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

From the Publisher

Marketers are discovering that customers are not just rational decision-makers. (Customers) want to be entertained, emotionally affected, and creatively challenged by "experiencing" products and services.

These phenomena provide the outlines of a type of marketing and management driven by experience. "Experiential marketing" will replace the traditional approach to marketing and business.

In Experiential Marketing: How to Get Customers to Sense, Feel, and Relate to Your Company and Brands, Schmitt looks back on the old days of advertising that are still the model for what has informed both the advertiser and the consumer. Rather than referring to the old model that was developed in response to the industrial age, and focused on functional features and benefits, experiential marketing seeks to create an experience through "experience providers" or "ExPros." (Experiential marketing) intends to give the customer a holistic experience; not only to buy the product -- but to identify with it.

This book provides the strategic frameworks and best-case practices needed for being successful with experiential marketing. Examples of experiential marketing are provided from around the world including campaigns from Gillette, The New Beetle, Martha Stewart Living, Shishedo, Hallmark, Sony, and Intel.

About the Author:

Bernd H. Schmitt is an expert in corporate and brand identity, international and strategic marketing. and product positioning and communications. He holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University. In 1988 he joined the Marketing Department of Columbia Business School where he is a tenured full professor. In 1998 he became the Director of the New Center on Global Consumers, Brands and Communications. At China-Europe International Business School (CEIBS), China's leading business school, located in Shanghai, he is the Chairman of the Marketing Department.

What People Are Saying

Gerald Zaltman
A lucid, provocative account of total experience engineering. This is a well thought out, well documented description of what it means to truly understand customers.
— Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Rob Wallace
With Experiential Marketing, branding now has a bible!
— Managing Partner, Wallace Church Associates, Strategic Brand Identity Consultants

Ronald A. Galotti
Schmitt is a marketing guru. He makes sense on every level--from the intellectual to the emotional.
—President and Publisher, Talk Media, Inc.

Hayes Roth
A fresh, new voice in the wilderness of so-called marketing experts--one who speaks with unusual perception, clarity, and common sense. Bernd Schmitt will have a profound influence for years to come on who we all think about brands and the marketing that selles them.
—Senior Executive Director, Landor Associates

Product Details

• ISBN: 0684854236
  
• ISBN-13: 9780684854236
• Format: Hardcover, 304pp
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
• Pub. Date: August 1999
• Sales Rank: 178,790

• Table of Contents
• Reading Group Guide
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Reading Group Guide

2. What are advantages and disadvantages of the different "Experience Providers" (ExPros)? (Chapter 3)

3. Discuss how useful it is for your organization to target the following types of customer experiences: SENSE, FEEL, THINK, ACT and RELATE? (Chapters 4-8)

4. At the end of Chapters 4-8, you find the critical voice of LAURA BROWN. Do you agree with her critical statements?

5. Using the Experiential Wheel, how could you create hybrids and holistic experiences for your customers? (Chapter 9)

6. Using the Experiential Grid, what are the key strategic issues for your organization? (Chapter 10)

7. What additional strategic experiential marketing issues arise for your organization? (Chapter 10)

8. To what degree is your organization an "experience-oriented organization"? Do you think it would pay off to become more focused on customer and employee experiences? (Chapter 11)

Read an Excerpt

From Chapter 8: RELATE

RELATE has been used successfully in a variety of recent marketing campaigns. Let's examine some of them.

Let's start with relating to a person. In the last chapter we looked at the ACT appeal of Martha Stewart. Her RELATE appeal is just as powerful and, for some, highly personal. Women who don't admire Martha, as well as those who do, speculate about "being" Martha. One writer describes her tongue-in-cheek foray into the world of domestic perfection: "the idea -- regrettably, my own -- was to see whether I could be Martha Stewart in time for the holidays." Despite the humor of the topic, many people do relate to Martha as the embodiment of an elegant and relaxed lifestyle.

Reference-group feelings can provide a powerful starting point for a RELATE campaign. Just think about Harley Davidson, the American icon of free-spiritedness, which draws thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts to weekend rallies staged around the country. Harley Davidson evokes such strong relations that owners tattoo the logo on their arms or their entire bodies. As Alec Wilkinson wrote in The New York Times: "If you ride a Harley, you are a member of a brotherhood, and if you don't, you are not."

On a higher-end scale, we find yet another brotherhood -- that of Tommy Hilfiger, the phenomenally successful American casual-clothing designer brand. Like Harley Davidson, Tommy Hilfiger has used RELATE marketing for many years. A recently launched Tommy fragrance uses the tag line, "the real American fragrance." Print ads show groups of wholesome-looking young people of different races, wearing Tommy fashions and relaxing in casual settings. The atmosphere is one of warmth and easy camaraderie among friends. One setting, on a manicured lawn before a large Cape Cod home, is strongly reminiscent of the Kennedy enclave at Hyannisport. Tommy's signature colors -- red white and blue, are carried through in American flags that appear in the background of each shot.

An integrated and successful collection of RELATE products and services is provided by the Franklin-Covey company. Building on the phenomenal success of Steven Covey's best-selling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Franklin-Covey offers a line of Franklin organizers, the Covey Leadership Center, and Covey's books on self-management. They have even opened a line of retail stores, the 7-Habits stores, selling products and services intended to help people get control of their lives.

Finally, RELATE marketing can be serious or playful. A "communist chic" restaurant is all the rage in Singapore. At the House of Mao, waiters wear red stars on their caps and Maoist slogans on their sleeves. A portrait of the late Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung dominates one wall of the restaurant, which is decorated with medals, posters, and copies of Mao's famous Little Red Book. The menu itself mimics the Little Red Book and offers dishes like Long March Chicken and Chairman Mao's Favorite Braised Garlic Pork. This tongue-in-cheek nostalgia is not confined to Asia, either. Shortly after the fall of communism in Europe, a hammer-and-sickle craze swept the region, with pizzerias and cafeterias harking back to the "good" old days in their design and marketing.

Copyright © 1999 Bernd H. Schmitt