Episode #2. This episode’s topic and skill is the Holy Grail for most marketers – building brand connections and meaningful experiences with your consumer. Talking to Abby is the creative wizard and founder of Meredith Collective, Meredith O’Shaughnessy. Meredith shares the importance of brand experiences (with some great examples) and why experiences will still matter for marketers in a post Covid-19 world. Plus, using your gut instinct and “inner crazy” to harness your curiosity.
Resources/brands mentioned in this podcast:
Sponsored by Labyrinth Marketing
FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)
00:00:01:10 – 00:00:10:08
Hello and welcome to the Whole Marketers podcast.
00:00:10:16 – 00:00:32:01
Today’s guest is Meredith from the Meredith collective. And today’s topic or technical skill is going to be around communications. The reason that I’ve invited Meredith today is she is an expert in building experiences that disrupt and build connection, between consumers and their brands which now has never been more the time to do so.
00:00:32:03 – 00:01:06:02
Covid 19 has meant that we have lost our in-store or brand experience opportunity. If I think back to when I started marketing used to take two weeks roughly to get a consumer to take action. We used to follow the model awareness, interest, desire and action starting with the above the line comms, moving to through the line and then below the line interest in outlet with the expectation that then a consumer would take action, whereas now in the digital age we are looking at end to end platforms like Instagram potentially taking 19 seconds.
00:01:06:04 – 00:01:12:21
I think I timed it the other day from seeing something pop up in your feed to actually taking action to purchase that item.
00:01:13:04 – 00:01:30:29
But what’s missing there is that brand experience. So what I wanted to do was welcome Meredith from Meredith collective onto the podcast so we can talk about what it really takes to build brand connection and experiences. First if you will with consumers today, welcome Meredith.
00:01:31:06 – 00:01:33:03
Thank you so much for having me on Abby.
00:01:33:05 – 00:01:34:07
Oh my pleasure.
00:01:35:03 – 00:01:59:16
So Meredith, do you want to explain a little bit about what you do and about the brands that you work on.
Yeah essentially what I do is I look at how brands can create real human connections with their customers and potential customers and how they can communicate their brand stories and how they can ultimately develop raving fans that want to come back to them time and time again.
00:01:59:18 – 00:02:32:05
And as most people know into the future while there’s an increased range of things that we can purchase and ways that we can live our lives or brands that have an emotional connection with people the ones that generate real cut through and then have a sustainable kind of lifespan and I help brands navigate how they’re going to do that in a way that’s authentic that creates impact and ultimately impacts their bottom line. I’m also advise brands on how they can have a more sustainable model.
00:02:32:07 – 00:03:10:24
So essentially assisting them to understand the experience economy now the experience economy is the next thing up from the service economy which means you can charge more for something because you have an experience wrapped around it and that way we can sell less stuff but still generate revenue. So, when we’re looking sustainability and how we can help the planet the longer term creating an experience-based model is something that’s incredibly valuable for everybody. In terms of the brands that I work with, it’s a real range everybody from Unilever right through to luxury brands like Manolo Blahnik, Rolls Royce a real selection whirlpool.
00:03:10:26 – 00:03:31:26
So I’d mostly help people that have a DTC offering and that’s something which is becoming increasingly important in a post-Covid world. Wholesaling and going through other channels is something that’s been incredibly affected and brands are really looking to how they can directly communicate with consumers and that’s what I’m help people with.
00:03:31:29 – 00:03:36:14
That’s just perfect I think especially as times change.
00:03:36:16 – 00:04:04:08
You know we’ve moved from you know chatting over coffee the other day I said the other day Pre-covid just to be clear for everybody between how things have changed from the Four P’s to the Four E’s, you know we talk about product place price information and we know that that product is being looked at as an experience people are wanting to buy that experience that exchange instead as you say an experience economy no longer that kind of a service economy.
00:04:04:10 – 00:04:09:28
So what do you think is driven this change in consumers purchase behaviour.
