The Experience Effect: Engage Your Customers with a Consistent and Memorable Brand Experience - Hardcover

Joseph, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814415547 ISBN 13: 9780814415542

Publisher: AMACOM, 2010

Synopsis

The decision to pay money for a product or service is often based on more than just the product or service itself. Consumers care deeply about the overall experience of the buying process: They respond to the marketing message, the advertising, the sales approach, the website, the interaction with company personnel, and more. When all these elements come together to form a seamless experience, the customer is left with a feeling of satisfaction that ultimately builds loyalty. Jim Joseph calls this ideal combination the “experience effect,” and in this book he shows how any business can create one for its brand. Filled with practical advice and real-life examples.

Whatever the business, whatever the size, The Experience Effect will help companies create a simple yet powerful brand experience that resonates purpose fully, consistently, and continuously with customers.

About this title

About the Author

ANDREW J. SHERMAN is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Jones Day and an internationally recognized authority on the legal and strategic issues of emerging and established companies. He has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, Time, and other publications, and is the author of Raising Capital (978-0-8144-0856-8).

From the Back Cover

There are literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of strategies you could use to market your products or services. But unless those strategies are seamlessly integrated to create a lasting impression and a deep hold on your customer, your brand will never quite rise above the competition, and your business or service never shine like it should.

Whether it’s online, offline, or at the retail level, The Experience Effect shows you how to link your advertising, packaging, website, messaging, and more to create a memorable and immensely appealing experience for customers. Packed with astute assessments of many of the brands that surround us in daily life—Pottery Barn, The Biggest Loser, Keebler, Marriott, and others—this clear, practical book helps you recognize the immense impact of branding and gives you deceptively simple, highly effective strategies for creating a consistent, compelling, and lasting “experience effect.”

Advance Praise for The Experience Effect

“Jim’s sound advice and helpful tools will help any marketer wrestle with the ever-changing developments in the new economic reality. His approach to marketing based on funda­mentals can be applied to any new challenge that pops up.” — From the Foreword by Kevin Roberts, CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide

“I have worked with Jim for years. He was practicing integrated marketing long before anyone was calling it that. The Experience Effect takes his experience and brings integrated marketing to a whole new level.” — Ashley McEvoy, Worldwide President, Johnson & Johnson

“Sharp observations. Perceptive insights. Jim connects the dots to the full brand experience across multiple touchpoints, and leads marketers to understand how best to consistently manage that experience to achieve the brand image and loyalty they desire.” — Sion Boney, former President, Bristol-Myers Products

“Written in a breezy, accessible, down-to-earth style, The Experience Effect is a practical, informative guide to the consumer purchasing process. It’s a must-read for marketers, brand communicators, public relations and advertising practitioners, and students in these fields.” — Mel Ehrlich, Professor of Communications, New York University

“An easy-to-read and entertaining look at the brand experience. Jim uses real-time examples to illustrate easy-to-apply tips for creating a more effective marketing plan.” — Sandy Uridge, Senior Director Consumer Promotion, Kellogg Company

“A rare combination of penetrating insight with common sense.” — Dick Thomas, Founder and CEO, Tris3ct, and former CEO, Arc North America

From the Inside Flap

In marketing, it may not matter how many advertisements or tweets you crank out. It may not even matter how great your product is. Because the truth is that when customers buy, they’re not just buying your product or service—and they’re not responding to a campaign of random marketing methods. What they’re buying is a carefully crafted experience. And in this book, marketing master Jim Joseph lays out a simple, step-by-step plan for creating the kind of deeply satisfying experience that will drive customers to your brand again and again. Your marketing message, advertising, sales approach, website, Facebook presence, logo, packaging—these are the pieces of the puzzle that fit together as a seamless, compelling whole to create a consistent “experience effect.” (Or, all too often, they just don’t come together.)

Consider the meticulously integrated, easy-to-navigate J.Crew branding experience, which links its catalog, website, and stores to create a strong, consistent branding experience that appeals intensely to its target audience. Then contrast that to the eroding Starbucks experience, which can be unpredictable from store to store, leaving longtime loyal customers doubting the brand.

You’ll learn lessons from giants like these, as well as from smaller companies and neighborhood shops, as the author uncovers the elements of effective branding. There’s nothing gimmicky or jargon filled about The Experience Effect. Instead, it presents all the fundamental skills and processes essential for building or improving your brand, whether it’s a restaurant, laundry detergent, boutique, charity, or any other product or service. You’ll learn how to:

• Define your brand with clarity and accuracy, and compare it to similar brands

• Pinpoint and truly understand your target audience by using simple, grassroots-type research techniques

• Ensure your brand is rooted in the lifestyle of your customers, and satisfies their needs, desires, and behaviors

• Activate brand “touchpoints” that engage your customer both rationally and emotionally to generate unique interactions

• Tap into the power of Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other low-cost options to market your brand

• Test your touchpoints to make sure they work and guarantee that the experience effect you’ve created belongs to your brand alone

These are practical, powerful business practices that work time and again. When executed well, their simplicity and elegance are striking, and the experience effect they create so immense that, as the author says, “it can ultimately bring calm and stability to an otherwise oversaturated life.” Create the experience effect for your customers and you’ll forge the strongest, most strategically based consumer connections that a brand can have—the essence of great marketing.

Jim Joseph serves as the President of Cohn & Wolfe North America, the agency’s largest region. With over 25 years of integrated marketing, public relations and branding experience, Jim provides strategic oversight, client service and drives new business across all offices in the U.S., Mexico and Canada. He has created seamless brand experiences for clients such as Kellogg’s, Kraft, Ikea, Cadillac, Tylenol, Johnson & Johnson, Clean & Clear, American Express and WalMart.

Prior to joining Cohn & Wolfe, Jim served as President and Partner of Lippe Taylor, where he led the agency in marketing to women for clients like Nestle and David’s Bridal. Jim re-engineered Publicis’ Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness, where he led the transformation of the agency from a traditional pharmaceutical advertising model to an award-winning, full-spectrum health and wellness marketing agency. Jim also established and grew his own marketing services agency (CPPartners), which sold to Publicis in 2002.

Jim is a daily blogger about marketing and teaches two intensive marketing classes at New York University, the first now in its fourth semester. He is a graduate of Cornell University and also received an MBA from Columbia University. In his spare time, when not working with his team, blogging or spending time with his family, you can find Jim running along the Hudson River with Lady Gaga in ear!

Edition details

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814415547
• ISBN 13: 9780814415542
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240