T H E

D E S I G N
M A N A G E M E N T
I N S T I T U T E

D ESIGN
M ANAGEMENT
J OURNAL
Article Reprint

Experiential
Marketing: A New
Framework for
Design and
Communications
Bernd Schmitt, Ph.D., Professor of Business/Director, Center for
Global Brand Management, Columbia Business School

Copyright Spring 1999 by the Design Management Institute. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission.
To place an order or receive photocopy permission
(617) 338-6380 x223 Tel (617) 338-6570 FAX E-mail: [email protected]

Reprint #99102SCH10

D ESIGN
M ANAGEMENT
JOURNAL
VOL. 10, NO. 2

SPRING 1999

EDITOR 'S NOTES

Design and the Customer Encounter: Looking for the Right Experience(s)

99102WAL06

Thomas Walton, Ph.D., Associate Dean, School of Architecture and Planning,

The Catholic University
KEYNOTE ARTICLE
Experiential Marketing: A New Framework for Design and Communications

99102SCH10

Bernd Schmitt, Ph.D., Professor of Business/Director, Center for Global Brand Management,
Columbia Business School
THE EXECUTIVE PERSPECTIVE
Integrating the Product + Brand Experience

99102MON17

Monty Montague, Design Principal, BOLT

CASE STUDY
Its Not Sugar-Coated, but the Information Goes Down

99102MOR23

Ken Morris, Founder/Chief Executive, Lightbulb Press

Dave Wilder, Creative Director, Lightbulb Press
STRATEGY
Needfinding: The Why and How of Uncovering Peoples Needs

99102PAT37

Dev Patnaik, Founder/Principal, Jump Associates

Robert Becker, Founder/Principal, Jump Associates
Topical Packaging: Trend or Necessity?

99102VIS44

Edwin Visser, Managing Director, Claessens Product Consultants BV

DEVELOPMENT
How to Hit Your Left Thumb: Designing a Better Hammer

99102GRI49

John Grieves, Founding Member, Ergonomi Design Gruppen

Close Encounters with Customers: Designing the NITON XL

99102ROM54

Ethel Romm, Chair, Board of Directors/Co-owner, NITON Corporation

PRODUCTION
Branding in the Networked Economy

99102MOO61

Michael Moon, President, GISTICS Incorporated

MARKETING
Testing Design with Customer Encounters

99102KRI66

Tore Kristensen, Associate Professor of Product Development, Copenhagen Business School

Jonas Sverdrup-Jensen, Researcher, Center for Design and Business Development
SUPPORT
A Designers Guide to Consumer Research

99102YOU71

Scott Young, Vice President, Perception Research Services

E-Sales: Customer-Centered Selling on the Web
Amanda North, President, New Ventures, Calico Technology

99102NOR76

KEYNOTE ARTICLE
....................

Experiential Marketing:
A New Framework for Design
and Communications

N BERND SCHMITTS conception of branding, consumers

buy experiences rather than products or services. Thus, like many
corporate executives, Schmitt asks: How can these experiences
be managed? He articulates five distinct experience modules,
followed by a review of strategies for analyzing the balance among
those modules. Its a holistic view of marketing that integrates a broad
spectrum of design elements to communicate with customers and
influence their loyalty and purchase decisions.

by Bernd Schmitt
Experiential marketing is everywhere. In a variety of industries, companies have moved away from traditional
features-and-benefits marketing toward
creating experiences for their customers.1
Welcome to the Experience
Economy, write B. Joseph Pine II and
James H. Gilmore in their article of the
same title. Using a long-term perspective, these authors have distinguished
four stages in the progression of economic value: commodities, goods,
services, and experiences. They write:
As services, like goods before them,
increasingly become commoditized
think of long-distance telephone services
sold solely on priceexperiences have
emerged as the next step in what we call

10

DESIGN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL

SPRING 1999

the progression of economic value. From now

on, leading-edge companieswhether
they sell to consumers or businesses

BERND SCHMITT
(PH.D., CORNELL
UNIVERSITY) IS
PROFESSOR OF
BUSINESS AND THE
DIRECTOR OF THE

CENTER FOR GLOBAL

BRAND MANAGEMENT
AT

COLUMBIA

BUSINESS SCHOOL, IN
NEW YORK.

