Your Brand Is The Experience

Your Brand Is The Experience

"We have been and always will be a coffee company. So many companies lose touch with who they are. Arrogance sets in and they think they can be all things to all people. Our core business is coffee, and the experience we create around it.

We're in the business of creating an experience in our stores that goes well beyond the product. The product is not just the coffee, it's the relationship we have with our customers, the environment, the music, the entire setting. Our primary goal is not to increase transactions; it's to increase the experience in our stores."

— Excerpts from an interview conducted with Howard Schulz, Chairman of Starbucks, by The Boston Globe, April 18, 2004

I've been struck by the number of articles I've seen written about the retail experience being the means to 'brand' the brand.

Here's the headline from Stuart Elliott's Advertising column in the New York Times on August 5th, 2004: "Meow Mix is opening a temporary café for felines. No dogs allowed. Cat people will understand."

The Meow Mix Company, the maker of dry cat food, wanted to enter the lucrative wet category of the cat food segment. Its method? Create a restaurant (on Fifth Avenue in New York City, no less) featuring its new line for cats and their owners. It's part of a growing trend in packaged goods marketing, called "Pop-up Retail". Companies bring their brands to life in stores they design and manage, or in other high visibility venues. This approach avoids traditional venues like grocery chains and retail super stores as a means to launch or promote a product or service.

Elliott goes on to cite Hershey, Harley Davidson, Nike, Planters and ESPN as being other examples in using this technique. In each, the goal is the same: to create five-sense stimulated, three-dimensional experiences that envelop the consumer and evoke indelible feelings and memories. The marketing and behavioral science behind this contends that when the consumer comes into contact with the product in other, less stimulating arenas, the memory will return, in all its Pavlovian glory, to guide the customer to the shelf and a purchase.

The beauty of the restaurant, hospitality or attraction business is that we're already creating experiential venues. I remember one of the most important features in the design of the French Quarter Coffee Company or Leo's Delancey Street Deli experience, was to make them more than fast casual outlets for a cup of 'joe' or a corned beef on rye. We were interested in communicating a personality.

Even when the news is bad, companies that have created an experience around their brand, find it invoked. Krispy Kreme has been in the news and it's not been pretty. Still, The Wall Street Journal, in a September 3rd article dedicated to listing all of Krispy Kreme's woes, found space to offer a quote from Roy Blount Jr. "When Krispy Kremes are hot, they are to other donuts what angels are to people." Not bad for a company in the midst of an SEC investigation and investor revolt.

Lastly, I refer you to the quote at the beginning of this article. Howard Schultz is not kidding when he talks about, "Our primary goal is not to increase transactions; it's to increase the experience in our stores."

The 10 GEMS™ offer a road map to help retailers devise the ways to give brands that depth, et al. But even they cannot overcome a brand without a unique story and deeper purpose for existing. Starbucks is not in the coffee business. It's in the refuge business, the escape business, the 'safe haven' business. That's the experience to which Schultz refers and is its reason for being. It also allows them to charge ungodly amounts for beverages without spending much in traditional marketing. The experience is the marketing. It's why I focus so much on the creation of the story as a starting point to generate a play, which then must go into production.

Experiences are created through a carefully planned and executed theatrical event. The play is the thing. There is no other way to generate lasting feelings in the guest. Effective theatrics rooted in a unique story with a deeper purpose produce a sense of connection with the guest, a relationship informed and enhanced by the various stimuli used to enliven the experience. We have all seen the results when companies mistake effects for affect. Planet Hollywood is a prime example. Even ESPN Zone, a brand touted in Elliott's column, is more about game machines and electronics than a place for people to gather and break bread.

It's the retail experience and the memories it creates that help our guests decide where to spend their disposable income. Passive media, like advertising, "works in the margins," according to Brian Collins of Ogilvy and Mather. "With stores, you're creating experiences that people … can actively seek out in ways that give the brands depth, sense, sight, smell, dimension." *

So, as you consider your strategic direction, ask yourself a simple question, "Is my place a show? And, is it one I'd pay to see again?" Good food, service or hospitality are merely entry points into being competitive in the new Experience Era.

* Stuart Elliott's advertising column, New York Times, August 5th, 2004

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Reader Feedback from August's issue, Surprise and Delight

Krista Melton, a GM with Champps Restaurant and Bar wrote:

I truly believe in surprise and delight … example: When the guest comments on how good the dressing is … bring them a pint of it to take home with them. NO charge … just surprise and delight. If they comment on the 9-grain bread and how good it is … bring them a loaf to take home. Each time they take a bite of it or share it with their friends, neighbors and family … they re-create the surprise and delight in the restaurant as they talk about it. This is definitely "Wowing'" the guest. I have a group of regulars that frequent our restaurant every Friday night. There are about 8 of them. I usually bring them a dessert they have never tried or an appetizer to start on the house. However, I had just received new Champps Visors that normally sell for $15 bucks a piece. I brought them all one to the table … You would have thought I had given them winning lottery tickets!! They sent me a picture from their group camping trip … and guess what they were wearing … the visors on them all … That is the reason I work in this business …

Krista — you're like a beacon of delightful sanity! Please keep it up.

If you have opinions or experiences around these ideas, please e-mail me at rkhendrie@li nkincmethodmarketing.com.

A book by Seth Godin, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable (Amazon.com), offers tips on ways to Surprise and Delight your customers. I like the premise: You're either remarkable or you're invisible. Everything we do needs to be considered through the prism of our own 'unique us-ness'. I recommend the book as a way to stimulate ideas on becoming 'visible' in a commercial world that's too loud, too crazy, 'too, too'.

Have any questions about this issue? Please feel free to email me at rkhendrie@comcast.net , or call me at 617- 547 -5123 or 617-335-1011. I'll do my best to help you out.

We combine theater technique, classic marketing skill and operations know-how to create a profitable, "WOW" guest experience.

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