The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unlocking the Power of Experiential Marketing with Pauline Oudin CEO and Partner of Gradient Experience

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Unlocking the Power of Experiential Marketing with Pauline Oudin CEO and Partner of Gradient Experience Gradientexperience.com About the Guest(s): Pauline Oudin is the CEO and Partner of Gradient Experience, an experiential marketing agency that emphasizes elevating human connections to drive results. Throughout her career, Pauline has consistently delivered measurable successes for high-profile brands including Cartier, Beam Suntory, and the L'Oreal Group. A French native with over 30 years spent across the US and UK, she is celebrated for her innovative and creative approach to marketing by Fast Company. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss dives into the dynamic world of experiential marketing with his guest, Pauline Oudin. As the CEO and Partner of Gradient Experience, Pauline shares her expert insights on how transforming human interactions can powerfully elevate brand results. They explore the nuances of experiential marketing, distinguishing it from traditional marketing and discussing its long-term impact on consumer loyalty and brand recognition. Pauline illustrates the value of creating memorable experiences over passive advertising. Through detailed examples from high-profile clients such as Cartier and Beam Suntory, she explains how brands can foster emotional connections and enhance consumer engagement. Additionally, the conversation touches on the innovations in measurability within the field, demonstrating how modern tools can track the effectiveness of these interactive campaigns. Pauline emphasizes the importance of integrated, participatory, and community-building approaches in making these experiences truly impactful. Key Takeaways: Experiential Marketing Defined: Unlike traditional advertising, experiential marketing involves creating interactive and participatory experiences that foster emotional connections and brand loyalty. Measurability Innovations: New AI tools and technologies are enhancing the ability to measure the long-term impact of experiential marketing, providing deeper insights into customer engagement and ROI. Case Studies: Examples from major brands like Cartier and Beam Suntory highlight how well-executed experiential marketing campaigns can create lasting impressions and build community. Pandemic Adaptations: The episode discusses how brands adapted their strategies during the pandemic, emphasizing the continued need for live, interactive content. Priceless Brand Connections: Pauline underscores the importance of prioritizing long-term customer relationships and brand integrity over short-term sales tactics. Notable Quotes: “When you think about most marketing, brands tell you a story…experiential marketing is all about living the story.” - Pauline Oudin “Hearts move minds. We like to believe we are logical when we purchase products, but at the end of the day, it’s all about emotional connections.” - Pauline Oudin “In experiential marketing, it’s not just about who was affected on the day of the event, but the ripples that experience creates.” - Pauline Oudin “We live in such an exciting time with AI tools allowing us to measure things we couldn’t before.” - Pauline Oudin “If you turn off your social media ads and your TV spots, what's left is what you've built in brand equity.” - Pauline Oudin

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, when the Iron Lady sings it, that makes it official. Welcome to the big show.

We certainly appreciate you guys. As always, for 16 years and over 2,000 episodes, we've been bringing the Chris Voss Show with all the smartest people, the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, all those sort of great stuff. In fact, there was a presidential debate last night. I believe we had Susan Page. We had one of the great journalists, I think a year or two ago, on the show who was one of the presidential interviewees or interviewers. We've actually had presidential people running for the presidency of the United States on the show here.

Anyway, I'm just sadly plugging the show outrageously at this point. You want to just give a list of everybody on the show, Chris, as a guest? No, we don't have time for that. Anyway, go to go to reese.com for us. That's Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com for us. That's Chris Voss. Chris Voss won on the TikTokity,

and I can't help the Chris Voss ramble. It's improbable to be in every show, people. Get over it. Pauline Udan joins us on the show today. We're going to be talking to her about her amazing career, what she's built with her company, and all the good and great things in between. She's going to inspire you, motivate you, and tell you how to live your life better,

or something along those lines. I'm just basically selling her down the road with probably a whole lot of expectations. I didn't come with this much data, Chris. Maybe she did. She seems very smart. Pauline is the CEO and partner of Gradient Experience. It's an experiential marketing agency that powers results by elevating human connections. She has consistently delivered powerful, measurable results for brands, including Cartier, Beam,

Suntory, and L'Oreal Group, among others. She's a French native who's lived in the u.s and the uk for a combined 30 years she brings a truly global perspective see i told you she's smart and knows a lot to her clients and teams she was lauded by fast companies as innovative and creative as they come welcome the show pauline how are you i'm doing great chris how are you i am doing excellent as well i just kind of we're kind of doing a random ramble today where I'm just kind of rambling. Give us your dot coms. Give us your dot coms so people can find you on the interwebs.

