Branding for the Experience Economy
Businesses are no longer selling goods and services-they are staging experiences. It is no longer enough to be merely purchased and consumed, products have to relate to customers in a way that creates brand loyalty and longevity as an expression of the consumers' life.
If "all the world's a stage," then brand managers need to think like playwrights, CEOs need to become producers and brands need to become actors. In their 1999 book, The Experience Economy: Work is Theater and Every Business a Stage, B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore implored us to recognize that products and services must become "theater" for consumers in order to make a meaningful, emotional connection and to avoid commoditization.
Consumer product marketers may think retailers or service providers have an easier job in creating "theater" within a fixed venue. Certainly, retailers may have more opportunities to convey the brand message through multiple touchpoints. Yet, this also requires greater coordination in accurately delivering the brand message across all channels. Everything from the signs on the door, to the front line associate, to the product itself, to the shopping bag, to the displays, must consistently embody the brand message. With consumer goods, the primary touchpoint is the product itself. So, it's the package and the product that must deliver the "performance." The product must project itself into the lives of the consumer in a meaningful way. So, how can a product and package become theater?
The Method method
The foundation of theater is the human-to-human experience and connection. Package design must convey the human experience and "perform it" authentically. Package and product designers should, therefore, think like Method actors embodying the brand identity and personality within the design.
When the great acting theorist Konstantin Stanislavski developed the notion of a "believable truth" for actors (and his Method), he was asserting that theater was only going to be meaningful if it went beyond external representation and into emotional connection. The objective was to create truthful and deeply felt performances that were equally believable and meaningful to the audience. The same holds true for branding.
The believable truth is that which the customer sees, experiences, and remembers. The brand, therefore, needs to connect with the customers' own feelings, memories, and experiences in order to be recognized as genuine and meaningful. In order to accomplish this, a designer must utilize and internalize these memories, feelings, and experiences to create the brand "performance." This performance, or presentation, is how the customer will ultimately experience the product or service.
The journey for the Method actor starts with researching and assembling all external facts about the character before he can then use his own feelings, memories, and experiences to create a complete and believable individual. In branding, a designer must assemble all external and internal facts about both the product and the customer in order to find the common bond that will create the experience and make the emotional connection. Then, using intuitiveness and expertise, create it. For an actor, the character traits are internalized to project the true nature of the character. If these traits are not incorporated into the performance, the actor can only present a one dimensional character-offering nothing to which the audience may connect.
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