Change is inevitable: As an economy matures, ages, and ultimately evolves into something new, adjustments must be made to our business development, marketing, and branding.
Failure to adapt to new realities results in potentially unwanted and dramatic consequences.
We are all aware of how modern economies have developed from those based on agriculture, to those based on industry, and then on information. But where do we stand now? Is the information economy dead? If so, what's replaced it?
We need look no further than Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to see parallels between personal and economic growth in a sophisticated modern economy.
The agrarian economy satisfied the first level of Maslow's hierarchy by fulfilling basic physical needs like food, while the industrial age provided the goods necessary to satisfy a variety of concerns, ranging from safety to social acceptance and status. The information economy provided answers to our cognitive needs, the desire for knowledge.
But things have changed. The Web has disrupted business-as-usual: The effects on the music, film, television, newspaper, book-publishing, and software industries, just to mention a few, have been not just dramatic but traumatic.
The adage "adapt or die" has never been truer for business. So where are we now on the personal and economic pyramid?
Be All You Can Be
At the top of this pyramid is "self-actualization." the desire to make the most of our existence (similar to the US Army's slogan: "Be All You Can Be"). This is the central defining issue of the new economic reality, the Experience Economy.
B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore, authors of The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage, sum up what business needs to focus on in this new economic era: "While commodities are fungible, goods are tangible, services are intangible, experiences are memorable and transformations are effectual. All other economic offerings have no lasting consequence beyond their consumption."
"Experiences are memorable and transformations effectual" should be your new marketing mantra, your marching orders to fulfill what the market demands: to be all you can be.
Experiences Are Memorable, Transformations Effectual
Experiences are memorable and transformations effectual. What does that mean? To effect change—to turn Web site audiences into customers—marketers must deliver something more than commodities that are replaceable for a price, goods that are made irrelevant by technology, and services that are mere conveniences. The businesses that will succeed in this new experience economy are the businesses that will provide an experience and not just goods and services.
We are surrounded by examples of the experience economy, both online and offline. The growth of coffee giant Starbucks was not a result of great coffee but of the experience it provided to patrons; online, iTunes satisfied the ignored needs of music buyers and Amazon did the same for book lovers. Mac computers are finally gaining market share because the experience that consumers have had with iPods has been so satisfying they are now ready to bring that satisfying experience to their desktops.
The key to business survival is not a new feature or even a lower price... but, rather, an experience that satisfies the soul.
Experiences Satisfy the Soul
Traditional business thinking has lagged far behind the sophisticated psychological desires of the experience-economy consumer. Business schools have produced a cadre of bean counters and statistical idiot savants whose grasp of this new experience-driven economic reality has been outpaced by Web-savvy mavericks bent on delivering the essential emotional need of consumers to gain some measure of satisfaction in a hectic, demanding, frustrating world.
The Web is not without its own version of mindless number crunchers, selling the search engine optimization snake oil of Web-traffic nirvana. These new-age carpetbaggers play on the conventional wisdom and comfort food of spreadsheet statistics. Like Texas Hold'em poker, you can play the math or you can play the man, and it's the latter who generally walks away the winner.
The Six-Step Web-Branding Blueprint
The Goal: Transformation Through Self-Actualization
The end result of our efforts is to transform Web site visitors into customers. But to do that, we must first take a step back. The experience economy demands a new way of thinking about your audience and exactly what it is you're selling.
Every marketing decision you make from now on should relate back to one simple priority: what element of self-actualization you deliver. Find that element and build your marketing campaign around it.
Forget price, quality, and service; they are all discounted in the minds of a highly cynical marketplace bugged more than enlightened by heavy-handed old-school marketing presentations and methodologies.
Step one: Understand that your marketing goal is to transform your audience from unsatisfied cynical viewers into satisfied contented clients.