So you can find me obviously on LinkedIn. I have an original name, so it shouldn't be too hard to find me, Pauline Oudin. And then do follow us on Instagram at gradient experience. So give us a 30,000 overview, what you guys do there in your words. So I'm sure you've all had the experience of experiential marketing, even though you may not know the name, but think of any interaction that you've had with a brand where truly you just felt what the brand was about.

It could be a pop-up. It could be a conference where the brand really comes to life. So any interaction where instead of a brand just telling you its message and instead a brand helping you live the message, the story that they're trying to put across, that's experiential marketing. And that's what we do for our clients. And so how is that different than say, you know, normal marketing or various other ways of marketing? Yeah. So really when you think about most marketing, advertising, direct marketing, brands tell you a story, right? It's all about storytelling. And so from a consumer

perspective, it's quite passive. I just take in what I'm being told, and I can probably tune it out, which is what most of us do, and ignore it. Whereas when there is an experience that you're living through, it's extremely participatory. You're part of it. You're experiencing it with other people. And that is going to create an emotional connection between the person that's experiencing it in the brand. And that's going to create a connection with the brand. You're probably going to talk about it with other people, therefore generating word of mouth. And as we all know, but I can give you the stat that it's almost 90% of people trust recommendations from their friends and family over an ad they receive.

So you're going to be impacting the people that are there and others. And then there's an extra layer because of course, social media massively transformed this game. When you create content from an experience where you see people truly interacting with the brand and feeling whatever feeling the brand decided was key for them, wonder, surprise, surprise fear we had that one for for one of our experiences um then when you are showing a truly authentic interaction between a consumer and a and a brand and that gets pushed out onto social media then it starts feeling like a brand that's for me so what's an example of a of a marketing event or a campaign that people can kind of get the feel of how this looks or operates yeah in a gradient we have quite a few industries that we're known for spirits and beauty are probably are two strongest as is luxury but i'm going to stay away

from luxury because as soon as i give an example of cartier everybody's yeah but it's cartier they have so much budget so fair okay i'll stay away from those but it's fine i mean i mean why do we know well let's decide okay so let's let's start with suntory and you didn't know the name but I can guarantee you know the products behind. So think of Basil Hayden's. Think of Maker's Mark bourbons. So all of those, you recognize them, you know them. And why do you choose one bourbon over another? Usually it might be because a bartender recommended it.

But how did the bartender interact with the brand, you're going to have quite a few possible interactions with a bartender that will create a moment where you're going to make them a fan of the brand. And from there, they about the going to a bar and having a really fun game that brings to life the brand where you have a dartboard. And if you manage to interact to hit the center, then you get a free drink or you get the sparklers that come out. So that can be on premise. Very low investment per interaction, but hugely important for the brand because it's at point of purchase. But then let's think about all of the big music festivals where I'm sure a lot of your listeners go to in the summers, you're going to have huge interactions in those festivals where brands come to life in a really smart way. One of the very smart interactions

that we saw was a shampoo brand that during music festivals, multi-day music festivals, offered shampoos for anyone that was at the hair care service at any for anyone that was at the festival you just created a point where i get to actually try your product and you've created a moment for me where i'm loving your product because i actually really needed it because it's been three days since i was last able to shower. And now I fall in love with your brand. I'm going to create content for your brand. I'm going to post it because I'm so excited about what just happened. And all of that is a moment for the brand to come out of the supermarket aisle and truly

