Experience the Message

EXPERIENCE MAKES AN AGENCY

According to an article in Adweek:

As in past years, Reardon Smith Whittaker, a consultancy that coaches agencies on new business development, focused on why clients seek new agencies, what they look for and how satisfied they are with the results.

The top-ranked reasons the respondents cited for launching reviews were unhappiness with their agency's thinking (46 percent), followed by dissatisfaction with creative work (40 percent) and not being proactive enough (38 percent).

The execs had mixed feelings about agency searches. They find the process to be time-consuming (42 percent) and 28 percent agree that "you're told so many things that you're not sure what to believe," yet 37 percent said reviews were "exciting" and 22 percent "look forward to it."

As for the tactics they're most interested in, the respondents pointed to online marketing (69 percent), buzz marketing (58 percent), experiential efforts (53 percent), search engine marketing (52 percent) and mobile marketing (25 percent).

The rise of experiential marketing isn't news at all. Nor is the fact that more clients are asking for experience-based thinking to be presented in creative pitches and reviews. What's interesting is that the philosophy -- if not strictly the methodology -- is taking a rightful place alongside the "new" mechanisms and engagement points like online, buzz and mobile marketing (which are experiential in nature anyway).

Blog Book Tour with Jonathan Tisch

Thanks to David Polinchock at Brand Experience Lab, I will be one of 6 bloggers hosting "hosting" Jonathan Tisch, CEO Of Loews Hotels and author of "Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience" at a blog book tour. I will be asking him questions and he will respond to them this upcoming Thursday.

But the cool thing about a Blog Book Tour is that you get to participate too! You can send me any questions that you have about customer experience and we'll get it over to Jonathan to get an answer. My email is mlenderman@gmrlive.com.

You can go to http://tinyurl.com/34urq2 to learn more about the book.

NATIONAL BIZ BOOK AWARD

A quick (and surprising) update: Experience the Message has been chosen as a finalist for the National Business Book Award in Canada. Read the release here.

I'm honored and quite taken aback. This is, after all, "one of Canada's most prestigious literary awards," one which is "presented annually to the author of an outstanding business-related book published in Canada."

As Wayne and Garth would intone when confronted with an astounding honor: "I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!"

INHALING (COUGH*COUGH) AN EXPERIENCE

It's been about a month since a lounge called Marshall McGearty opened up in the trendy Bucktown area of Chicago, and it's still getting press. The reason, primarily, is that this lounge is the brainchild of tobacco powerhouse RJ Reynolds. It is, for all intents and purposes, an experiential campaign for cigarettes -- and this is giving it a lot of attention.

The Marshall McGearty store was a developed on a napkin by Larry McGearty, a CD at RJR ad company Gyro Worldwide, and RJR honcho Jerry Marshall. It is a plush smoking lounge that serves booze and munchies. But the focus of the place is to sell exotic blends of high-end tobacco, and charge people for the experience.

It is the Starbucks of cigarettes, and although it is for now only in Chicago, I don't see why RJR wouldn't open up more lounges in the future.

So now I'm torn: it's a damn good idea...but it's a good idea on how to market cigarettes. I'm an ex-smoker, and know how addictive ciggies can be. Worse than herion (not that I'm a heroin user) and easier to get than beer. But since tobacco companies are often prohibitted from advertising in print, radio or TV, going the experiential route is an incredibly astute move.

And as luck would have it, the opening of the lounge coincided with the start of a public smoking ban in Chicago, landing the lounge in regional papers and the New York Times. Classified as a retail tobacco store, the lounge is exempt from the smoking ban.

Good move. Free press and legions of exiled smokers. So when is the local crack dealer going to set up a plush den for his customers?

ETM IN MARKETING MAGAZINE

I'm impressed! When I was told that Marketing Magazine agreed to excerpt from my book, Experience the Message, I had initially envisioned a 500-word blurb that just took up some space in the magazine.

Instead, they chose to print over 3,000 words of pure marketing genius (subjective plug) from yours truly. You can read it here, my friends.

McDONALD'S GOING OUT OF BUSINESS

From a CNN Money report comes this:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - In a move away from its iconic burgers, McDonald's is looking to new chicken products, coffee and fresh foods such as salads and fruits to help spur sales in 2006 and beyond, the president of McDonald's North America, told a gathering Monday in New York.

