The Experience Effect
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Tue, Sep 28, 2010
Jim Joseph, president of the Lippe-Taylor Brand Communications, presented at the AMA’s Marketing Research Conference in Atlanta. “Marketing is a spectator sport and a team sport. We work together a lot, and we can learn from what others do.”
“If you don’t build a great brand experience, you don’t really have a brand.” Can you turn a need into a want? You need to wear a shirt, but can a brand make you want to wear their shirts? Jim wants to wear Paul Smith shirts. You may need to have a cup of coffee each morning; Jim wants to have a Starbucks each morning. In the city of Coca-Cola, Jim said, “I can sniff out the difference between a Diet Coke and a Diet Pepsi, blindfolded and hungover. I need Diet Pepsi.”
Everyone defines marketing differently. Some say marketing is creating a demand; Jim says marketing is “building the incredible experience”. Marketing “transcends the product, engages the consumer, differentiates from the completion, adds value beyond compare, and is able to be shared.” Can you get your consumer to tell their friends about the experience?
Marketing starts with understanding your consumer. Without that understanding of consumer needs, wants and desires, you can’t build a brand experience that adds value for consumers. “You need to understand two sides of your benefit: the rational hardcore benefits, the reasons why consumers need your products, and the emotional benefit, which we do not use enough, to differentiate the brand.” Market-research professionals can easily identify the rational benefit; the emotional benefit, on the other hand, takes significant research, especially if you are going to do it better than competitors. “Every single brand, I would contend, has an emotional benefit,” Jim said. “Even pharmaceutical products, where the makers think there is no emotional benefit.” You can’t settle for the generic emotional benefit; you need to dive deeper to really understand. “Maybe hair removal, for women, is about being flirty, desirable, young, things that we aspire to be but perhaps aren’t so much anymore. Identifying this is how you shift from a need-brand to a want-brand.”
For brands, consistency is important, across every advertising medium, for every aspect of the experience, from the product packaging to the buying process. “You have a great ad but when your consumer goes to the store, she can’t find it. Or she goes to the web and it looks like a completely different brand. She takes it home, and it’s not quite there.” The messaging has to be adapted to each medium, but you need consistency of voice.
This challenge is especially acute for social media. “So many brands set up a Facebook page and just leave it there. ‘It’s a playground for our consumers,’ the brand managers might say.” In fact, social media is about interaction, and the brand needs to interact with its followers. “We do work for Ikea, which has a reputation for a million pieces and parts that makes its products hard to put it together.” So Ikea uses Facebook to answer requests for advice on furniture assembly. Initially, the Facebook page was dormant, until Jim analyzed the type of posts and requests that the page was generating to develop its customer-service approach.
Jim used Lady Gaga as a case study in brand experience. She sells pop music, which is very similar to much other pop music. But she is able to build an experience for her international consumers; she is the most followed person on Twitter, she is #2 on YouTube on videos. “Lady Gaga knows she is a brand.” She has a mission, “to inspire the underdog so that they can each realize their potential”. Like a brand, she has a line of products and packaging; she has CDs, singles and a video repertoire. Her target audience is the underdogs, a psychographic that ranges from pre-teens to seniors. “She is one of the first artists, or musical brands, that has a name for her target audience: she calls them ‘little monsters’, and gave them a hand gesture that they can use to identify one another and connect with one another.” Her media strategy is deliberate, from mainstream press to social media, using Twitter from the stage of performances. She has formed strategic alliances with other brands that reflect her values; she is the creative director for Polaroid, now an underdog brand. She is consistent; when she accepts an award, she always thanks her fans, her ‘little monsters’.
As a final case study, Jim used J. Crew. You can walk into the store, not see a logo, and realize you are in a J. Crew store, with separate in-store experiences for men and women. Their brand is consistent across the store, their catalog and the web, yet each reflects the strength of each medium. They offer complimentary personal shoppers for women, and a section of their web site for men. They have concept stores called “The Mens Shop” that are being tested. “J. Crew dabbled in a brand extension to bridal wear, and it completely took off.” The J. Crew social media experience is very consistent; they have separate Twitter handles for sales, fashion tips, job opportunities as well as a consolidated feed for “J. Crew junkies”.
The starting point for all branding is building the true understanding of the consumer, developing knowledge beyond the ordinary, “beyond the survey, the focus group or the quant study”. Jim advises, “Spend a day with the consumer in her real life to get a true understanding of who she is.” It is a real way to learn – early in his career, Jim had no experience with infants, but spent time with a number of new moms so that he could better understand marketing to mothers. Immerse yourself in the pop culture of your target audience, Jim advices; involve yourself in their social media conversations, reach out to bloggers. “In beauty, fashion and health care, you can learn an amazing amount of consumers from bloggers.” For some of Jim’s brands, the bloggers are much more influential than the traditional media outlets.
Build a consumer profile to make the data real. “We put it all together to tell a story and attach a face and a name. Add texture and context, then use the persona as a game.” Share the persona with the team and use it as a guide in all your work. When marketing to women, Jim looks at all her “need states” throughout her day, to try to get the brands he represents to be her wants.
“At the end of the day, brand consistency is paramount,” Jim concluded. You can follow Jim on Twitter (@jimjosephexp) and read his book, The Experience Effect: Engage Your Customers with a Consistent and Memorable Brand Experience.