separated by the experiences that surround that product. If we homogenize the experience, we can't help but devalue the brand through that homogenization as well. (Note, this is a very frequent theme of mine and something I'm still saying today!)

Once you know who you are, then you can truly build involving, 'oneline' experiences, that will truly bring your brand to life, engage your audience and create the brand loyalty that is so frequently lost today.

Location Based Branding, Inc. (Oneline Brand Experiences).

Massively Networked: What happens as marketing gets truly interactive?

I spoke earlier this year at SXSW and Pamela Lund wrote up some nice reviews about the sessions I was in. Given my recent writing about the state of retail, I thought it was worth reviewing it again.

I'm sure we've all had both good and bad experiences as we've been out shopping this season and one thing is clear to me, the experience you have at retail can play a significant role in whether or not you buy a product. I wrote about part of our experiences looking for an e-reader here, but the experience got a little more frustrating for us. We finally went to the Sony store, where after waiting a while for someone to help us, the store employee we spoke with actually sent us somewhere else to get the information we needed. At this point, we had probably been to six stores to get this information and being sent to yet another place could've sent us to another product. While the woman who did eventually help us was incredibly helpful, patient with our questions and understood how we wanted to use the product, the path to this person was harder then it should've been.

I've had a number of discussions about retail experiences the past few weeks and one thing is clear. Overall, we're pretty disappointed by what's happening out there. It seems odd that at the one place where the consumer engages the brand, can be the one place where we put the least resources.

I'll be doing additional reports on the state of holiday shopping this weekend and would love to hear your retail experiences, both good & bad.

If we're moving toward an augmented reality that enables always-on and everywhere deep access to information, companies, people, products, places and services - and facilitates interacting with them - we're heading into territory that creates an unprecedentedly rich interactive marketplace. So much so, it will up-end how we think about marketing products and services, it blurs the line between personal and commercial and challenges the fundamental structure of the established marketplace.

As Polinchock said of traditional retail, "Physical retail experience has to deliver more than price and product." If retailers don't evolve to compete with applications such as Amazon's iPhone app that allows you to enter a brick and mortar, take a picture, price compare and purchase online, they will become "stupidly expensive websites." To survive, physical stores will have to provide some valuable service or experience that can't easily be found online. In Polinchock's view, it's a matter not of creating just brand awareness, but "brand utility."

As marketplace gets truly interactive, creating brand utility will mean more than providing easy access to context-relevant, valuable information and facilitating transactions. When marketing gets truly interactive I believe it hits escape velocity from the realm of linear transactions and practical utility into the realm of co-creating a story. Polinchock hinted at this by saying people are now searching more for meaning - than possessions, presumably. I'd take that a step further and say that what people are really starting to look for is to be part of a story that resonates with them and provides a satisfying experience. To the extent brands can connect with the marketplace on that level, they will successfully evolve.

Massively Networked: What happens as marketing gets truly interactive? .

The Media Cycle is Not New, The Continued Old vs. New Battle

I originally wrote this post in 2006 and as we continue to talk about the changes in media I thought it might be worth revisiting. I think that we get caught up in the "new" of things and we sometimes forget that history often repeats itself. As I'm fond of saying:

Those that don't know history are destined to think everything they do is new.

I think we continue to get worked up in the old vs. new battle without really looking at what's come before. We become like those Spy vs. Spy cartoons from Mad magazine, where we spend more time trying to blow each other up then trying to do anything else. We could do better for our clients if we figured out how to use the best tools available to get the job done, rather then pitching them on the latest shiny bauble.

It's also interesting that when you look at what people are watching online, they seem to watch professional content more then UGC. According to Top 10 Viral Videos 2009: See Who Topped The List (VIDEO), every single one in the top 10 was a professionally produced video. Now, there are a lot of amateur videos in the most watched lists, but I wonder how many of those videos can be watched over & over again. Yes, the video where the woman is dancing drunk and knocks down the whole wedding tent is funny (assuming that it's not your wedding), but how many times can you watch it?

So if you want to see what might happen in the future, take a look at what's happened in the past. It's not a guarantee of the future, but I'm certain it'll be worth the time.

Original post, July 26, 2006

I decided to take the plunge this weekend and spend a great deal of time at Youtube.com. The NY Post recently wrote how youtube could now be worth $1 billion, finally making it worthy of a plan by Dr. Evil.

So, I've spent more hours then I probably should watching videos on the site. I've looked at the professional, the amateur and, well, the less then amateur. I've had some occasional laughs and even a guffaw or two; I've been occasionally titillated and I even listened to the recording of the Howard Stern Show on 9-11.

But mainly, I saw a lot of boring stuff that I would barely watch again and probably wouldn't have watched in the first place if I weren’t trying to learn more about youtube. I mean, my life can be pretty boring on its own and I wouldn't want to put any more time into watching snippets of other people's boring lives.

