There's No Business That's Not Show Business: Marketing in an Experience Culture
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Smart companies today realize that traditional forms of marketing and communications don't cut it any more. Customers want more than a smiling face accompanied by a catchy slogan and jingle aired on prime-time TV. Instead, customers judge products, brands, and entire organizations based on the experiences that they offer. Companies therefore need to provide experiences, and these experiences must be entertaining, engaging, boundary breaking, and at the same time value creating. Show business delivers such experiences, and in a more cost-effective way than any other form of marketing. As a result, there is no business that can't benefit from show business. But what is the right type of show for your brand? How do you stage and manage a show? How do you instill show business into the organization as a whole? This book shows you how by providing numerous examples of successful show business practices in today's organizations. As you will see, we found most cases outside the frame of traditional marketing and traditional media. Customers are getting quite skeptical and cynical about advertising and other traditional media. In response, many of the newest forms of marketing that we have found echo traditions that predate television. These new forms offer experiences instead of cut-and-dried messages: road shows, jamborees, product play shops, street theater, fairs, and other face-to-face encounters. That's why the old-fashioned term show business makes sense. The old razzle-dazzle experience mixed with up-to-the-minute technology is bringing marketing into the future. By now, the uses of experience by businesses have multiplied beyond theater-like performances at theme parks and restaurants to include buzz marketing, product launches, customer retention, internal communications, and nontraditional advertising. We view these show business experiences as a branding tool and a part of your increasingly diversified marketing mix. These experiences are valuable because they are face-to-face, interactive, help you reach and focus on your most valuable customers, and are capable of creating real loyalty and genuine relationships. They are not just razzle-dazzle, Las Vegas style. They are strategic and value-creating. Our take on the experience aspect of show business is related to two other books (as well as a series of articles) authored by one of us, Bernd Schmitt. Experiential Marketing, published in 1999, provided an integrated marketing approach that moves beyond the functional features and benefits of a product to differentiate a brand. Customer Experience Management, published in 2003, provided a five-step process for connecting with customers through unique brand experiences, customer interfaces, and innovations. As a consultant and CEO of The EX Group, Schmitt has used these frameworks and tools with companies in consumer packaged goods, automobile, electronics, software, financial services, pharmaceuticals, beauty and cosmetics, hospitality, and media industries. In working with these clients and with David L. Rogers and Karen Vrotsos, it became clear that many companies needed not only long-term strategic initiatives to manage customer experiences, but also concepts and tools for how to use creative, fun experiences to engage their customers and their own employees. In this book you find such concepts and tools as well as numerous cases of successful show business projects. In many successful companies show business is alive and kicking, a well-kept secret behind the corporate curtain. This book will open the curtain and let you see the value that show business can offer to your business. Ladies a-a-a-n-n-n-d Gentlemen in Business! Let the show begin! Bernd H. Schmitt, David L. Rogers, Karen Vrotsos />The EX Group, LLC showbiz@exgroup.com />New York City, May 2003
From the Back Cover
Say goodbye to "business as usual"--to succeed today you need show business!
How do you market in today's "experience culture"--as conventional advertising grows increasingly ineffective, and customers grow increasingly independent? Companies and brands from Altoids to Volkswagen have discovered the answer: bring show business into your business!
There's No Business That's Not Show Business demonstrates how to use "show biz" techniques to cut through the clutter, engage your customers personally, differentiate your product or brand--and create real, long--term value.
These techniques can be adapted for any product, service, or market--consumer or B2B. You'll learn how to clearly identify strategic objectives and expected outcomes; target your high--value customers; ensure that "show biz" marketing promotes your core brand message; extend your impact via PR and CRM; and, above all, achieve quantifiable results.
Show biz techniques that cut through market clutter--and delight and engage your customers!
Customers today are more independent than ever, and advertising less effective and more costly every day. There's No Business that's Not Show Business shows how smart companies can use creativity, humor, and play to reach out and engage customers through a new kind of experience. This book provides winning case studies and "show business" techniques that can be used to dazzle customers, launch products, build brands, generate buzz, and build great customer relationships. From road shows to street evangelism to multi--media theater and beyond, it offers a new generation of marketing that can work for every customer in every industry. Most of all, it offers tools to link your "show business" to your brand, to core strategic goals, and to measurable results. Your business can be in show business too--and to reach customers today, it must!
"This book cleverly and insightfully makes explicit a clear (if upsetting to some) trend, i.e. 'all the world's a stage.' As the emphasis has moved from the physical product (or service) to customer experience, how consumers relate to products in their own authored "play" has increasingly become the focus of marketing thought and practice. Using a variety of well--known (e.g. Victoria's Secret, Intel) and less obvious (e.g., the Guggenheim) examples, the book explores the implications of a focus on the show/experience in an entertaining way. Importantly, however, the book also provides a seven--step procedure for moving from identification of a desired image to the quantitative measurement of performance. This raises the book above the level of identifying a phenomenon to the position of suggesting something useful to do about it. The real value of a book is whether it causes the reader to think as well as stay awake. This one succeeds on both counts."
--Don Lehmann, George E. Warren Professor of Business, Columbia University Graduate School of Business
"This will be one of the most important business books you'll ever read! It will convince you you're really in show business and that if you're not, you'd better be. Implement the star--studded findings the authors reveal, and you'll have a huge competitive advantage over your competition. Let the show begin."
--Jason Jennings, worldwide bestselling author of It's Not the Big That Eat the Small--It's the Fast That Eat the Slow and Less Is More
"Bernd Schmitt is unquestionably one of the most creative and original minds in marketing. Well worth the price of admission, his new book with David Rogers and Karen Vrotsos provides sharp, witty insights and engaging case studies that brilliantly illuminate how entertaining experiences can build strong brands."
--Kevin Lane Keller, E.B. Osborn Professor of Marketing, Amos Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College
"Schmitt, Rogers, and Vrotsos demonstrate vividly that there is a New Marketing Mix without which your products won't grab any attention, spark any interest, or build any memorable experience."
--Philip Kotler, Northwestern Kellogg School of Business, and author of Marketing Management, 11th edition
"The authors practice what they preach by presenting a book that is both entertaining and thought--provoking. This book is an important contribution to our deeper understanding of the complex experiences surrounding the consumption of goods and services."
--Gerald Zaltman, Professor, Harvard Business School, and author of How Customers ThinkThere's No Business That's Not Show Business: Marketing in an Experience Culture,Bernd Schmitt,David L. Rogers,Karen Vrotsos,Financial Times Prentice Hall,0130471194,Advertising & Promotion,Brand name products,Business & Economics,Business / Economics / Finance,Business/Economics,Corporate Planning,Corporate image,Customer Service,Customer relations,Management Science,Marketing,Marketing - General,Product Management,Strategic Planning,Business & Economics / Systems & Planning
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