00:04:10:00 – 00:04:43:06
I think it’s been a combination of the development of retail over time. Ultimately when you have the ability to purchase things online you can purchase things incredibly rapidly as you just said. And that basically differentiates the things we buy into the things that bring us joy and happiness and make us feel something about who we are as people. And then the things that are convenience. So ultimately if you’re buying something which is a functional item you don’t need to have an experience attached to that. You just want to have it the best possible price and the quickest way possible.
00:04:43:09 – 00:05:16:06
And that’s something that you can do in a very transactional way. And that is increasing so you have people like Amazon that are offering incredibly you know we can get things incredibly quickly at incredibly good price. And it’s very competitive at the end of the market where I look is things that we buy because they make us feel something about who we are as people and they let the world know that we’re who we are as people. And those are the things that should have an experience attached around. Because ultimately if they don’t they will get lost and they won’t be able to kind of get in front of people and people won’t care.
00:05:16:13 – 00:05:31:15
No. Completely. And I think we know that consumers today are looking for brands that reflect their aspirations their dreams the vision of who they want to become not necessarily who they are now. And that’s really hard to do if you’re hanging around in that transactional world.
00:05:31:20 – 00:06:15:02
Yeah I mean it’s interesting when you think about experiences often people think about things that are incredibly fancy and incredibly complicated actually putting an experience around something which is intrinsically could be perceived as a slightly boring item. So washing machines for example when I worked with Whirlpool, they were looking to reposition themselves at a slightly higher end of the market. And they actually had the quietest machine on the market. So something that had quite a spin cycle which doesn’t sound that interesting. But then when you think Okay who wants something with a very very quiet spin cycle where we look to target with urban people that lived in flats in urban environments that might want to have a social life that they might want to have a cocktail party going on and their washing machine going on at the same time.
00:06:15:04 – 00:06:27:17
And therefore they don’t want a loud washing machine that we threw an event where there were washing machines that were working and there was a party happening at the same time. So it’s a very visceral way of showing the benefits of a product and it’s fun. And
00:06:27:19 – 00:06:43:24
And people remember it.
As opposed to say you know quiet cycle or the decibels or kind of focusing on that product function. It’s about you know the benefit that that brings you. And also as you say the aspiration you know those people that are having cocktail parties I’d love to be at one of those
00:06:44:18 – 00:07:12:09
The dream.
Yeah but if you’re going to sell a washing machine that’s like a thousand pounds then really you need to be thinking of an innovative ways of selling and communicating these items traditionally they would have be marketed into trade magazines. I don’t know about the decibels of a washing machine really like I don’t wouldn’t know how to compare them. But if you see it happening there you suddenly want it becomes desirable it becomes something that says I’m the sort of person for cocktail parties even if you don’t.
00:07:12:12 – 00:07:15:09
Yeah it plays an aspirational piece definitely.
00:07:15:15 – 00:07:20:15
And it’s a great picture of you on your website sitting on that washing machine which I absolutely love.
00:07:22:03 – 00:07:26:04
Yeah you definitely are the person behind your brand that’s for sure.
00:07:26:06 – 00:07:40:19
I love that love love love. So we were chatting once again we chat a lot in case people haven’t realized that on the podcast, it’s about creativity and obviously to come up with these awesome experiences.
00:07:40:21 – 00:07:48:29
Creativity is a skill is something that you have to have what do you think creativity means for Marketers today.
00:07:49:01 – 00:08:25:10
I think it’s difficult because I think it was like creativity, innovation even experience get bandied around a lot. And it’s hard to define what those things are. You know on one end of the kind of scale you might think of creativity as somebody that creates art or is you know or can create things at the hands where creativity kind of in the sense that we’re using here is much more than the Steve Jobs definition which is somebody that brings ideas together that hadn’t previously been placed next to each other but seems so obvious. And he always said that the creatives don’t think that they are creative because it seems like they put something together that already existed.
