Creating upmarket brand experiences

Everywhere we look, reports confirm that fewer consumers are making purchases purely for material gain—that, instead of acquiring stuff, people young and old are spending their money and time having experiences. From a branding perspective, this news is promising. But from a company perspective, it can be highly perplexing.

What exactly does “experience” mean? How do we relate it to growth and profit?

If you’re The Ritz Carlton, which built its business providing the very wealthy with luxurious settings and an unparalleled personnel-to-guest ratio for over 75 years, the answer is simple. Likewise, if you’re a purveyor of kayak trips around San Juan Island or Glacier Bay, the experience part is easy.

But what if you’re marketing a brand of skin cream, living room furniture, raincoats or a hotel chain serving the business traveler? What does “experience” mean to your market? What must you do to create an experience that is as fulfilling for your stockholders as it is for your customers?

Follow the trend

The move toward creating an upmarket brand experience begins when you embrace the well-documented fact that not all consumers are hell-bent on finding the cheapest product. Many, perhaps the majority, are looking for products that create or enhance their life experiences, and they want their purchase experiences to do the same.

Who are these consumers and how many of them are there? Simply put, there are a lot of them, they are growing in number every day, and they command a large portion of America’s discretionary spending. You’ll find them at all income levels, from all ethnic groups, religions, political parties and geographies. Sociologist Paul Ray dubbed them Cultural Creatives, and we have been monitoring them closely for years. UpMarket: Peace, Love and Granola Bars explains this social trend in detail.

Now back to our regular scheduled program

To put it in business terms, brand experience is the reason the Apple iPod commands an unprecedented 70%-plus share of the portable digital music player market, despite its premium price tag, and Starbucks can sell a fifty cent cup of coffee for over two bucks. From our perspective, these are pretty compelling reasons to consider creating an upmarket experience for your brand.

So what is it about Starbucks that makes their cup of coffee worth five times more than the one you get at Denny’s? They had a big idea and they’ve successfully used it to create an experiential package for their products that emotionally connects with the consumer. This business feat took more than a little bit of imagination. It also took a lot of courage.

Finding the big idea that powers brand experience is not an easy task. Making sure it is delivered consistently, day in and day out, is a labor of love. You have to understand and care about the audience you want to have as customers. You have to know what your company can conceptually offer and operationally deliver that will inspire consumers to pay a premium to participate. And you have to communicate with your audience clearly, consistently and creatively, at every touch point, in a way that moves them toward loyalty.

Additional reading

This shift in consumer motivation was first identified by James Gilmore in a July-August 1998 Harvard Business Review article entitled "Welcome to the Experience Economy", and later fleshed out in the book, The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage (April 1999), which he cowrote with B. Joseph Pine.

Other books that shed light on the subject include:

Experiential Marketing: How to Get Customers to Sense, Feel, Think, Act and Relate to Your Company and Brand by Bernd H. Schmitt (Aug 16, 1999)

The Experience Is The Marketing – A Special Report by James H. Gilmore (Aug 26, 2002)

Managing the Customer Experience: Turn Customers into Advocates by Shaun Smith and Joe Wheeler (Oct 29, 2002)

Priceless: Turning Ordinary Products into Extraordinary Experiences by Diana Lasalle and Terry A. Britton (Dec 4, 2002)

Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences by Steve Diller, Nathan Shedroff and Darrel Rhea (Dec 21, 2005)