There was a lot of good commercial quality content on the site and, as I said, some of it can be very entertaining. And one thing is very cool about sites like this. It does take distribution control away from a small group of media companies. Now anyone has a place to showcase his or her talents. That's way cool for the really talented folks out there stuck without a way to show them. And I have a theatre degree, so I know how hard it is to make a living in that field. But it is good to remember that not everyone has talent!

And, since everything old is new again, the whole youtube phenomenon reminds me of the stories from the early days of the printing press and the Penny Press here in the US 100+ years ago.

As was the case today, before the printing press, content was controlled by a very small group of people. People could only read what was given to them to read and these edits were made to help people understand the complex narratives -- to help people keep under control.

Then Gutenberg created the printing press and all of that changed. Now content could be distributed by a larger group of people and that meant new content could find an audience. As we've written about in the past, the coffee houses in London in the 1600 and 1700's all used to print their own newsletter, directed to its specific audience. So a coffeehouse that served doctors would print a newsletter about the medical field. In fact, Lloyd's of London, the large insurance company, was started at Lloyd's coffeehouse because that's where many people in the shipping industry went for coffee.

When the Penny Press hit the US in the 1800's, there were 500+ being printed in their heyday. They were fast & cheap to print and people printed a lot of them. According to Historic Pages history of newspaper:

By 1814 there were 346 newspapers. The 1850 census catalogued 2,526 titles. An astounding 11,314 different papers were recorded in the 1880 census.

And, if I had to make a guess, there were some good things being printed, but there were also some mediocre things printed and I would even guess there were lots of bad things printed. And I'm not talking bad like you didn't agree with their POV; I mean bad like just poorly written.

And, over time, the bad ones died off and we were once again back to a relatively small group who distributed the content for us.

The same thing happened with blogs. There are just so many out there and many of them are either mundane or poorly written and there's a lot that are both. And eventually we find a small group that we like and that's what we read.

It seems like there's a cycle that always occurs. It's like your freshman year away. You go from a restricted world to one with (seemingly) complete freedom and you just do way more Jell-O shots then you know you should. Eventually, you calm down, (although it's still OK to have Jell-O shots every now & then) and settle into a routine.

And that's the cycle the all of the sites like youtube and myspace will go through. At first, lots of people will spend lots of time on these sites. And eventually, they'll slow down. It's the circle of life!

The key for the advertising and media companies to not pretend these new channels don't exist. But it's also to understand that they're not your saviors either. Sure, I had fun watching clips of Howard Stern, but it didn't make me want to buy his on demand show.

We say a lot here that it's much easier to get people to watch this new content then it is to engage people and certainly both need to happen.

But before you jump in and declare these sites as your salvation, make sure you look at the cycle and understand how to play the cycle we’re in. And don’t bet the farm on this being your future. It’ll change again before you know it.

Is it Working? New Target Commecial

This is a favorite commercial around our house.

Best Handheld Device of 2009

Thanks to AltNyttErFarlig for this, the best handheld of 2009.

Ahead of the Curve - GDR Creative Intelligence

I was very happy when GDR Creative Intelligence asked me to write about trends and how companies needed to approach the innovation process. Sheena Patel, the editor I worked with, was really excellent, which was not really a surprise. GDR does a great job at gathering trends from around the world and if you're not on their mailing list, you should be. Here's an excerpt, you can download the full article by clicking on the link below.

A host of emerging technologies are being enthusiastically embraced by rapidly growing numbers of digitally savvy consumers. Leading brands and retailers should be harnessing these technologies to create engaging experiences and practical tools that enrich consumers' lifestyles. If they are to stay ahead of the game, brands must explore and intergrate these new developments.

“With more and more people becoming ‘digital natives’, staying ahead of the curve is critical to a brand's success. Brands should be exploring emerging technologies to create experiences that make digitally savvy consumers want to engage with them.”

How are you looking at innovation today?

Is it something that you reject because it doesn’t fit with your business model, or fear because we are only just coming out of recession?

Ask yourself now: Am I really connecting with my audience? With more and more people becoming ‘digital natives’, staying ahead of the curve is critical to a brand's success. As such, brands should be exploring emerging technologies in order to create experiences that make digitally savvy consumers want to engage with them.

Far-sighted brands realise that being innovative during a bad economy is a great way to gain a leadership position. While everyone else is pulling back, brands must work out how to open up. It may even be the right time to form a new company or spin-off brand.

There is no such thing as a ‘no risk’ position, and hanging on to an existing business model may leave brands and retailers vulnerable to competitors that are more open to innovative thinking. Take the case of the old encyclopedias. When I was growing up, the Encyclopedia Britannica was Google and the world wide web of information. However, the company did not adjust in time to a world in which information could be disseminated online. They couldn’t see the big picture. Today, instead of being Google, they’re relegated to a back seat at best.