create an interaction with a consumer in a way that's powerful. And probably builds loyalty in a way or some sort of loyalty. Loyalty and even fandom. So if you think about it, when can you actually say, oh yeah, I'm a fan of that shampoo product. You're like, yeah, it's the one that's on my shelf. But if you create a moment that, that truly to me, where I feel like you were at the place that matters to me, you created an experience that mattered to me, you spoke to me, I now feel seen, heard, and I'm now going to associate that positive interaction with your brand. And I'm going to talk about it. You've just made me a fan. And at a moment where I'm sure most business people will recognize this

at a moment where media is so fragmented and usually quite ignored, it has become extremely hard to target audiences in a way that's effective. I mean, unless you've got Super Bowl budgets, it becomes very hard to target on TV. Magazines are all but dead. So social media can certainly be a great way to reach your existing audiences, but you still need a way to reach new audiences and then to create a moment that's strong enough for them to notice you. Association. So making that mental association with the brand, building an experience. So you're just not looking at it on the shelf going, what does Bob Brands do? So a good example of this might be, you mentioned the summer things that people go to events and stuff. South by Southwest probably has maybe more of these sort

of experiential marketing things than probably anybody. But when you say that some of those things that you see at South by Southwest, usually they take over a building or they have some sort of event or usually they have some sort of building they take over and you walk through the building and have the experience and they have whatever going on. Is that a good example of experiential marketing then? That is a very good example. South by Southwest, Comic-Con, Beauty-Con, Art Basel, where our beauty and luxury clients are always present, Tales of the Cocktails for the spirits industry. All of those are key moments where a lot of people all come in one place and you have an opportunity to really create a reason for them to notice you and to fall in love with you.

Yeah. And the experience is, you know, we've covered South by Southwest for years and gone there and done different events. And of course, we've wandered through all the different setups and stuff. And it is much different when brands compete in this way than just you know yelling at you on ads on social media and i think is it is there an effective measurement as to how more effective an experiential marketing setup is comparatively to just you know yelling at people on facebook with facebook ads you know one of the problems i have with Facebook ads and other ads is I'll be interested in something and then I'll buy a product.

So I don't know, I'll buy a vacuum. Let's just say we did buy a vacuum. But the problem I have is for two to three weeks, I'll still see ads that are wasted and ad money wasted of people still trying to sell me a vacuum. And I'm like, I already bought the vacuum. So is there some stats behind this that maybe, I don't know, you can throw at us real quick? So it's the measurability

of experiential marketing is actually the element that most marketers say they struggle with the most. We have about 54% of all senior marketers that say that it's one of their top three concerns. And one of the fascinating things, and you'll see this actually in the white paper that we're going to be sharing very shortly, is that they usually use these available on the day of stats to track what should be a business investment. And so I'll give

you an example, but usually they will say that the attendance on the day of is one of the lowest priorities, and yet it's one of the only metrics that they use to track. And so the interesting thing here is that budgets and experiential marketing have been increasing year over year for the past three years. We have 80% of senior marketers based on a recent survey that we did that tell us that their experiential marketing budgets have and will continue to increase. So it's not a small chomp change kind of effort that they're looking at, because it is the way to reach especially newer audiences. And yet they're still treating it as a end of the campaign planning effort. Yeah, we'll think about that, you know, a couple of days before

we go live. But the reality is, when it becomes such an important part of your budget, you need to treat it with the same discipline that you would any other effort, and you need to track it with the same discipline that you would any other effort. And so we've actually been investing a lot in measurability. We've created a new tool called Quant and the amount of data that you can actually get from onsite. And then when you tie in with retail and with social media is really impressive, but you don't do it after the fact. You actually need to make it part of your marketing effort. And probably combine it with a few other maybe marketing pieces, maybe to like social media to get it out there. Absolutely.

