notes and views on crm, social media, and the human side of information technology

Will “Authenticity” be as misunderstood as the “Experience Economy”?

I quite like the term “Experience Economy” as it fits nicely into the “CRM 2.0″ vocabulary - despite the fact it’s 10 years old!

10 years ago, CRM was just another IT acronym that did nothing to help businesses relate to their customers (but did wonders to the IT consulting companies’ bottom line). I find it fascinating that it’s only now that CRM is re-discovering thoughts that have been here for some time.

CRMBuyer.com has an interview with one of the authors of this term, Joe Pine, regarding his new book Authenticity. Excerpt:

Pombriant: Has the market’s reaction to the idea of experiences been what you had hoped for?

Pine: Yes and no. The acceptance amongst certain classes of folks — particularly environmental and interaction designers, developers and marketers — has been terrific, as well as in certain industries, such as hotels, technology, financial, and, surprisingly, healthcare. I’ve had hardly any clients in the retail industry — but a lot of manufacturers that are getting into retail to create place-making experiences in order to generate demand for their goods.

One thing is really bothersome, and that is that so many folks who claim to have read The Experience Economy missed — or act and talk as if they missed — the main thesis: that, as I noted earlier, experiences are a distinct economic offering, as distinct from services as services are from goods. So many glom onto the language of “customer experience” or “experiential marketing” rather than truly design and stage experience output. If that continues, the concept will devolve and become bastardized.

Creating experiences seems to be easier for organizations in the “sexy verticals”. I would argue, though, that it’s the rest of the economy that should be thinking of it, longer and harder. Armani will create compelling experiences simply because it’s a fashion house and does & creates cool things. A paper company has - seemingly - a much tougher job. But is it impossible?

Look at Moo.com, a service that prints your Flickr photos on paper of various sizes and mails it to you. It could be totally boring and uninspired. But it’s not. The whole process, from selecting your pictures to cropping them to submitting your order, has a certain smoothness and elegance to it, plus it works really well.

“Experiental marketing”, heh.

(via Paul Greenberg)

Additional reading

January 11, 2008 | Filed Under CRM 

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