1. The term experiential marketing has been

used by a variety of firms (Coca-Cola, Forrester
Research, Gillette, MasterCard, Momentum of
McCann-Erickson, National Mall Network) in
a variety of contexts, including event marketing
and sponsorships, shopping-mall design, online
marketing, and various forms of communications. Moreover, academic researchers have explored the experiential aspects of consumption
(see Morris Holbrook and Elizabeth Hirshmann,
The Experiential Aspects of Consumption:
Consumer Fantasies, Feelings, and Fun,
Journal of Consumer Research, September 1982,
vol. 9, pp. 132-140).

DESIGN MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR THE CUSTOMER ENCOUNTER

EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGN AND COMMUNICATIONS

will find that the next competitive battlefield lies in

staging experiences.2
Unfortunately, traditional marketing and other
business fields offer hardly any guidance for capitalizing on the emerging experiential economy. I use
the term traditional marketing to refer to a canon of
principles, concepts, and methodologies that marketing academicians, practitioners (marketing directors, brand managers, communication managers),
and consultants have amassed throughout this century and, in particular, during the past 30 years.
Traditional marketing presents an engineeringdriven, rational, analytical view of customers,
products, and competition. It was developed in
response to the industrial age. Todays information,
branding, and communications revolution calls
for a different approach.
Traditional marketing has the following four key
characteristics:
1. A focus on functional features and benefits.
Traditional marketersand product designers
assume that customers weigh functional features
in terms of their importance, trade off features
by comparing them, and select the product with
the highest overall utility.
2. Product categories and competition are
narrowly defined. In the world of a traditional
marketer, McDonalds competes against Burger
King and Wendys (and not against Pizza Hut or
Starbucks). Chanel fragrances compete against
Dior fragrances and not against those of
Lancme or LOreal, or any other fragrance offered by a mass-market retailer. For a traditional
marketer, competition occurs primarily within
narrowly defined product categoriesthe battleground of product and brand managers.
3. Customers are viewed as rational decision
makers. Customer decision-making processes
typically are assumed to involve several problemsolving steps: need recognition, information
search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase,
and consumption. As Engel, Blackwell, and
Miniard3 explain, problem solving refers to
thoughtful, reasoned action undertaken to
bring about need satisfaction.
4. Methods and tools are analytical, quantitative, and verbal. These techniques include
regression analyses, positioning maps, and
conjoint analyses based on Likert scales or that
sacred cow of qualitative research, the focus
group (conducted in artificial environments far
removed from the customers natural settings).
But How About Branding?
But, you may ask, didnt the branding approach
change all that? Brand strategists certainly do not
look at products merely in terms of their functional

features and benefits. David Aaker, for instance,

describes brand equity as consisting of assets (and
liabilities) linked to a brand, its name and symbol.4
Unfortunately, most brand theorists have treated
brands as identifiers and signifiers of abstract attributes such as quality. Their equation reads:
Brand = ID. As we will see, this view misses the
very essence of a brand as a rich source of sensory,
affective, and cognitive associations that result in
memorable and rewarding brand experiences:
Brand = EX. Today, customers take functional features, benefits, and product quality as a given. What
they want is products, communications, and marketing campaigns that dazzle their senses, touch
their hearts, and stimulate their minds. They want
products, communications, and campaigns they can
relate to and that they can incorporate into their
lifestyles. They want products, communications,
and marketing campaigns to deliver an experience.
Experiential Marketing: Four Key
Characteristics
Experiential marketing differs from the traditional approach in four important ways (figure 1)
all aimed at a broader, more holistic view
of the consumer.
1. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES

In contrast to traditional marketings narrow focus

on functional features and benefits, experiential
2. B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, Welcome to the
Experience Economy, Harvard Business Review, July/August
1998, pp. 97-105.
3. James Engel, Roger D. Blackwell, and Paul W. Miniard,
Consumer Behavior (Ft. Worth, Tex.: Dryden Press, 1994).
4. David Aaker, Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the Value
of a Brand Name (New York: The Free Press, 1991).