And that's exactly. And it's all because the important thing is that it's not just who was affected on that day of, it's the ripples that you're creating from it. So yes, you impacted the people that were there, but how much content did they generate from it? How much UGC was created? How far did that go? How much earned media essentially did you get from this? And then of course, if you do have smart tools to measure, you can actually see the lifetime value of a new customer. So for example, for some of our more refined clients like L'Oreal, they have very clear models of attribution and of lifetime value for a customer. And so we will look at how many followers did they gain pre and post experience.

We look at that a month after, three months afterwards, and that can be directly attributed to the experience and that has a value that goes significantly beyond how many people walked through the door but in the same way we have this this pretty exciting tool that allows us to track not individuals but phones and really chris do you know anyone that today still walks around without a phone i mean other than maybe like our old parents and even then so if there is a phone there is a ping to any kind of mobile device that's nearby therefore we can know how many mobile devices came in, how many came back, how many walked by, and how long did they stay in front of the experience before leaving. That's still an interaction, right? If you think about the fact that an out-of-home, a billboard, it tells you that they've got like

X number of people that see it every day just because people drive by it while they're ignoring it. If that's an impression, certainly the people that walk by an experience where you've got the whole setup, they see the brand, they see the people in line. That's certainly a worthy impression. So all of that we can track just because today we have the technology to be

able to at least track how many phones came in, out, and around. So I've seen the lines, you know, South by Southwest usually has lines at experiential events. And it's amazing because, you know, any other day, you know, if I stood as a carnival barker at a local grocery store and like, how do people want to hear about Coke? You know, people would be like, what is going on there? That guy's weird, which is probably true. But I'll see you at South by Southwest or other events, concerts, things like that.

I think Coachella probably is another good example of that. Yes. I mean, geez, they put on some experience. Experience in marketing. I don't know if anybody does that at Burning Man. I don't think there's really any marketing at Burning Man. No, I think the whole point of Burning Man is that it's supposed to be anti-commercialism. So I think it would probably be very frowned upon.

But I can tell you that. I think dust is the main product there. Yes. They sell dust. And even water isn't sold. It's supposed to be freely given. Oh, is it really? But that being said, I can tell you that in most experiential agencies like ours and like our competitors, that week of Burning Man, it's like dust balls in the office.

Like no one's here. Everybody's over there because it is the same sort of experience that you're seeking, but you're taking inspiration. A lot of our creatives take inspiration from sort of what is lived there and then think about how to apply it into a world of marketing. Yeah. I mean, I just watched all my friends do Burning Man. That's what's kind of on the edge of my head. Now they're posting all their pictures. But I think Dust and Trench Foot is the two main marketing products they sell there at Burning Man.

I tease my Burning Man folks. But yeah, it's a great experience that people love to do. Now, one thing you mentioned that perked my ears was you mentioned lifetime tracking. I think it was their lifetime measuring of the customer in how they interact. You know, years ago, decades ago, actually, decades ago, 2000 to 2006, I used to go to Sundance every year. And we owned an acting agency. And so we'd get invited by, you know, Hollywood to go up there. And there was a lot of shows going on in Utah at the time, Touched by an Angel and stuff.

So we were always invited to all the cool parties. And even as I sit here today and think about the Sundance Film Festival that we always go to every year, there was a, decades ago, there was a house called the Chevy House or the GM House, but I'm pretty sure it was the Chevy House.

And they would throw the best parties. And so to this day, I still am recognizing the brand when I think about that. And it's been decades later. There's probably experiences I've had with products. Maybe you're drinking a Coke and you fall in love over dinner or something. I don't know. There's different ways that people go through that. But a lot of people today in customer service don't measure that sort of lifetime exposure of what brings people back you know on the chris faust show we've got videos now they're almost 20 years old that people are still watching and going through and having an experience there and asking questions commenting

it really strikes me because i'm like you guys are still talking about the iphone 5 who's doing that any of your thoughts on that and and the importance of measuring that? Because a lot of companies, I think, they're just like, hey, how did we do in the first week? Okay, then cool. Then it's a success. And you're like, not really. You need to measure longer than that. That's long-term.

