INTERVIEW
In an increasingly
unreal world, consumers are choosing to buy or
not to buy based on how real they perceive an offering to be
at IBM six months later he ended up being engaged as a consultant by Gilmore – who has a background in logistics consulting. By 1996, the pair had formed a partnership and were writing The Experience Economy.
SUPREME THEMING
The pair maintain that theming is still a key part of staging an experience today, but it now has to be much more subtle, even subliminal. As Gilmore says: “What’s lacking in many of today’s environments is an organising principle. The theme is the essence of an experience – and if you have to tell people what it is then it’s not a very sophisticated theme. “Every time Francis Ford Coppola shot a movie he always had a single word he’d refer to – whether it was deciding on what kind of raincoat or wine to use in a scene – he’d go back to that single word, which represented the essence of the fi lm.” To show this perfectly applied in a business setting, Pine and Gilmore use the example of Joie de Vivre Hotels and the company’s founder Chip Conley – who is a past recipient of a Strategic Horizons’ EXPY award. In the late 1980s, Conley bought
a rundown motel called the Phoenix in San Francisco’s Tenderloin dis- trict, and decided to theme it around Rolling Stone magazine. But instead of being an overt homage to what many considered a bible of rock music, Conley went through past
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Hotel Avante is themed around Wired magazine
magazines and extracted fi ve princi- ples that he believed summed up the essence of the publication. Pine says: “They were: adventurous,
hip, funky, irreverent and young-at-heart. Conley thought that if he could cap- ture the sense of the magazine in this way then everyone who loved it would naturally love his hotel. And it worked. Without having to put an oversized rock guitar in the lobby, the Phoenix became the place for rock bands to stay when they played San Francisco.” Conley went on to create other ven-
ues, such as the Hotel Rex, themed around New Yorker magazine, and the Hotel Carlton, themed around National Geographic, and now has a large portfolio of chic boutique hotels, res- taurants and spas around the US. Pine and Gilmore’s formula for cre- ating memorable experiences revolves
around their own THEME acronym: ■ Theme the experience – design
around a dominant organising principle. ■ Harmonise impressions with positive cues – intentionally create memories with signals from the space (set) or
the staff (ensemble). ■ Eliminate negative cues – remove whatever runs counter to the theme or desired impressions.
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■ Mix memorabilia – let guests attach memories to physical objects they
actually use in the experience. ■ Engage all fi ve senses – richly stage all sensory phenomena. Out of these, says Gilmore, eliminat- ing negative cues is the most simple to address and yet is often the most overlooked. “Anything that doesn’t con- tribute to the theme is a negative cue. It might be something as simple as an overfl owing waste paper basket, or a staff member who doesn’t smile.” As a model of good practice, Gilmore cites the example of the John Robert’s chain of hair salons in Ohio, which from its start in the 1990s was focused on creating a very personal guest experience. Gilmore says new customers are
always given a white gown to wear, while regulars are given black ones, enabling staff to tailor their han- dling and greeting of a client without that client ever knowing they’ve been signposted. Similarly, instead of the receptionist having to tell a stylist their next client has arrived within earshot of a current client – potentially creat- ing the negative cue of making them feel rushed – the stylist is buzzed via a device hidden in their pocket.
ISSUE 3 2013 © cybertrek 2013
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