Figure 1

Experiential

Marketing
Customer

experience
Focus
on

Methods are

consumption

eclectic

Customers are
and

rational
emotional animals

The four characteristics of experiential marketing.

DESIGN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL

SPRING 1999

11

DESIGN MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR THE CUSTOMER ENCOUNTER

EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGN AND COMMUNICATIONS

marketing focuses on customer experiences, which

makes for a much wider view. Experiences occur
as a result of encountering, undergoing, or living
through certain situations. As I will demonstrate,
experiences provide sensory, emotional, cognitive,
behavioral, and relational values that replace
functional values.
2. CONSUMPTION AS A HOLISTIC EXPERIENCE

Experiential marketers do not think shampoo,

shaving cream, blow dryer, and perfume. Instead,
they consider the holistic consumption experience
of grooming in the bathroom. They ask what
products fit into this consumption situation, how to
design such products, and how packaging and communications can enhance the experience of using
the products.
Examining the consumption situation and
sketching the fuzzy boundaries of categories and
competition accordingly amounts to a radical shift
in thinking about market opportunitiesa shift that
moves marketing thinking over and up. This
type of thinking, illustrated in figure 2, broadens the
concept of a category (moving over) and examines
the meaning of the specific consumption situation
in its broader sociocultural context (moving up).
For an experiential marketer, McDonalds competes
against any other form of fast food, whether it is a
quick bite or a hang-out. Moreover, experiential

Figure 2

The Socio-Cultural
Consumption Vector

SCCV

(e.g., eating a hamburger

as part of a casual
meal given your
healthy diet)

Healthy lifestyle

V
C
C
S

Socio-cultural
context
(e.g., low fat,
healthy-diet
environment)

Casual meal

Hamburger

Consumption categories
(e.g., going out for a casual meal)

The holistic basis of experiential marketing broadens the concept of a category

(moving over) and examines the meaning of a specific consumption situation in its
broader sociocultural context (moving up). For example, if you are marketing
McDonalds hamburgers, you consider yourself to be competing against all other
forms of fast food, whether they are competing hamburger chains or fried chicken
shops. At the same time, experiential marketing examines the macro picture: How
does your product fit into the cultural bias toward healthy foods? How should
McDonalds be positioned and communicate in this world?
12

DESIGN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL

SPRING 1999

marketing examines the macro picture: What does

it mean to eat a hamburger in a time when nutrition
facts are screaming in your face in the supermarkets
and when Martha Stewart urges you to live a
homey, healthy lifestyle? How should McDonalds
be positioned and communicate in this world? In
sum, we are moving away from thinking about an
isolated product and, instead, following along a
sociocultural consumption vector to arrive at a
broader space of meaning for the customer.
3. CUSTOMER AS RATIONAL AND EMOTIONAL
ANIMAL

To an experiential marketer, customers are emotionally, as well as rationally, driven. That is, although
customers may frequently engage in rational choice,
they are just as frequently driven by emotions, because consumption experiences are often directed
toward the pursuit of fantasies, feelings, and fun.5
Moreover, it is useful to think of customers as
animals, whose physical and mental apparatus for
generating sensations, thoughts, and feelings
evolved by natural selection to solve the problems
faced by their evolutionary ancestors.
4. METHODS AND TOOLS ARE ECLECTIC