We've seen with the Chris Voss Show, the products we reviewed over the years. We used to do a lot of review products before COVID. We've just seen a super long tail you know there's people that come up to me this day that on something i recommended 10 15 years ago and they'll be like hey remember that time you reviewed that thing i'm like no and they're like yeah yeah i just bought one and i'm just like wow you bought it off of a 15 year old video that video that we did? Yeah. I mean, it's really hard. And a lot of that, I think, has been forced in by the perceived immediacy of a lot of the digital marketing, Facebook, Google, right? You just, you sort of like pour money into it and it plops up on your dashboard that they control, by the way. It plops up on your dashboard

that you're getting all of these impressions and you're getting all of these results. And obviously that feels so immediate and comfortable that by all means, let me cut all of this branding effort that I don't know if it's actually doing anything for me. I'll just take it. I'll plop it over there because then I can show such solid numbers to my CFO or to my board that my job is going to be more secure. It's just an easier if A then B. But the brand, the strength of a brand is so important that if you keep pushing things away in the short term, you're diluting what makes you truly you as a brand. And I'll go back to Starbucks that used to be known for its third place. They invested so much in what was the third place. That was what

made them different. And then they started investing with the new CEO. They started investing in only short term results. So it was the drive through and it was online orders and you need to stay, you know, ahead of the times. I get it. But Howard Schultz, you know, who's no longer the CEO, he came back out and he did what normally chairperson is not supposed to do, but he actually wrote a letter that he published and said, we are losing our way because we need as a brand to think about the experience, not the transaction. And he actually used the term, we can't be transactional. We have to be experiential. And so the interesting thing with experiential is that it's now really bleeding into retail and the retail experience because people aren't going to go into a store and for just a transaction, unless I need to go there to return something. I'm going to go there if there's a reason for me to interact with your brand if you're creating an experience for me and that kind of thinking is the thinking that requires investment and that requires long-term

planning and not just what results can i get next week by pouring something in here that shows up in a dashboard which is just a bunch of sugar and starbucks drinks i don't know it's a sugar company really i saw something interesting on a podcast recently some vcs from silicon valley i'll reference it because i can't come up with the name off the top of my head but but they but they basically broke down how it's a sugar company which probably adds to the experience when you go there you're like on a sugar high but you're're right. I'm throwing shame at Starbucks now. They're a good company. But no, you're right.

It is about the experience. You know, one of the things that's stuck out of my mind, I've had a lot of customer service experiences like a lot of people. But I've really begun to resent. There might be a deep resentment. There might be an issue I need to see therapists on about going to Walmart as they proliferated these check-in, self-check-in services. And the message that's almost been sent to me as a consumer is, fuck you, bag your own groceries and do your own thing. We're not going to bother with it. Why don't you just become an employee for a company and just scan your own groceries and bag them?

And I really don't like it because number one i don't i don't need to learn how to be what i don't need more jobs and so normally i'll go in and ask for the ask for a cashier and if you ask for one they'll they'll reluctantly drag one out and when i say reluctantly they act like you've asked them to move a mountain and I remember recently I went in I had to go in I reached the point where I just pay for delivery now because I just I just cannot go into the stores that's how much they've scarred me and I think a lot of people are that way but maybe they're maybe they're maybe maybe I'm beholden to a marketing campaign that's trying to get me a sign up for the

delivery and I've and I haven't realized the shell game I just got played on but Maybe I'm beholden to a marketing campaign that's trying to get me to sign up for the delivery. And I haven't realized the shell game I just got played on. But I went in and I was very angry because they were being resentful about pulling out a cashier for me. And the cashier came up and the cashier was nice, super friendly, energetic. Hey, Chris, how you doing? Not doing well. I really don't like you guys' check-in experience, I told him. And he goes, yeah, man, I know.

Some people tell me about it. And he, in just a few seconds of being positive, and said, you know, I don't like it either, but, you know, we got to do what we got to do. So let's have some fun. How was your day? How was your week? You know, the guy was, like, super friendly.

