Orange Juice Pulp at 40,000 Feet

Sept 29, 2008

On a recent 22-hour flight to address the African Experiential Marketing Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the folks who asked me to speak were generous enough to provide me with a first-class ticket.

    While enjoying the trappings from my oversized seat, it was a great opportunity to divorce myself from e-mails, cell phones and voicemails…and just think.

    Pure, unadulterated, uninterrupted thought. About my 1-year-old daughter's first tooth. About our clients. About our agency. About the orange juice pulp in my glass (yes…I'm that deep!). And where the world of ROI marketing is headed-or should be.


    So away went my copy of War & Peace (I knew how it turned out anyway), and I passively watched as our flight attendants tended to fellow passengers. Always smiling, overzealously courteous, and unwaveringly attentive, all while knowing they were stuck in this plane for the long haul halfway across the globe.
   
    Now how much, I thought, do airlines spend on the traditional tricks of the trade to attract fliers? Were these passengers drawn to this positive brand experience by TV/print/radio/Web, et. al.?

    No. We came to the experience largely because of flight availability options. And, as a result of experiencing the brand firsthand, we left as overwhelming loyalists.

    So ask yourself (and it should be a very short Q&A): Are marketing budgets best spent to claim that a brand is an experience and hope for conversions, or show that a brand is an experience and actually watch conversions?

    Coincidentally, what I was witnessing was the meat and potatoes of my "Destination: Devotion" presentation that I was asked to deliver: that all brands are products but not all products are brands. And the transition into a brand is still not enough to remain on top. The high fliers go the extra mile to make their brands a "hero" in the eyes of consumers.

    I thought about a couple of sound bytes from a couple of guys who've been around the block:

"I know that half the money we spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is that I don't know which half." -Lord North of Unilever (among others)

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." -Confucius

    Our final destination was Johannesburg, but the brand's destination was devotion. And each went off without a hitch. So yet again, I had witnessed the effectiveness of our agency's substantiated philosophy, and went back to mindlessly contemplate my orange juice pulp.

As Founder & CEO of Gigunda Group, Inc., the most awarded agency in 2007 and selected by Promo Magazine as the Most Creative Agency in America, Ryan FitzSimons is a frequent speaker on the worldwide marketing circuit, where he teaches maverick marketers how to build brands through the agency's "Destination: Devotion" platform ...moving products from brands to brand badges. He can be reached for seminars and speaking engagements or a good ol' brain picking at: ryan@gigundagroup.com.


Download the 2008 Experiential Marketing section here (PDF)

For more Experiential Marketing coverage:
Part I
Part II

Download the 2007 Experiential Marketing section here (PDF)