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Product, communication, behaviour, environment
Experience branding is seamlessly connecting all elements a producer uses to let her customers purchase her product. Main point of these elements should be the positioning of the company, extracted by the needs and wants of the target group. Walli Olins, a guru in the global brands and corporate identity field, globally classifies these element in four parts: Products, communication, behaviour and environment. Through these four elements, a brand can be experienced. Activities that can be subdivided under this are: advertising, retail, web, events, publishing, brand community, product and package design and much more. In this short analysis about experience branding (and which part interactive media plays within this), I’ll apprehend the Olins model for brand experience.

Brief history of branding
When at the beginning of the 20th century mass-production became possible through the industrial revolution, the demand for certain products could be largely met. A larger product choice arose. When in the 1930’s and then in WOII arose less demand through frugality, while more and more mass-production was possible, in the fifties, producers began to use the new medium television to bring their brand and associated products to the attention of many potential customers. This traditional way of branding is aimed at distinguishing one product from another on the shelves. What matters here is package, the product and the volume. For this, people are addressed on what they find visually attractive, their instinct and intuition and their emotion. This technique of branding is called indirect messaging, and is more and more used when direct experience of the brand (product) is not possible. Another example of indirect messaging is a sponsorship; a way to let people associate a brand with nice activities.

A successful brand demonstrates who you are
On the current market there’s mostly not only a tangible product to sell, but more and more an emotional one. Often you buy “the brand” because it adds something to your own feeling about yourself. This is a key to a successful brand. That’s also why advertisement goes more and more from informational (”this hairgel contains natural elements”) to transformational (”If you use this hairgel you are extremely cool”). Marketing is also moving more into services (which are more difficult to manage). You see more and more company’s that don’t make or do anything, but where it’s only about attitude.

Interactivity has more impact
While the beginning years of modern branding were about products and communication (Olins brand experience model), with the new way of branding, the behaviour and environment elements are addressed more often. Besides indirect messaging, there is also a branding technique called direct-experience. Direct experience is about using the product or service. This positive or negative experience influences the feeling of the customer towards the brand. Direct experience is much more effective and has much more impact then indirect messaging. This because of an actively participating customer, interacting with the brand and its product.

The use of interactive media
The behaviour element of Olins’ model is about the way for example employees of a certain company interact with you. If the receptionist of a chic hotel doesn’t greet you when you enter the hotel and doesn’t seem very interested in helping when you’re asking for clean towels, the brand experience of the hotel probably isn’t complete. Another way company’s can behave through is via interactive media.

“The interaction a customer has with a website is a very intimate interaction with an organisations brand. When it let’s us down, the brand let’s us down” David Tames, innovationcatalyst.

I just read about the purchase funnel, which describes in general the steps a customer walks through when making a purchase. Pete Lerma (Tribal Fusion) uses the elements of this funnel for what he calls the “brand experience cycle”. The steps a customer walks through in this cycle are awareness, consideration, preference, experience and loyalty. Lerma typifies the use of interactive media with each of these steps differently. According to Lerma, in the experience-step (Which is Purchase in the traditional funnel) interactive media mainly plays the role of “generating excitement and delivering the information a customer needs to make the most of the brand-experience.”

Hmmm… interesting
Jim pointed out that the Olins model is difficult to use it for describing processes. Like for example a process which a company undergoes to anticipate on a changing market. At first I answered that the purpose of this model wasn’t to describe such processes; no matter where the company in such a process is, the elements working together for positioning a product still can be subdivided in product, communication, behaviour and environment. To Jim’s question about where for example “timing” would fall under, I didn’t had a quick answer. At first I would say under product, because the way you experience a product connects with when the product is brought out. But is could also fall under communication: When do you advertise about a certain (renewed) product.

Experience branding was here all the time
I am aware of the general definition of experience branding in the first paragraph of this entry. It describes that companies use the elements of branding in a uniform way to let people experience their product. This way, branding in the fifties could also fall under this. I know that branding has changed through the years from addressing tangible to more emotional needs of the customer, making use of different kind of elements to do this and that there is more participation from the customer through for example the use of interactive media. Right now, the way I interpret the definition of experience branding from my web-research, all of this is no part of the experience branding definition. (Maybe this ís part of direct-experience branding)

There are still so many things to say about this subject. For example, an important thing I haven’t noticed yet, but definitely interesting to evaluate when it comes to experience branding is the increasing role of the customer in branding (participatory culture).
Finally, some examples of brands that use the new way of experience branding (links to articles in which is written about the concerned brand):

Virgin
Disney
Starbucks
Dove
Apple