Experiential Marketing : How to Get Customers to SENSE, FEEL, THINK, ACT, RELATE to Your Company and Brands

Rating:
Summary: Okay pop/practice book, but a bit lacking...
Review: ... in real consumer behavior science. This book serves as something of a followup to "Marketing Aesthetics", and I personally feel that the writing might have lost something with the loss of Simonson as a co-author. You certainly don't need to have read "Marketing Aesthetics" to understand or follow this book, but I would suggest reading it first, and then using this work as more of a 'flavor' piece to supplement it.

This book does do a good job of outlining how taking sensory impressions into account can dramatically impact the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. It also does a wonderful job of outlining how different ads can be aiming for differing goals, and how increasing purchase frequency is not always the bottom line for an ad campaign. Many of the points made in this book are the necessary and insightful extensions of the 'brand image' work that has been taking place over the last 25 years. The need for experiential consistency across promotion, physical space, product, and message is also a very important point well addressed in the book. The points made in the chapters are also throroughly illustrated with specific examples from well-known companies in recent years.

Still, I can't help but wonder if this book could be better served condensed into something of a 20-page abstract. It is filled with personal analogies, thought experiments, and this corny bit where a "MBA student" asks questions at the end of each chapter, essentially setting up a devil's advocate that proves remarkably easy to bowl over. I was also hoping to find many more references to academic research in consumer behavior to back up the claims made in the book, which currently rest upon selected case study, analogy, and common sense evidence. I think giving hard scientific evidence to many of the statements about the effectiveness of experiential / vivid / sense marketing would make this book much, *much* more powerful. Of course, the academic work might be lagging behind the pop marketing work, but it is still a deficit that needs to be addressed.

Still, it reads fast, contains some interesting ideas, and certainly presents a fresh viewpoint. The message of creating a coherent experiential platform for your brand is an important message, and you could do *far* worse in the pop/marketing field.

(as a somewhat personal aside, the pictures of the author in various business 'costumes', combined with what might be a bit of overzealousness in coming up with servicemark-ready acronyms for a number of everyday ideas suggest that perhaps the author takes his position as 'marketing guru' a mite too seriously. Of course, should we really be surprised that an expert on integrated marketing and promotion chooses to strongly brand himself?)

Rating:
Summary: Okay pop/practice book, but a bit lacking...
Review: ... in real consumer behavior science. This book serves as something of a followup to "Marketing Aesthetics", and I personally feel that the writing might have lost something with the loss of Simonson as a co-author. You certainly don't need to have read "Marketing Aesthetics" to understand or follow this book, but I would suggest reading it first, and then using this work as more of a 'flavor' piece to supplement it.

This book does do a good job of outlining how taking sensory impressions into account can dramatically impact the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. It also does a wonderful job of outlining how different ads can be aiming for differing goals, and how increasing purchase frequency is not always the bottom line for an ad campaign. Many of the points made in this book are the necessary and insightful extensions of the 'brand image' work that has been taking place over the last 25 years. The need for experiential consistency across promotion, physical space, product, and message is also a very important point well addressed in the book. The points made in the chapters are also throroughly illustrated with specific examples from well-known companies in recent years.

Still, I can't help but wonder if this book could be better served condensed into something of a 20-page abstract. It is filled with personal analogies, thought experiments, and this corny bit where a "MBA student" asks questions at the end of each chapter, essentially setting up a devil's advocate that proves remarkably easy to bowl over. I was also hoping to find many more references to academic research in consumer behavior to back up the claims made in the book, which currently rest upon selected case study, analogy, and common sense evidence. I think giving hard scientific evidence to many of the statements about the effectiveness of experiential / vivid / sense marketing would make this book much, *much* more powerful. Of course, the academic work might be lagging behind the pop marketing work, but it is still a deficit that needs to be addressed.

Still, it reads fast, contains some interesting ideas, and certainly presents a fresh viewpoint. The message of creating a coherent experiential platform for your brand is an important message, and you could do *far* worse in the pop/marketing field.

(as a somewhat personal aside, the pictures of the author in various business 'costumes', combined with what might be a bit of overzealousness in coming up with servicemark-ready acronyms for a number of everyday ideas suggest that perhaps the author takes his position as 'marketing guru' a mite too seriously. Of course, should we really be surprised that an expert on integrated marketing and promotion chooses to strongly brand himself?)

Rating:
Summary: Another Thick Slice of Brilliance from Schmitt
Review: Anyone who's read Schmitt's auspicious first book, Marketing Aesthetics (with Alex Simonson), already knows that he's the man with the boldest, most relevant ideas in Marketing today. A true polymath, Schmitt continues his deconstruction of standard marketing cliches, which other authors seem not to realize are badly showing their age.