In contrast to the analytical, quantitative, and verbal

methodologies of traditional marketing, the methods and tools of an experiential marketer are diverse
and multifaceted. In a word, experiential marketing
is not bound to one methodological ideology; it is
eclectic. Some methods and tools may be highly
analytical and quantitative (such as eye-movement
methodologies for measuring the sensory impact of
communications). Or they may be more intuitive
and qualitative (for example, brain-focusing techniques used for understanding creative thinking).
They may be verbal, taking the traditional format of
a focus group, in-depth interview, or questionnaire.
Or they may be visual. They may occur in an artificial lab environment or in a bar, where consumers
watch TV and drink beer.
A Strategic Framework for
Managing Experiences
This research builds on earlier work done with Alex
Simonson that culminated in our book Marketing
Aesthetics: The Strategic Management of Brands, Identity
and Image (New York: The Free Press, 1997). Marketing Aesthetics, however, focused on sensory experiences only. The current framework is much more
comprehensive and incorporates all types of cus5. Morris Holbrook and Elizabeth C. Hirschman, The
Experiential Aspects of Consumption: Consumer Fantasies,
Feelings, and Fun, Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 9
(September 1982), pp. 132-140.

DESIGN MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR THE CUSTOMER ENCOUNTER

EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGN AND COMMUNICATIONS

Figure 3

at
s

SENSE
FEEL
THINK
RELATE

tit
en
Id

Pr
od

ie

un
m
C
om

S
E
M

Enriching vs. simplifying

Broadening vs. shrinking

SEMs (figure 3) are strategic experiential modules

that managers can use to create different types of
customer experiences for their customers. The term
module has been borrowed from recent research in
cognitive science and the philosophy of mind to refer
to circumscribed functional domains of the mind.
Modules have distinct structures and functions.7 The
experiential modules to be managed in experiential
marketing include sensory experiences (SENSE),
affective experiences (FEEL), creative cognitive experiences (THINK), physical experiences, behaviors,
and lifestyles (ACT), and social-identity experiences
that result from relating to a reference group or culture (RELATE). Each SEM has its own objectives,
internal structure, and principles.

ic

STRATEGIC EXPERIENTIAL MODULES (SEMS)

uc
ts
C
obr
an
di
En
ng
vi
ro
nm
en
W
eb
t
si
te
s
Pe
op
le

ns

ExPro

io

tomer experiences.6 It is marked by two key strategic

concepts: strategic experiential modules (SEMS)
and experience providers (ExPros).

Connecting

Intensifying
vs.
diffusing

Separating

ACT

Strategic experiential modules (SEMs) can be used to create different types of

customer experiences.

SENSE
The SENSE moduleor SENSE marketing
appeals to the senses, with the objective of creating
sensory experiences through sight, sound, touch,
taste, and smell. SENSE marketing may be used to
differentiate companies and products, to motivate
customers, and to add value to products through, for
example, aesthetics or excitement. One of the key
principles of SENSE is cognitive consistency/sensory variety; that is, the ideal SENSE approach
provides an underlying concept that is consistent but
always fresh and new. The long-lasting campaign for
Absolut vodka is a good example of SENSE marketing. The bottle design provides the resting point
and cognitive consistency, yet it can be executed in
continually new designs with sensory appeal.

sections in its Creations stores to its Web site,

Hallmark is all FEEL.

FEEL
FEEL marketing appeals to customers inner feelings,
with the objective of creating affective experiences
that range from mildly positive moods linked to a
brand (for example, for a noninvolving, nondurable
grocery brand or service or industrial product) to
strong emotions of joy and pride (for example, for a
consumer durable, technology, or social marketing
campaign). What is needed to make FEEL marketing
work is a close understanding of stimuli that can
trigger certain emotions. Standard emotional communications lack both because they do not target
feelings during consumption. It is difficult to create
successful FEEL campaigns on an international scale
because both the emotion-inducing stimuli and the
willingness to empathize in a given situation often
differ from culture to culture.
An example of a FEEL marketer is Hallmark.
From the design of its greeting cards and the various

ACT
ACT marketing enriches customers lives by
targeting their physical experiences, showing them
alternate ways of doing things (for example, in
business-to-business and industrial markets), as
well as alternate lifestyles and interactions. Rational
approaches to behavior change (that is, theories of
reasoned actions) are only one of many behavioral
change options. Changes in lifestyles and behaviors
are often motivational, inspirational, and emotional
in nature and frequently involve role models (such
as movie stars or athletes). Nikes Just do it has
become a classic of ACT marketing.

