Emotional Experiences Create Memories

Brand experiences that tap into the emotions of our customers have the ability to create memories. Emotional experiences speak to the core of who we are as humans. If you think about this, emotions are a very universal language. You go anywhere in the world if we see someone crying we know that they’re sad. If they’re smiling from ear to ear we know that they are happy. Emotions are the same driver that has many of us chasing after love, happiness, freedom, peace and more.

When brands tap into these positive emotions they create a bond with their customers. Remember when you first saw Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches commercial? Did it make you cry or maybe it was a moment of realization for you? The powerful video had the world talking and till this day it’s probably one of the first commercials that really spoke to us on a humanistic emotional level.

But today’s there’s something happening in our oversaturated hyper-data world, customers are being bombarded with billions of messages which means their emotions are being pulled in many directions. It’s because of this very reason that brands need to be deliberate in designing their experiences. They need to be aware of the type of emotion or emotions they want customers to experience in order to craft the right experience.

In creating experiences there are 2 key questions we must ask at every step of the experience. One is am I saving my customer time and two am I seizing their attention. Your experience design must start precisely the first place you meet your new customer. Maybe you’re meeting them in person, online, social media, through a blog or even an email but wherever you meet them you must start asking those questions.

Here’s how these experiences would look like:

Collectible Experience (Seizing Their Attention)

Think of it as doing it for Instagram. Essentially these are experiences customers can easily snap and post onto social media. A perfect example of this would be Refinery 29’s, 29 Rooms.

The drivers of collectible experiences are:

1. Broken rules of engagement -When brands operate out of the normal parameters. The Beer Dog Brewery opens up a beer-centric hotel in Ohio called The Dog House. It features an interactive beer museum, beer-infused spa treatments, and an in-shower minibar.

2. Status- social media platforms have allowed people to upload live experiences and share it globally where it’s seen by billions.

3. The rise of expert- customers are picking easy and cheap products such as Pandora or Spotify “Music on tap”.

Saving them time

This is an automated experience, it’s seamless and happily forgotten. Financial institutions frequently use this type of experience. In the beginning, customers will love this experience, take it away from them and they become irritated.

The drivers for this kind of experience are:

1. On-demand economy- customer are getting used to instant gratification. That is why brands such as Uber, Netflix, and Amazon are wildly successful, with one click customers can fulfill their needs.

2. Verbal Intelligence- using voice-activated products such as Google Home, Alexa, Siri

3. Cool to be busy- being too busy is a status symbol now. If we go onto Instagram and look up #hustle #workhard #workhardplayhard, you’ll see billions of posts attributed to these hashtags.