He totally changed my, you know, crappy attitude I was having and totally changed my experience. And I walked away going, eh, Walmart isn't that bad, I guess. And just that little experience that had nothing to do with whatever the supplies were in my groceries, you know, like you mentioned with Starbucks, the products themselves, the experience was the thing that I remember. And I still remember this day. It's been months since that happened. And it's combined with my perception of Walmart and people just don't realize how much that

makes a difference. You know, I think, I think if you create an, and people buy off emotion, right? So if you mess up by making their emotional experience awful that's locked into their memory you know i think i think especially with women who control pretty much most of the money and spending in this country emotion is a big deal to them it's a core value for for them because they operate on emotion And so if you create bad emotions for women, they're going to anchor that inside them. And when they see your brand, you know,

they'll be like, hey, I had a bad experience there. I'm not going there. And that's probably for a lifetime. It is so expensive to lose a client. And all you need is one bad experience. But, but that being said, it's, you know, what you just mentioned really struck a chord. One of the things that we often say here is that hearts move minds. We like to believe that we are logical and thoughtful when we purchase specific products. And yes, we do our research and all that. But at the end of the day,

you buy this toilet paper because you have some sort of like affinity for it, right? Like you didn't do your market research of the cost per ply and, you know, the resourcing of the paper. There's, you know, there's shortcuts that we all take. And that one's got a teddy bear on it. And teddy bears are soft. So I'll just grab the one with the teddy bear. And it creates, you know, a connection. But then there's something else that you just mentioned, sort of like that difficulty that they're creating by trying to create a different system. I'll give you one example that just blew my mind.

Have you been to a Uniqlo store? No. I'm not sure if we have them here locally. So next time you're in a, you know, like a major metropolis, New York, San Francisco, et cetera, it's a Japanese store that sells clothing, but a lot of like quality basics. So if you need like a new battery of like white, gray, black t-shirts, it's sort of like a great, great go-to but what was amazing is you take all of your clothing like that you have in this big bag you plop it on a cash register and that the system scans everything itself and so everything everything shows up. And now next time I want to buy a black T-shirt, I just want to go back because it's just such a cool experience.

So it's all a question of like, how can you use innovation to create a moment of wonder so that now my experience is memorable and I'm on a podcast. These are not my clients. And yet I found the experience so cool that I'm telling you about it. And you'll tell people for years. I mean, we learned this years ago with decades ago with Tom Peters in Search for Excellence, I think it was. No, I don't have to remember. It's a Tom Peters book that kind of launched the customer service sort of thing. But the thing you talk about is it's hard to acquire new customers.

It really is. And then you talked about the cost of losing a customer. And trying to get new customers all the time, and then I see companies lose a customer. I'm just like, do you understand how much that impacts you? It's very interesting in how people don't measure that. And I think one of the things you talked about was how we started off talking about how short-term sometimes marketing departments can be. I think you probably get the same thing I do when people talk about doing marketing is, I want to go viral. I want to go viral.

I want to go viral. I want to go viral. And that's like the big thing I do when people talk about doing marketing is I want to go viral. I want to go viral. I want to go viral. I want to go viral. And that's like the big thing. And if you don't go viral, then your marketing campaign was a failure. And I've seen so many different marketing campaigns. Like I said, the Chris Voss show is an endurance race on seeing how long brands last on there and how people interact with them. And and and I think that mentality of we gotta go viral isn't always the thing it's it's all it can be a slow long burn sometimes it can last for decades you know like we've talked about on the show some examples and I'm you know I remember stuff from decades ago how powerful is that and the positive experience is a negative. Very powerful.

I don't know if you didn't throw you a question there. So I kind of gave you something on the setup there. So there's something. Good. Yeah. One of the things, at least a gradient that matters a lot to us is measurability. And so we are always looking at new tools. And the reality, Chris, is that today we live, honestly, in such an exciting time.