THINK
THINK marketing appeals to the intellect, with the
objective of creating cognitive, problem-solving
experiences that engage customers creatively.
THINK appeals engage customers convergent and
divergent thinking through surprise, intrigue, and
provocation. THINK campaigns are common for
new technology products. A good example is
Microsofts Where Do You Want to Go Today?
campaign. But THINK marketing is not restricted
to high-tech. THINK marketing has also been used
in product design, retailing, and communications in
many other industries.

6. This framework is presented in more detail in my forthcoming book, Experiential Marketing: How to Get Customers to
SENSE, FEEL, THINK, ACT and RELATE to Your Company
and Brands (New York: The Free Press).
7. Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: Norton, 1997).

DESIGN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL

SPRING 1999

13

DESIGN MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR THE CUSTOMER ENCOUNTER

EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGN AND COMMUNICATIONS

RELATE
RELATE marketing contains aspects of SENSE,
FEEL, THINK, and ACT marketing. However,
RELATE marketing expands beyond the
individuals personal, private feelings, thus relating
the individual to something outside his or her
private state.
RELATE campaigns appeal to the individuals
desire for self-improvement (a future ideal self
that he or she wants to relate to). They appeal to the
need to be perceived positively by other individuals
(peers, girl- or boyfriends, spouses, or colleagues).
They relate the person to a broader social system (a
subculture, a country).
Americas Harley-Davidson motorcycle is a
RELATE brand par excellence. Harley is a way of life.
From the bikes themselves to Harley-related merchandise to Harley-Davidson tattoos on the bodies
of enthusiasts (who come from all social groups),
consumers see Harley as a part of their identity. Not
surprisingly, Harley-Davidson users form strong
bonds in the form of brand communities.
SEM OVERLAP

As mentioned earlier, the five types of SEMs all

have their own inherent structures and principles.
SENSE design is aesthetically appealing or exciting;
FEEL design uses emotional symbolism; THINK
design is unusual and surprising; ACT design is
dynamic and action inducing; RELATE design uses
cultural and ethnic associations. Or consider SEMs
in advertising. A SENSE TV
ad campaign typically dazzles
Should the
viewers senses with fastpaced, fast-cut images and
music. It is dynamic and attention getting and may leave
a strong impression after just
15 seconds. FEEL TV ads, in
contrast, are often slice-of-life
ads that take time to draw the
viewer in, building emotion
gradually. THINK campaigns
are often sedate. They begin
with a voiceover, then move
to text on the screen. ACT
campaigns show behavioral
outcomes or lifestyles. RELATE campaigns typically
feature the person or group to which the customer
is supposed to relate.
However, experiential appeals rarely result in only
one type of experience. Modules are circumscribed,
but they are not self-contained structures; instead,
they are connected and interact. Many successful
corporations employ experiential hybrids that
combine two or more SEMS in order to broaden

organization broaden its

experiential appeal from
individual experiences to
experiential hybrids and
holistic experiences, or
should it stick toor focus
onone single experience

14

DESIGN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL

SPRING 1999

experiential appeal. Ideally, marketers should strive

strategically for creating holistically integrated experiences that possess, at the same time, SENSE, FEEL,
THINK, ACT, and RELATE qualities.
THE IMPLEMENTATION TOOLS OF EXPERIENTIAL
MARKETING: EXPROS

The SENSE, FEEL, THINK, ACT, and RELATE

modules are implemented through what I call experience providers (or ExPros), which include communications, visual and verbal identity and signage,
product presence, co-branding, spatial environments,
electronic media, and people. To create the appropriate marketing experience, ExPros must be managed
in three ways: (1) coherently (that is, in an integrated
fashion); (2) consistently over time; and (3) by paying attention to detail and using each ExPro to its
fullest potential for creating the experience.
Strategic Management Issues of
Experiential Marketing
THE EXPERIENTIAL GRID