This book takes a holistic approach to Marketing, an approach which is unabashedly consumer-centric. What do products MEAN to consumers? What is it that people experience in the act of consumption? Schmitt answers these questions and more, in supple prose which belies the wealth of concrete recommendations the book contains.

In a world where so much of marketing and business school education is reduced to Excel spreadsheets, Schmitt's take on the sheer anima of Marketing is a breath of fresh air. If you work in Marketing or know anyone who does, this is the book for you

Rating:
Summary: First-Rate: An approach that's really new
Review: Having devoured Schmitt's previous book, Marketing Aesthetics, I had high expectations for the pre-print I saw of this book. They were exceeded. This is the most relevant book Marketing to have appeared in years, brimming with fresh insights and perspectives.

What makes Schmitt's book so unique -- and unique it certainly is -- is the consistent focus on meaning and interaction. Schmitt ingeniously shows how the static concepts permeating business education and practice today are woefully inadequate to the kinds of dynamic brand relationships required to excel in today's crowded consumer and media-centric marketplace.

Two aspects of the book really stand out. First, Schmitt breaks down the process into five parts, which, simplifying to facilitate memorization, he terms Sense, Feel, Think, Act and Relate; each is copiously illustrated with actual case studies, from Nokia to Tommy Hilfiger. Second, the book's clarity and engaging tone never detract from the solid core of research on which the book is based; Schmitt's scholarship not only fails to be marred by his innate sense of putting forth an argument though metaphor, but is substantially enhanced by it.

This is a book for which the term 'groundbreaking' was invented. As Schmitt himself might admonish you, it's something to be experienced.

Rating:
Summary: My Detached Assessment
Review: I didn't actually read this book but stumbled upon its title by accident after having ordered a book on the philosophy of emotions. The title seemed very ominous sounding to me since I get the impression particular industries are intent on commercializing the very experience of consciousness itself, especially among younger people. An interminable title like this one only serves to augment that impression!

Rating:
Summary: "A New Model"
Review: In Marketing Aesthetics, Schmitt & Simonson argue that "most of marketing is limited because of its focus on features and benefits." They then presented what they characterized as "a framework" for managing those experiences. In Experiential Marketing, Schmitt provides a much more detailed exposition of the limitations of traditional features-and-benefits marketing. Moreover, he moves beyond the sensory "framework" into several new dimensions, introducing what he calls "a new model" which will enable marketers to manage "all types of experiences, integrating them into holistic experiences" while "addressing key structural, strategic, and organizational challenges." The key word is "holistic"; the key process is Issues

Epilogue

In his Preface, Schmitt introduces his reader to someone he identifies as "Laura Brown." At the end of each of the 11 chapters, Laura Brown reacts to the material presented. Often, she responds with questions which the reader may be tempted to ask. For products but what if a company is an industrial firm? What if it is a consulting firm or a medical practice? How does experiential marketing come into play for these kinds of companies?" Or at the end of Chapter via a brand? What kind of communities are the 'brand communities'? What about communities of real people?"

Obviously Schmitt is a clever fellow. He includes Laura Brown (who turns out to be a real person) to respond to his material with questions such as these so that, in effect, he can say "I am so glad that you asked me about that!" Of course, he then answers the questions. This interaction is playful, adding humor; it is also a brilliant device by which to expand and enrich the flow of Schmitt's ideas.

They are very important ideas indeed. Simultaneously, Schmitt establishes a rock-solid conceptual infrastructure while examining a number of different companies (eg Nokia, Procter & Gamble, Apple Computer, Volkswagen, Siemens, Martha Stewart Living, and SONY) which demonstrate the fundamental principles of Experiential Marketing. One of the book's most valuable contributions is provided in Part Two as Schmitt focuses on what he calls Strategic Experiential Modules (SEMs), each of which has its own distinct structures and principles which must be understood by each manager. SEMs include sensory experiences (SENSE), affective experiences (FEEL), creative cognitive experiences (THINK), physical experiences and entire lifestyles (ACT), and social-identity experiences (RELATE). Schmitt examines each, explains how to achieve the effective integration of all four.

In the Epilogue, he reveals Laura Brown's identity (no surprise there), suggesting that the experience-oriented organization is a "Dionysian organization and focuses on creativity and innovation...it takes a broad, helicopter view focusing on long-term trends, pays attention to its physical environment, and views its employees as human capital." Indeed, he hastens to add, "the experience-oriented organization is keenly interested in promoting its employees' experiential growth." Schmitt thus offers an alternative to the traditional organization which is oriented toward order, structure, analysis, and short term.