AI tools are allowing us to measure things that when I started my career, it was all Excel documents and people like, you know, doing data entry. And then at the end, you know, if you were, if you were a client that had budgets, you'd have a consultant that would crunch those numbers for you. And then once a year, they would look at all the results and they tell you, okay, moving forward the rest of the year, this is your strategy. But you sort of had to have all of that manual effort that went into it. But because we're so focused on measurability, we're always looking at new tools that are

coming out. And I have to tell you, yesterday I saw a new tool that truly allows brands to look at what is the impact of that base brand effort that you put in, right? All of that work that you do. So if you're, if you turn off the social media ads and you turn off your TV and you turn off your in-store discounts, what's left? And if you did nothing, what would be to your point, the tail at which it starts really reducing and pinching? At which point are you just no longer top of mind? And so I think probably the biggest message that I'd like to get out there to any marketer that's listening is don't assume that because you couldn't measure something

six months ago that you can't measure it today there there's really exciting innovation that's happening in this space and it is worth staying curious it's worth reading up on because i think very soon a lot of marketers are going to realize because we're going to start having the tools that they've been pouring budgets into places where they may be told that they're getting all of these impressions, but the results are not necessarily there. And at that point, I think there's probably going to be some significant shifts in marketing budgets across the spectrum and hopefully more to my space you have a lot of great examples on your website of some of the

different things that people use for experiential marketing one thing you talk about on there is live content and how much that impacts the experiential marketing and ar and ai it sounds like, is a big future of this. Wouldn't you say? Sorry, I think there's a delay in our feed, so maybe that's what's coming through. Go ahead. Yes, there might be a bit of a delay. But let me rephrase. You're talking about live content, right?

Which is sort of what we're doing right now so we obviously with with the pandemic our clients still needed to communicate and we were actually quite lucky because a lot of our clients their businesses weren't too impacted beauty i mean everybody still needed to look good with all the Zooms that we were doing all day. Booze, who remembers how many cocktails a day we were having during COVID times? And luxury products that seemed to have completely not been affected. But you still needed to have interactions with consumers in a meaningful way. And so our live stream division really boosted. We continued seeing from our clients less in brand to consumer, but certainly in internal

marketing. I mean, you talked about the positive effect of that interaction that you had with the Walmart cashier. Think about all the training that is necessary for all of the brands of their sales teams. And they sort of, you know, trickle out a PowerPoint presentation that goes to managers. But what we've seen smart brands do is leverage thought out, planned out, train salespeople

so that they're really integrated with the overall campaign. Let me tell you what I mean by that. If you have a Cartier, to go back to that example that I was giving you, that does a huge experience, a really big investment during our Basel, right? They transform a building like what you see when you go to South by Southwest. If a consumer goes to that experience, mesmerized by it, feels connected with the brand and then they go back to their home base in london and they go in the store the person that they interact with needs to know what has happened they need to speak the same story tell the same message that was just reinforced into this consumer at this very expensive experience. Otherwise, you have a complete breakdown in message for that consumer. And we've all lived

this, right? You see a great ad on a billboard for sneakers, you go in the store, you ask the sales guy, you're like, you know, these are gonna make make me run faster. And the guys, I have your size, right? That's not the message that you want passed on for your brand. And so live content is actually something that is still massively used by smart marketers to really motivate, drum up their sales teams or their marketing teams so that you've got a consistent story throughout all of your customer interactions. A consistent story, then creating those experiences. Tell us a little bit about this white paper. When is it published? How can people download it and get a hold of it? I'm going to make sure that you have it so that you have the link so that in future,

future listeners in 15 years, I think that's what you were saying that your listeners continue to go back to your stories for over 15 years. So it will be there in the show notes, I'm sure. Otherwise on our website. And this white paper is called Impact Marketing in the Experience Era. And what we've done is we've researched with CMOs, CEOs, and with direct interviews. And then we've interviewed over 700 surveyed, sorry, over 750 senior marketers to really understand what makes experience marketing highly impactful. What do the smart marketers do that works well? And we came out with this acronym. So impact is actually an acronym. It is integrated, measurable, participatory, effective, community building, and true to brand.