Figure 4 illustrates the critical strategic issues

intensity, breadth, depth, and linkageof what
I call the experiential grid.
Intensity: Intensifying Versus Diffusing
The intensity issue involves individual grid cells.
Should the specific experience provided in a given
ExPro be experientially enhanced or diffused?
Lets say you are Hallmark Cards, and you are
creating a FEEL experience in your commercial
(you knowthose slice-of-apple-pie, two-minute
commercials showing the brother coming home
almost late for Christmas dinner, just in time to sing
a Christmas carol with his younger brother). The
question is: What is the perfect level of intensity to
get viewers to dab their eyes and feel good about
Hallmarkthe level that avoids overdoing it and
coming across as tacky? This is not an easy balance
to strike. Without the right kind of testing, you can
overshoot your mark or fall far short.
Breadth: Enriching Versus Simplifying
The breadth issue concerns the management across
ExPros. Should the organization enrich a given
experience by adding additional ExPros that provide
the same experience, or simplify the experience by
concentrating it into certain ExPros?
Imagine again that you are Hallmark. Should
your retail stores be experiential FEEL environments in order to enrich the experience, or should
they be more functional selling spaces? Or conversely, should you even drop the FEEL advertising
and use a more simplified approach by relying
solely on the messages and imagery of the cards

DESIGN MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR THE CUSTOMER ENCOUNTER

EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGN AND COMMUNICATIONS

Depth: Broadening Versus Focusing

The depth question is one of management across
SEMs: Should the organization broaden its experiential appeal from individual experiences to experiential
hybrids and holistic experiences, or should it stick
toor focus onone single experience?
For example, as part of its strategic planning,
Hallmark may ask, What is the function and meaning of greeting cards in the electronic age? Does it
still make sense to send greetings via mail? And
what if greeting cards are sent by e-mail, or personally created and stored on Web sites? As these
questions illustrate, in the electronic age Hallmark
may consider broadening its experiential approach
from FEEL to THINK and perhaps even explore
RELATE and ACT. In fact, the company has capitalized on these opportunities by inaugurating one
of the most exciting and thought-provoking sites on
the World Wide Web (www.hallmark.com).
Linkage: Connecting Versus Separating
This issue involves the interrelations among SEMs,
as well as ExPros. It is often not enough merely to
add SEMs. SEMs need to be connected with one
another. In some cases, however, it may be beneficial to separate experiences that have become too
broad and thus run the risk of being meaningless.
Should Hallmark create linkages and connections between its traditional FEEL approach and its
new THINK approach by, for example, adding
multimedia to its physical greeting cards? Or should
electronic greeting cards and printed ones be run as
separate businesses?
Successfully managing these issues requires
making a commitment to an experiential approach
to marketing. Most companies, having practiced
features-and-benefits marketing for many years,
initially generate impoverished experiential marketing strategies. They use an approach that is too
diffused and simplified, focusing on one type of
experience only or using multiple, yet unconnected,
ones. For them, the strategic task clearly requires
intensifying and enriching current experiences,
adding new types of experiences, and connecting
them with each other gradually. As a result, major

Figure 4

Holistic
Experiences

.
..
SENSE.
.
FEEL.
THINK.
ACT.

..
..
.

themselves? Hallmark has obviously chosen the

former; it has made its Creation shops the epitome
of FEEL by emphasizing a warm and welcoming
atmosphere. There are quiet spaces for selecting
cards (rather than rows and rows of card displays),
comfortable writing surfaces with child-sized tables
and chairs and boxes of crayons available, and
themed displays (Kids Party, for example, or Adult
Birthday). Shoppers are welcome to sit down and
have a cup of coffee while they plan a party or select
a Mothers Day gift.