To read the full article, you can Download Polinchock GDR AHEAD OF THE CURVE.

Flooring The Consumer: Higher Calling For Retail Brick-and-Mortar Stores

Seem to be in a retail state of mind today and C. B. Whittemore has a good piece on the importance of the retail. Excerpts below, but check out the full piece by using the link below. And if you don't read C.B.'s blog, you should!

More specifically, according to Wachovia Bank research, "brick-and-mortar investment was the single biggest contributor to customer acquisition, outpacing advertising..."

Now, that does that capture your attention? It did mine.

WHY BRICK-AND-MORTAR STORES ARE SO IMPORTANT.

They represent an effective means for communicating with customers. Particularly for complicated categories, a store represents an opportunity for a customer to get one-on-one time with a sales representative for guidance and to help make sense of the plethora of choices.

Stores are where the brand comes alive, where you can demonstrate your commitment to customer service and truly humanize your brand, where you deliver your customer retail experience and demonstrate marketing value. Stores are much more than just distribution points .

Note the five recommendations for enhancing the retail brand experience in-store:

1. "Present your merchandise in a way that helps shoppers navigate through the sea of products."
2. "Help customers feel comfortable with their choices and decisions."
3. "Train store reps to be knowledgeable."
4. "Define what customer enjoyment is for your brand and express that in your physical environment."
5. "Provide great customer service."

Flooring The Consumer: Higher Calling For Retail Brick-and-Mortar Stores.

Scannable Retail Stickers to Extend Google's Local Presence - ClickZ

If you read my previous blog at all, you know that I talk a great deal about what I call the socialization of place, a combination of the third place and emerging technologies like QR codes and augmented reality. I wrote about the socialization of place back in 2005 and every year since then, technologies have launched that have made it more possible. From that first post:

The Hollywood Reporter has a brief interview with Judith Regan, the publisher and media mogul, for the "future of entertainment" special. Surprisingly, the woman whom made millions with tawdry tell-all books, political muckraking and celebrity gossip, sees the future as a step away from the "pornoization" of American culture.

In doing so, she echoes experiential marketers' calls for a humanization of marketing, and of using real people to engage with other real people, instead of the mindless gloss of traditional marketing and advertising.

"The central problem in America is lonliness, which comes out of consuming all this pop culture and yet, not having human experiences. I call it the "pornoization" of the culture. If you look at where the culture is going, there is no love, there is no tenderness. The images my daughter sees are devoid of love. I actually see in the future that simulating love or some authentic human experience will become what people desire and what they want to pay for (Emphasis mine)."

I love the idea that we'll be looking for authentic human experiences and I also believe that brands can play a greater role in the facilitation of those experiences. You see, despite all of the conversations about being friends with brands, really people are much more interested in letting brands facilitate our friendships with other people. In a world of "social" places, brands win by being the connecting point, not the connection itself.

Now Google is launching a new technology that places barcodes on store fronts. They've been doing this in Japan for years, so I'm glad it's finally coming to the States. I've heard advertising "futurists" talk about a world of mobile experiences where as you're walking down the streets, you can ads beamed to your phone. Frankly, no one I know wants that world. But this, this is cool! The best thing about technologies like this is that it is completely opt-in. Not interested in the store, don't take a picture of the barcode. But the ability to build 'oneline' experiences that move between the online and offline world.

Google plans on mailing around 100,000 window stickers to restaurants, hotels, bars, and other retail entities around the nation during the next two weeks. Each sticker will have a unique scannable barcode that is designed to work with numerous popular mobile phones and help local businesses target on-the-go consumers with promotions such as coupons.

When I first wrote about the socialization of place, I asked these questions:

What is the value of real estate for retailers today? Does a record store really need to exist as it's been for the past 40+ years? Or banks, grocery stores, fashion retailers? If, thanks to the internet, people are much more comfortable getting their purchases sent to them, rather then getting them right away, do we need that much space dedicated to merchandise? So, if we can do away with the inventory portion of most retail spaces today, what else would you do with the space? How could you make it a much more social environment, rather then being a retail environment? After all, this is exactly why places like Starbuck's or the Apple stores have boomed -- they created a social space, rather then a retail space.

But, while people look at Starbuck's or the Apple stores and say "Yea, that's great for them, but it doesn't apply to me," I think that they're missing a huge opportunity today. I think there's a coming trend to socialize the retail environment instead of just merchandising the real estate space. And the more we try to use the space for our purposes rather then our guests, the more they'll stay away.

As companies like Google add things like this or Google Goggles, we're starting to see the beginning of 'oneline' brand experiences and the socialization of place.

Scannable Retail Stickers to Extend Google's Local Presence - ClickZ.