So I'll quickly give you the summary. Integrated, I think we mentioned it. It's sort of like not putting it all the way at the end, but really thinking of the experience as a central piece from which you can create a lot of content and connect with a lot of other pieces of the puzzle. So that's integrated. Measurable, I believe speaks for itself. And we spoke quite a

bit about it. Participatory. So am I just being asked to sit in a movie theater and be fed a video? Or is it something where I'm going to be interacting with it, where I get to touch it, where I get to create, where I get to scratch and sniff, whatever it is, how am I part of the experience? Effective with an A is really about, is this creating an emotion? So am I just being fed information or is there something that's going to trigger an emotion? because as we said, hearts move minds. It's once my emotions are pushed that I really consider I have a connection with a brand. Community building really at two levels, but we know that we're mammals, we're social animals. We just feel feelings in a stronger way when we share it with others. You go to a theater, you just feel the emotions in the space. It's not the same as being alone watching a show.

That's why I think Netflix has all of these techniques now to make sure that you can watch shows at the same time as your friends so that you're you're sharing it but then also in a way how do i make sure that i'm creating content from the experience to share back with my community how does how do i am how can i be the center of a conversation about this brand with my community and then true to brand if you create an amazing experience at South by Southwest where you take over a whole building, if I take your logo off and I put your competitors, is it still going to ring true? Or is the experience really, truly unique to your story, your brand. And so all of these elements are sort of broken out into the white paper with questions for marketers to ask themselves. Because if you're going to be investing in experiential marketing, and it can be, as we said, you know, a booth at a conference, it can be influencer trip, where you get influencers to come to your manufacturing locations so they can see how

everything's happening or it can be all the way to you know a big extravaganza like at south by southwest if you're going to be investing that kind of money make sure that you do it well so that you get the results so that overall experiential marketing is seen as something that works because that's really what we're trying to promote but it only works if you put in the effort to make it as impactful as it can be there's a story that's on your website that i really like that that really nails this down in a very short particular way so it's a it's a post about how you can't taste an ad ads can tell you a story but in in but in a real life experience such as experiential marketing setup you are the story i like that because yeah you can't you can't taste

an ad you can't experience an ad in fact if anything it's a very 2d if you're looking in on the screen of your computer or your phone it's a very 2d sort of experience and you're just like yeah there's another you know 50 000 ads you're shoveled every day. But in real life marketing experiences, or, you know, when people in real life experience or interact with your store, I would say even sometimes the experience of buying something online.

You know, Amazon is great for making, you know, the barriers of being able to order something, find something you're looking for, or variations of that that might be better. Comparing those, they basically do what we used to do before Amazon. You go to the store and you compare the different various products. You compare prices. You didn't know what reviews were. But there is kind of still an experience on an online buying sort of basis as well, I think. So I love that. There's lots of

examples people can experience at your website. See what I did there? Tell us how people can onboard with you. If there's companies out there, buyers listening, how can they get to know you better, contact you, reach out to you, handshake as well? It's our website is, you know, troughful of case studies. We really try to be very transparent about the work that we do, how we did it, the results that we got. And we share a lot of that also on our socials, on our Instagram, on LinkedIn. I think it's an exciting time for experiential marketing. And we're just trying to make sure that there's enough information out there so that people really feel confident that it's the right investment for their brands. Thank you very much, Pauline, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. This has been super insightful. and even now I'm rethinking marketing and how everything is doing and the experience people have.

So thank you very much for coming on. Give us your dot coms and final pitch out as people listen. GradientExperience.com. From there, you'll be able to find everything else. And for any brand that is listening, if they need advice on how to truly create a strong brand experience, please reach out. We'd be happy to talk. There you go. Thank you very much, Pauline. We really appreciate it.

Have a great day. Thanks to my owners for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfast, LinkedIn.com, 4chess, 4ChessChristmas, Christmas1, the TikTokity, all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.