Experience the Message

EXPERIENCE THE ANGST

I had heard of a bunch of metal-heads in an Eastern European country had wired up a junk yard with speakers and would invite their fellow head-bangers to come over and smash shit up while listening to deafening speed metal. It seemed like a most beautiful and sublime idea to me, an idea that could probably be monetized but more importantly an idea that was experiential at heart and intent.

So its no surprise that Sarah's Smash Shack has opened up its doors. According to Iconoculture:

• What some might call a cheaper alternative to the therapist's couch, the Break Room at Sarah's Smash Shack in San Diego lets frustrated folk vent by hurling glassware and dishes, for as little as $12.
• Marketed as a cathartic good time, the Smash Shack provides breakables, a safe and sound-proof room and protective gear. Smashers are encouraged to bring their MP3 player to heighten the experience (may we suggest Smashing Pumpkins?).
• Sarah's Smash Shack offers discounts to police, fire, military, students and seniors. Shards are donated for art projects, or for $10, they'll box up your spent bits as a momento.

That's pretty cool. Of course, Greek restaurants in Montreal have been offering a little bit of therapy themselves, as a dinner is usually completed with a stack of dishes that are thrown against the wall.

SO POWERFUL IT HURTS

This is why I got in this game. This is why I am proud to be an experiential marketer. When I first learned of this campaign, I actually shed a tear. Amazing stuff. I am so indebted to Ryan at Gigunda Group for creating this "campaign," in that not only has he and his team created something compelling and extraordinary, he has actually changed the world around us...for the better.

I am moved beyond description every time I see this. I just presented the clip at a conference in Sydney, and I could literally feel the hearts and minds of the audience metaphorically sigh in empathy and sublime appreciation for being human.

A Dress Show for Salad Dressing

Here's a pretty cool idea. Something on the lighter side. Let's start this week with a little salad. Check this out, from Ad Age:

Lettuce-trimmed ball gowns, walnut necklaces and fruity bikinis? Yes, you read that right. Salad dressing giant Wish-Bone hosted its second-annual summer salad fashion show in Grand Central's Vanderbilt Hall.

A cross between a fashion show and a fruit-and-vegetable stand, Wish-Bone's event featured garments that could be eaten after the show.

The piece de resistance, however, was the show's ending piece, designed by fashion icon duo Heatherette (designers Richie Rich and Traver Rains) -- an Ambrosia Wedding Salad Dress, complete with an array of pineapples, mangoes, oranges and kiwis and a few Heatherette touches of glitter, tulle and feathers. This ensemble was for the "prom princess buffet on the go."

"Project Runway" mentor Tim Gunn was the emcee.

Using the concept "Express your salad style," the show incorporated the idea of consumer participation. Wish-Bone asked its consumers to create recipes conveying their salad style. The two winning recipes -- "Red Hot Mama Salad" and "Cucumber and Pear Carpaccio Salad" -- inspired two original dresses from costume designer Chris March that were presented at the show. Who would've thought wearing a grill with salmon on your head would look hot?

Okay, kind of silly right? But not if you think a little deeper into the insight and the people the brand is trying to reach. Plus, how often do you hear of a salad dressing making headline?

LIVE BY THE BLOG, DIE BY THE BLOG

I just love this story!

AdPulp points out that popualr blogs like Kottke.org and Seth Godin's blog do not allow for comments. Yes, that's right. These bloggers -- who presumably are auguring in a new two-way form of communication -- don't like one of the ways, namely, the one where you and me get to tell them to screw themselves. I guess they are too thin-skinned for it...or just part of the old guard who hold on to the notion that experts deserve a pulpit and damn the dirty masses.

Well, an iconoclastic spirit has come up with the solution. In the instance of Kottke, he has launched kottkecomments.com, a site that is exactly like the original Kottke, but with the comments turned on! Brilliant! Here's how it works:

We suck down the RSS feeds from Kottke.org (published under a Creative Commons license that allows us to create derivative works) and republish them here, then use our own software to manage the comments. We use TypeKey for comment authentication to minimize spam.

So, even if you're scared of a little conversation, we can mae you talk anyway. And by the way, as Tom Asacker points out, the follwoing URLs are still available:

sethcomments.com
godincomments.com
sethgodincomments.com
purplecowcomments.com

Hurry now!

THE BUBBLE REVOLUTION

In talking about a 50 Cent poster that has not yet been touched by the effort, Adrants points to an incredibly interesting campaign by New York-based art director and designer Ji Lee called The Bubble Project.

The idea is simple, yet totally ingenious. Lee printed 15,000 blank dialogue bubble stickers, which are placed over ad posters and outdoor ads throughout the city. Consumers use the blank bubbles to write in their own statements about the ad, or quite literally, put words into celebrities' mouths.

The manifesto (do all movements have to have manifestos?) spells out the projects goals, and in doing so, presents a cynical media and advertising lansdcape for the consumer. More importantly, it announces and empowers the emergence of a new consumer that is no longer conditioned with a one-way dialogue with marketer, and one that is mroe than willing to talk back.

"Our communal spaces are being overrun with ads....Once considered public, these spaces are increasingly being seized by corporations to propogate their messages solely in the interest of profit. Armed with heavy budgets, their marketing tactics are becoming more and more aggressive and manipulative. We the public are both target and victim of this media attack.

