Combining Brand, Product, and Experience

In the strictest sense of the definition, marketing is the promotion of something, the actual act of engaging with our audience to convince them to buy from us or contract with us. We have countless tools to market to people, the million dollar question (literally) is how we can do that in truly effective fashion. What is particularly interesting to me is what we can learn from the intersection between the various tools that we have. In this piece I will focus on three categories of tools, brand, product, and experience. Like any good data scientist I am a sucker for a Venn diagram, so here I will map these three to illustrate increased effectiveness by exploiting the overlap between them.

Brand is a particularly good starting point because the purpose of a brand is the creation of a unique identity that actually sets you apart from every other offering out there. Especially in a commoditized field, it is often the brand that ultimately drives consumer decision. In other words: The stronger the brand, the more effective the marketing.

Product is of course also key because ultimately if there is not real added value in what you are producing or offering, you will not be able to attract the customers necessary to make your business viable. For the purposes of this exercise, I will focus on physical product to illustrate how to achieve more effective marketing through better staying power. This is fundamental to the Woolston Inventive philosophy, and as noted in countless other places if a product is not relevant it will not make an impression and it will not last .

Experience is another really effective tool. In our economy over the course of the last decade or so there has been a real shift from buying and giving tangible, physical products to providing experience. This has been based partly on concerns about sustainability but more practically on return since, the “stuff” you buy inevitably ends up in a corner somewhere whereas the experiences you have turn into lasting powerful memories. Oftentimes the experience itself is its own marketing, as with theme parks, destination dinners, or trips like cruises. Other effective examples incorporate an experience into the purchase, like with food-related classes (cooking or tasting tours), behind-the-scenes tours (factory tours or candy making), or DIY classes (pottery, painting, crafts, etc.).

Those of us who are serious about leveling up our marketing work in the intersections.

BRAND + PRODUCT = IDENTITY

Brand plus product gives us the opportunity for branded products. Apparel is a perennially popular example because there is always an immediate and obvious use, plus then, the people to whom we give it are literally wearing our identity on their sleeve. With other branded products like keychains or bags, they are carrying something around with them. Alternatively we give them something they will look at or admire frequently, such as an office or home product or a work of art. The key to effectively exploiting brand and product is to offer things that are relevant and therefore sticky. Ideally we want someone to use or wear our branded product so much that their personal identity becomes partly connected to our own. We turn them into a missionary acting on our behalf.

PRODUCT + EXPERIENCE = SOUVENIR

The word souvenir is French for “memory.” Our goal is to offer someone something that will remind them of the experience they had while they were with us and that will therefore remind them quite literally of us and what we offer. It is possible to get away with something less relevant or sticky because there is a positive association that is going to give that souvenir more staying power already. Classic examples include amusement park photos (such as from the middle of a roller coaster ride), postcards, or commemorative coins (like the pressed penny). These are great examples of things that are not particularly useful so they might suffer for having less stickiness, except that they are so closely tied to the amazing experience we had that we are inclined to keep and protect them, to make a place for them in our lives. With an effective souvenir we are essentially extending the experience past the end.

BRAND + EXPERIENCE = PREMIUM

There are plenty of activities we undertake on a regular basis that can be enhanced, sometimes significantly, by branding the experience. You have to eat regularly... If you are going to grab lunch or dinner anyway, come get it at our place where you will have an experience that is a little bit more special while you are at it, even if it is just through the act of taking a moment to spend with someone special at a place you enjoy. If you are going to a movie or a concert or a show you will have plenty of options, but I can offer something through my brand that sets my offering apart so that you are going to want to come to mine. If you have to purchase a tool of some kind (a pen, a hammer, a towel...) it is often by definition a commodity, which means you could purchase any brand at any location, except I can brand my offering such that you will be willing to go just a little out of your way to get it from me.

It is relatively easy to do any one of these, just not particularly effective. This is how we end up with the generic squish ball (product) that will not be kept very long, and that will not last very long even if it does happen to be kept. This is how we end up with cell phone service (brand) that we select almost solely based on price because as long as my cell phone is reliable it does not really matter who the carrier is. this is how we end up with the fast food carousel (experience) where my priority is (first) convenience and (second) food type or quality and therefore I do not have a particularly strong opinion about where I “grab” a bite to eat.

Which leads us back to the most effective kind of marketing, marketing that takes advantage of all three of these pillars. The most effective marketing finds a way to incorporate all three of these into the message, and offer a product through an experience that is not only consistent with the brand but that actually reinforces it.