00:08:25:12 – 00:08:57:04
But it’s actually new. So creativity really is about understanding the world around us and seeing connections. And I think to be creative is about being in the world is about seeing things being out there. I once spoke to somebody that was looking at a brief for a PR agency that will remain nameless and he said to me Oh I’m going to go away and I need some ideas and I’m gonna go and sit in a dark room and come up with some ideas around this brief and I said to him that’s the worst possible thing you could do. What you need to do is you need to go out for a walk,
00:08:57:06 – 00:09:07:18
You need to go to a bar you need to go and see something because that’s how you spark creativity it by inhabiting the world around you and seeing what’s out there.
00:09:07:21 – 00:09:18:02
Yeah having that variety of different stimulus taking that different journey, sitting in different environments, reading a different material to what you’d normally read because you I suppose you’re only really as good as your last stimulus.
00:09:18:04 – 00:09:54:12
Yeah you have to be constantly curious. So I think somebody is really creative or perceived to be very creative is constantly curious. They constantly want to find out new things and are delighted by the things that they discover I constantly bore my friends and family because I’ll read a book on some being random and then just talk about it for a week and be like Oh my God did you know. And I think it’s having that curiosity that sparks creativity. It also helps, I’ve been listening to some people talk about creativity during the lockdown and a lot of people are struggling because they don’t have as many stimuli as they normally would at this time.
00:09:54:14 – 00:10:11:14
You know normally during the week I’d be going to the theater and going to the cinema and visiting new venues and going to experiences and that’s all become two dimensional and is only being able to consume through books. And what we’re watching on screen so it’ll be interesting to see what comes out.
00:10:11:18 – 00:10:24:10
Post lockdown it will it massively will. And it’s so interesting that you say that about being curious because literally that was the chapter I’m writing about and you know it’s marketeers aren’t curious that really worry me.
00:10:24:12 – 00:10:55:26
It’s those that don’t people watch that don’t necessarily look out you know try and work out who someone is why they’re doing what they’re doing because you know insight comes or connection with our consumers comes from asking why why are they doing that why why why why why. And if you’re not curious I would question whether you’re ever going to kind of get below that surface action of what they’re doing to really understand why they’re doing it and that’s where the emotional connection comes from. That’s where insight comes from. Without that we’re never really going to build that emotional connection with our consumers.
00:10:55:28 – 00:11:25:28
Yeah I think it’s interesting. With marketing I mean I don’t have a marketing background. I come from a hospitality background and I think that has meant that I’m much more used to dealing with people and understanding what drives people and the emotional connections between people and I think there’s a real clash sometimes of marketing between the figures and then the gut instinct about what trends might be happening and what people actually want and and bringing those two things together both are equally valid.
00:11:26:00 – 00:11:58:01
Both are very important and they can feed into each other. But if you sit too heavily in one camp then you’re not going to see the bigger picture. So you need to know the data you need to understand you need to test, you need to have all that information. But ultimately when you’re thinking about how you can connect with people it’s it’s emotional and there’s there is a gut instinct there and so design of experiences or strategy by committee is often the worst thing that can happen because it gets ideas get diluted so rapidly.
00:11:58:03 – 00:12:17:00
So I think having somebody in your team that is incredibly innovative that is thinking you know is coming in kind of almost the point where you think oh my god they’re a bit crazy. That’s really helpful because I’m going to drive you forward in a way that is challenging and interesting and dynamic and that’s where future brands need to be.
00:12:17:06 – 00:12:28:11
That plays in quite nicely to my next question which is you know if that’s where marketers need to be maybe a little bit crazy although I do love commercial numbers as you know to prove a given idea.
00:12:28:21 – 00:12:29:06
But
00:12:30:18 – 00:12:53:20
you know we are there to lead the commercial agenda of any organizations the numbers do have to have a play but as does conviction and you know as we’ve said if you’ve got that deep understanding about who your consumers are to the point that you can feel it in your soul because you’re so immersed in what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and what drives them and their dreams and their aspirations I suppose it’s got to be an air of conviction behind that to just go for it.