RELATE

Intensity, breadth, depth, and linkage are critical strategic issues that must be
considered for each SEM.
investments in experiential marketing are needed,
because the strategy approach often calls for a
stepwise review and revision of all ExPros and
the addition of experiential elements into communications hitherto used for features-and-benefits
marketing. It also requires the presence of certain
organizational structures and processes, which we
will discuss next.
CORPORATE BRANDING AND SUB-BRANDING

Here we consider corporate/brand architecture as it

is projected to customers (suppliers, business customers, or consumers). Typically, a company that
has very high corporate visibility (for example, Ford
or Sony) should create an experiential identity for
itself. But it must also create experiential identities
for its brands and products, and these should not
clash with the corporate identity. A corporation that
has created strong stand-alone brand identities
(such as General Motors or Procter & Gamble) may
forgo experiential branding because it has less visibility as a corporation. But it still needs to manage the
experiential identities of its products and brands
very closely.
NEW PRODUCTS, BRAND EXTENSIONS, AND
PARTNERSHIP STRATEGIES

In traditional marketing, the goal of new product

development is often the addition of new features
and benefits that will improve old products or old
technologies. Traditional marketing models view
brand extensions in terms of the fit between product categories and the transfer of positive equity
from the current brand to the extension product.
In contrast, the experiential marketing approach
views new product and brand extension decisions as
driven by three factors: (1) the degree to which the

DESIGN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL

SPRING 1999

15

DESIGN MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR THE CUSTOMER ENCOUNTER

EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGN AND COMMUNICATIONS

new product and extension category enhances the

experiential image of the company or brand; (2) the
degree to which new products and brand extensions
add new experiences that can be leveraged in additional
new products and further brand extensions; and
(3) the degree to which they help in the creation of
holistic experiences.
Similar considerations will also drive the selection of other companies for strategic partnerships.
Such experiential considerations may have been
behind the decision of Swatch and Daimler-Benz to
form a joint venture to manufacture a new cara
decision that puzzled many industry experts. And
the resulting productthe
Smart caris an automotive
Traditional
offering that is experiential
from beginning to end. The
Smart reflects the best of both
of its parents worlds. Its appeal derives from its design,
which couples attention to
safety with a customizable
fashion look. The Smart car is
a mini, designed to fit in any
parking space in any city in
the world; its thought-provoking slogan is reduce to
the max. The Smart is conceived as a completely new
productan innovative solution to the problems of
city driving. Despite its size, safety is a central design
concern for the Smart, and it is passing rigorous
safety tests implemented by Daimler-Benz. The
Smart is also fun. Its distinctive looktiny, somewhat triangular, and modernsets it apart from all
others; this car looks like nothing so much as a
sneaker! Its distinctive two-tone color scheme is
customizable to consumer specifications, and its
interior design is marked by modular parts, which
make it possible to stylize the car quickly and
cheaply. In fact, the Smart represents the realization
of a car as a safe and well-designed fashion accessory.

marketing has
provided a valuable
set of strategies,
implementation tools,
and methodologies for
the industrial age

16

DESIGN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL

SPRING 1999

GLOBAL EXPERIENTIAL BRANDING

Experiential branding extended into the global arena

raises a range of complex issues, including:
Are there cultural differences in preferences for
types of SEMs? For example, do customers in
one nation prefer FEEL, in a second nation
THINK, and in a third one RELATE?
How about specific experiences? For example,
are certain nations more attuned to aesthetics in
SENSE, while others love excitement? Or do
some like nationalistic RELATE appeals, but
others global appeals?
Do different ExPro executions appeal to customers in different countries?
Conclusion
Traditional marketing has provided a valuable set
of strategies, implementation tools, and methodologies for the industrial age. Now that we have
entered a new era, it is necessary to move from the
features-and-benefits approach toward marketing
to customer experiences. Managers need to consider new concepts, new approaches, and new
structures and processes within their organizations
to capitalize on the opportunities offered by experi(Reprint #99102SCH10)
ential marketing. l
Suggested Readings
Elliott, Stuart, Clinique Is Introducing Scent in
Bid for Share of Premium Market. The New York
Times, September 30, 1997, Section D, p. 6.
Kotler, Philip, Marketing Management (eighth ed.).
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1994.
Peters, Tom, The Circle of Innovation: You Cant Shrink
Your Way to Greatness. New York: Knopf, 1999.
Porter, Michael, Competitive Strategy: Techniques
for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. New York:
The Free Press, 1985.