Ralph Alvarez, speaking on the second day of the National Retail Federation's 94th annual convention, said current eating trends dictate how the No. 1 fast-food chain tweaks its options.

"Beef sales have been flat year over year, while chicken product sales are growing 8 to 10 percent a year," he said. "As a brand we have to follow trends."

Is there any wonder why McDonald's is dead in the water? The president of its North American business thinks that the role of a brand is to follow trends!

Ladies and gentlemen, the role of a brand is to make the trends, not follow them. If you can't do that, if that's not your mission, then just roll over and die.

EXPERIENCE THE MESSAGE IN FAST COMPANY

EXPERIENCE THE MESSAGE was written-up in the January issue of Fast Company! I'm freakin' thrilled. I love that pub.

The writer was able to squeeze in Potty Palooza, Apple, the US Army and a reference to Joseph Jaffe's "Life After the 30-Second Spot" into a tight and breathless mention.

Anyway, here's to you Fast Company! Thanks for the props.

The New Canadian

I very much like this article,Download TheNewCanadianMagazineWinter04-05_small.pdf  not only because the writer quotes me a lot (full disclosure: he's a friend of mine) and not just because Erik Hauser and the IXMA are also extensively referenced. I like it because it aims to present experiential marketing in a very accessible manner, with an easy-going narrative but plenty of punch.

We started talking about experiential marketing in the car. The writer turned on the taperecorder just as I began talking about the Scion brand, and the way it was marketed to their target consumer. In a weird scene of serendipity, a Scion pulled up in front of the car, even though no Scions were being sold in Canada. It was a great experiential moment; the writer was able to see the car firsthand, and as I engaged in a series of car maneuvers around it while simultaneously waxing poetic about its ingenius marketing campaign, the message was certainly delivered experientially.

Parenthetically, the feature article is by Craig Silverman, who runs the very cool blog called Regret the Error.

In Strategy Magazine

Don't worry, I usually don't toot my own horn much. But I got to let slip a bit of egoism and hubris here. I was recently featured on the cover of Strategy Magazine, the leading marketing magazine in Canada. The title of the article is "Brand Culture: The Experience Is the Sum of All Its Parts." It was very well-written by the editor, Lisa D'Innocenzo.

I was quoted quite a lot in the article, but what really gets all my colleagues calling and heckling me is the cover photo. It is a play off of DaVinci's Vitruvian Man sketch. I look nothing like it in this picture.

I did surprise the hell out of the Strategy editorial staff at the shoot when I put on the sleeveless shirt and uncovered the tattoos on my arms. Well, they had Frank Palmer, founder of Taxi, on the cover in his boxers. A punk like me and my skin ink should be no big deal.

In any case, the article is a great example of how experiential marketing is entering the mainstream, and how major brands are embracing it better than others. You can get it here.

Here's a morsel, tho: "...brand stewards are increasingly interested in wowing consumers through one-on-one interaction. Max Lenderman, president of Montreal-based guerrilla marketing firm Gearwerx, is also a founding member of the International Experiential Marketing Association (IXMA), HQ'd in San Francisco. Although the organization started up only a year ago, it now counts over 10,000 members, mostly marketers at the VP and EVP level, dedicated to taking their brands to the next level.

Experiential marketing, explains Lenderman, is an umbrella term for the tactics implemented to create a brand experience. A manifesto that Lenderman wrote for the IXMA states: "Consumers want ... experiences that are personally relevant, memorable, sensory, emotional and meaningful.... Businesses will live or die ... by the experience they offer customers at every touch point."

And that's just the beginning: Pundits believe that down the road the brand-customer relationship will be entirely flipped on its head. In a recent speech given at the IEG Event Marketing Conference in Chicago, futurist Andrew Zolli talked of the quickly approaching "culture economy" being brought on by a "participation revolution" instigated by consumers.

Adds Lenderman: "Brands have been controlled by brand managers and, in the past, God forbid you messed with top-down messaging. Now brand play comes from the bottom up, and it becomes culture."

Any thoughts?