If you read Experiential Marketing and then share my high regard for it, I urge you to read also (if you have not already done so) The Experience Economy and The Entertainment Economy.

Rating:
Summary: Resonating and Relevant
Review: My associate bought this book, read it and gave it to me to review (at the site of my school of ad-vertising and marketing I run a book review section). He was amazed and disappointed. And so was I.

THE NAME - What does the name "EXPERIMENTAL Marketing" suggest to an average practi-tioner of the trade? I've tested it on a dozen of businessmen and students of marketing and they were all unanimous - the name suggests staging experiments in marketing. (This accounted by the way for the decision of my associate to buy the book.) As a matter of interest, the name has been translated into Russian as "empirical" marketing, perhaps because the Russian editors found out that the book has nothing to do with experimentation. By the way, there is another book "Experimental marketing", by E. J. Davis. What's it about?

SUBHEADING (How to Get Customers to SENSE, FEEL, THINK, ACT and RELATE to Your Company and Brands) - Behold, vendors of nuts, bolts, bricks, furniture, hardware, apparel, station-ery, and of millions of other mundane, commoditized products. If your customers can neither sense, nor feel, nor think, nor act, nor "relate," this is a book for you. A minor point of grammar - what's it to "sense to your company," "to feel to your company," etc.?

TRADITIONAL MARKETING - The author arrogantly dismisses the so-called traditional mar-keting: "The history of all hitherto existing marketing is the history of functional features and bene-fits. Advertiser and audience, seller and buyer, strategist and client - in a word, marketer and cus-tomer--stood in constant opposition to one another, a fight that each time ended without any deliv-ery of true value." Really?

According to Prof. Schmitt, traditional marketers, those nitwits, view consumers as rationally think-ing robots. For instance, a buyer of lipstick is allegedly concerned solely with its chemical formula. (We'll have to excuse the marketing ignorance of psychologist Schmitt - he hasn't heard of Revlon's famous motto "In the factory we make cosmetics; in the drugstore we sell hope." )

Schmitt: "Let the traditional marketers tremble at the experiential marketing revolution." If we want to continue in one piece, we should scrap the old-fashioned ideas of meeting a client's needs, how-ever sophisticated and subconscious (see Maslow pyramid), customer satisfaction, "outside-in think-ing" (Trout), partnersell, WIN-WIN, platinum rule, and a host of other time-tested "US-made" marketing wisdoms? We must concentrate on how to entertain a harassed housewife in a supermar-ket - previously she was mostly locating on the shelves her habitual products and mechanically put-ting them into her cart. Now we must expose her to a wide spectrum of "consumer experiences."

RESOLUTIONIST - "We are in the middle of a revolution. A revolution that will render the prin-ciples and models of traditional marketing obsolete. A revolution that will change the face of mar-keting forever. A revolution that will replace traditional feature-and-benefit marketing with experien-tial marketing." A new Marx prophesies: "A spectre is haunting the marketplace - the spectre of ex-periential marketing."

FROG DISSECTION - "Experiences may be dissected into different types, each with their own inherent structures and processes." And so are marketings: the SENSE marketing is not to be con-fused with, say, THINK marketing. I admire that military style thinking - if your drill sergeant (say, Prof. Schmitt) tells you that yours is SENSE marketing, stick to it. And don't THINK or, God for-bid, RELATE - VERBOTEN!!!

In the conformable world of Prof. Schmitt's "strategic experiential modules (SEMs)" everything is clear and convenient, everything has its slot, everything takes care of itself. And... "The customers have nothing to lose but their boredom. They have a world of experiences to win."

Needless to say, that prodigy of revolutionary thinking is being received with much acclaim. However amidst much official appraise one finds on Prof. Schmitt's site his condescending reference to those who are too stupid to be converted: "The old school of marketing makes its retort against Experiential Marketing, Schmitt, and everything he stands for...

I am sorry to say, I found myself rather subscribing to the opinion of those "stone-age marketers" and wondering at the origins of the acclaims.

Rating:
Summary: The Marketing Paradigm for the New Millenium!
Review: This book is definitely an eye-opener for everyone in business of all types. Experiential Marketing is a cutting-edge yet a fundamental approach to marketing, which should be taught in all business schools. Via "experiential marketing," Schmitt presents a revolutionary framework for getting in-touch with one's customers while at the same time differentiating oneself from rest of the competition. I especially liked Chapter 9 where Schmitt lucidly illustrates the "Experiential Hierarchy" concept using Volkswagen Beetle examples. A well-written, easy-to-read format, which makes it a great reading even on planes.

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointed
Review: With a title like Experiential Marketing, I thought the book would practice what it preached. Instead it took an exciting subject and made elementary points dull and uninspiring.