The Bubble Project is the counterattack. The Bubbles are the ammunition. Once placed on ads, these stickers transform the corporate monologue into an open dialogue. They encourage anyone to fill them in with any form of self expression, free from censorship.

More Bubble mean more freed spaces, more sharing of personal thoughts, more reactions to current events, and most importantly, more imagination and fun."

We as marketers need to recognize these reclamation "projects" as early manifestations of consumer revolt. Pure and simple, something like the Bubble Projects -- as silly as it may seem to P&Gs CEO -- will be the downfall of any company which fails to read the writing on the wall.

The revolution begins to gain steam when the public begins to sense that it can get away with chipping away at the foundations of the status quo.

These Bubbles are small hammer taps, which can soon turn into sledgehammers and wrecking balls, against the wall of ad overkill and impersonal, non-experiential marketing like outdoor ads and posters.

THE CONCERT IN YOUR HEAD

I took interest in a Wired article describing a San Francisco event called the Plug Music Festival. The festival is much like any other music shin-dig: a bunch of bands playing to a large, inebriated and engaged crowd of fans and their friends. Whether outside in a field or amphitheater, or inside some cavernous club, the audience is usually either singing along to the act or trying to scream out a conversation with somebodty over stacks of Marshall amps or B&W Matrix sub-woofers.

The Plug event is different, however.

Yeah, you still have the rotating line-up of live acts. And you still have hundreds, if not thousands, of actively engaged audience-members. But instead of the cacophony and double-digit decibles over speakers, this music festival is experienced by the throng over headphones (which everyone brings to the event).

The Plug festival is part of a loose-knit global organization called Le Placard -- or the closet, in French. Eight years ago, a Parisien musician streamed a concert from his closet. The myth is that three people in Japan tuned in to the inaugural concert in your head.

Since then, the idea has developed into a decentralised organization which puts on continuous open-source music festivals where anyone can come in and establish a streaming and/or listening room of their own.

This is an ideal concert medium to create an intimate and personal relationship between artist and audience. Ear phones provide a head-space that is unbroken by outside influences and distractions.

Listeners can, however, interact with others around the globe through chat rooms specific to the concert on Le Placard's IRC channel.

The concert experience may never be the same.

MMM...MMM...BBQ

Erik Hauser of Swivel Media asked a rather simple question on the Experiential Marketing Forum yesterday, wanting to know what marketing "experience" EMF's readers have had recently. The question sparked a recent memory for me, specifically, a restaurant I passed in Chicago on the way to a Steel Pulse show at the House of Blues on State Street. That restaurant was called The Weber Grill Restaurant, and yes, it was a grand bow to experiential marketing and the future of brand marketing.

The restaurant is an homage to all things grill-related. It, and two other locations, are extensions of the Weber Grill. The brand already owns the backyard for many consumers. Now it seeks to make the grill into a gourmet experience. The Weber dining experience is boyued by Pavlovian sensory inputs that gets carnivores to imagine the same steaks, ribs and other BBQ fare on their very own Weber grill outside in the yard. The brand is truly experienced by the experiential marketing. It's also a pretty good revenue driver for Weber, which gladly serves up $40 steaks and $8 well drinks at the restaurants. Wow. It's marketing with immediate ROI -- about 100 tables turning over five times each night. (Nevermind the business lunches.) We're talking the Midwest here. They love their grills. 

The Weber Grill Restaurant is an extension of experiential retailing, such as the recent "pop-up retail" trend that has been making marketers rethink the way consumers want to experience the act of shopping. If two-thirds of all purchases are unplanned, as Paco Underhill contends, then why should retail be so static? This is a trend that sees a $200,000 lease of a vacant storefront in NYC turn into $10,000,000 worth of unpaid media exposure, as it did for Purina when it opened the Meow Mix Cafe last summer. This is the trend that allows an organization like Vacant to become a retailing pioneer, much like the London Fashion Bus or Target's pop-up stores.

So when is Nike going to open a hotel for the athlete-traveller? I would gladly pay double for a hotel room if I could shoot baskets before going to bed, take laps in an in-room jet pool, buy an official Olympic jersey at the gift shop, watch an Uzbeki wrestling match on TV (or any sporting event in the world at the moment), and work-out in the most state-of-the art facility in the city, go to an indoor driving range. Imagine the cool staff uniforms, wearing the freshest gear. Imagine the conceirge being able to get tickets to any game in town. Imagine Gatorade and Vector bars in the mini bar. Imagine running into sports pros in the elevator.

Can't a guy dream? When, Nike, oh when will you do it? Everybody else is going to. It's pure experiential marketing, y'all. Think of Camp Jeep. Versace has a hotel. Why not you too?

Freakin' Out, Man!

A tiny aside from Iconoculture gives insight into a great experiential marketing idea for, say, Monster or Sony Music:

A Lubia, Spain, scrap yard lets anyone get medieval on everything from computers and fax machines to mobile phones and cars. Customers are given a sledgehammer, goggles, a helmet, and a soundtrack of heavy-metal music.

That's so damn cool! Imagine getting fired from a crappy office job. Monster not only offers you free job listings, but a free 15 minutes of "therapy" against the copy machine you were chained to at the office.