Brand as experience is indeed a big “thing.” It has been for some time now.
However, we’re not talking about experiential marketing, although that is related as a functional, tactical component. No, this month in the Branding Roundtable we examine experience as the essential definition of what it means to be a brand, and we look at the possibility that this relatively long-standing perspective may soon be superseded by other definitions.
Did you know that brand experience can be assessed by it’s own academically-developed and confirmed scale? (You’ll hear from one of the scale’s creators, a renowned business school professor, in our discussion). And have you heard the rumblings from our too-eager-for-the-next-big-thing industry that experience may now be conceptually outdated? (Try out a recent article from the Harvard Business Review for a taste of that trend in the making.)
To consider how brand is, and isn’t, defined as experience, we reached out to four diverse experts from San Francisco to Düsseldorf, from academia to the highest realms of brand and business consultancy:
- Damian Ferrar, Executive Director of Brand Experience at Interbrand
- Jesko Perrey, Senior Partner & Global Knowledge Leader, McKinsey & Company, Marketing & Sales Practice
- Bernd Schmitt, Professor at Columbia Business School, Director of its Center on Global Brand Leadership and CEO of the EX Group.
- Denise Lee Yohn, consultant, speaker and author of several books on branding, including What Great Brands Do.
You will no doubt disagree with some of what they say — after all, they often disagree with each other — so we encourage you to download this month’s Branding Roundtable. It’ll be quite the experience.