EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Storytelling Special
The experience business is theatre and an attraction is a stage, which needs actors, a dramatic structure and a reveal. Experience economist Joe Pine explains why time is what you design, and how to build up to the all-important moment
THE W 38
hen Jim Gilmore and I began writing The Experience Economy in the mid-1990s, we needed to determine the unique essence of this newly identifi ed economic offering that
we were calling “experiences”. Initially we used created, but that
wasn’t right. All offerings were created, after all; so what was unique about experiences? What did experiences do for people that no other offering did? The answer came when Gilmore and I hit on the fact that when you’re in the experience business, your work is theatre. It isn’t a metaphor, work as theatre. No, it’s a model: work IS theatre! Whenever you’re in front of your
guests, you’re acting. Whether you know it or not, whether you do it well or not, you’re acting and you must act in a way that engages the audience. Another way of saying it is that you’re
on stage. Stage! Yes, that’s the economic function for this offering: experiences are staged, the bringing together of disparate elements – backgrounds, sets, stories, scripts, costumes, props and so forth – to engage people in a production, and thereby create a memory. Experiences are therefore inherently personal – no two people can have the same experience, for the actual experience resides inside them as their own reaction to the events that are staged in front of them.
B.Joe Pine II
REVEAL
DEPICTING DURATION That also means you can’t really create an instantaneous experience, for experiences take time to unfold. Whereas commodities are stored in bulk, goods are inventoried after production and services are delivered on demand, experiences are revealed over a duration of time. From the customer’s standpoint, time is the key differentiator between a service and an experience. If customers don’t want to spend time with you, then you’re a service probably on its way to being commoditised. But if customers do want to spend time with you, and if they view it as time well spent, then you’re in the experience business.
Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital Almost as important from the
producer’s standpoint is the fi rst word in that phrase: revealed over a duration of time. That means experiences, to be truly engaging and memorable, must have dramatic structure. I don’t just mean the reveal – that big moment at or near the end where guests are surprised, amazed, frightened, shocked, awestruck, thrilled or otherwise astounded. In many attractions – as well as experiences such as movies or the occasional gastronomic event – the reveal is crucial for delighting guests and cementing memories, but it’s crucial that any reveal get a suitable set-up and a fi tting fi nish. Otherwise, you’ll never achieve the right effect from your reveal.
AM 4 2014 ©Cybertrek 2014
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