00:12:53:24 – 00:13:14:05
Yeah I mean I think that essentially when you think about advertising agencies you think of a creative director who’s there who is the one that’s standing by things are driving through new ideas and this kind of the friction that’s talked about between you know creators with an advertising industry is coming in and speaking to brands and marketeers and then not understanding the idea.
00:13:14:15 – 00:13:39:08
And I think actually that within brands they should have somebody within their organization or at the very least a consultant who fulfils that role. I believe the brands that don’t have a creative director of some form internally or somebody who’s plugging directly into them rather than via a kind of a larger agency is going to be missing out. That’s not where the future is.
00:13:39:10 – 00:13:51:14
The future is about incorporating a little bit of that unless of course you want to just sell widgets in which case that’s fine. You know there’s other companies and you know that do that.
00:13:51:16 – 00:14:10:13
But actually when we’re talking about these these brands that are the ones that people care about that are going to get you know column inches in magazines that are going to get you know going to sell themselves essentially at the end point you need to have you need to have some creativity and some kind of design focus around that strategy.
00:14:10:15 – 00:14:13:19
Yeah. The brands that consumers want to have a relationship with.
00:14:13:21 – 00:14:22:21
Yeah absolutely an emotional one. Yeah exactly. So which brands do you think are doing that well at the moment. There’s some interesting ones certainly in America.
00:14:22:23 – 00:14:53:21
Those like Casper mattresses that I’ve got a really interesting strategy with the way that they’re operating. They have a really good kind of online to offline consumer journey and it’s all very seamless and you can go into their stores and they have pyjamas that you can put it on to try out the beds and they have headsets that you can put over the headspace meditation apps and it all links up with their online journey where most of their purchases are made. So they’ve really thought about the whole journey.
00:14:53:23 – 00:15:08:10
And I think people that separate out online and offline. I digress slightly but that does also like the wrong way to be thinking about marketing and retail and channels and things like that. All of those all of those walls or those silos are coming down in the future.
00:15:08:13 – 00:15:41:24
So they are really interesting brand to pick out there’s emerging people like you know the museum of ice cream they call themselves. There’s a combination of like retail and experience-preneurs or something somewhere they’ve created. But it’s really interesting in terms of its incredibly Instagram-able, it’s really innovative and what they need to do is they need to just enhance their whole retail offering around that. But I think someone will be coming after them using ice cream to offer some really interesting retail experiences other people that are doing it really well
00:15:43:21 – 00:15:44:29
my mind always goes blank
00:15:47:28 – 00:15:59:17
With these questions.
I think I think that’s I think that’s a fair blank in the sense that you know most experts have been have been done for PR or coverage.
00:15:59:19 – 00:16:12:27
I don’t think they’ve always been done so that the consumer can truly immerse themselves in the brand. You know I can think of a handful of ones like the Magnum experience or Bombay Sapphire.
00:16:12:29 – 00:16:21:01
I mean they’re just a few that come to my head. But look, we’re sat here talking about them, so the long lasting impression that they’ve had is still there.
00:16:21:20 – 00:16:54:28
Yeah I think the drinks industry has always been a pioneer because they are essentially kind of quite an experience based like product anyway because you have to you have to taste them and they when you think about Diageo talk about liquid on lips there’s always been that kind of big ethos around any activations that they do. And ultimately good marketing and they want to get you to taste that product and that in itself is an experiential strategy. And so drinks brands have always been very very cutting edge and when you think about as you said there’s Hendricks Gin Jis always done really really interesting things that he created at King’s Cross.
00:16:55:00 – 00:17:34:06
They did an advertising campaign where they had their vinyl advertising all the way down through a tunnel and then had sent which has blown out so that people had the fully immersive experience and they walk through to the tube station. Now that’s a really really interesting thing to be doing and it’s thinking in a really creative way. Unilever also absolutely excellent. They have put experiential at the very heart of their strategy and they’ve got some great brands to play around with. And there’ll be some really interesting stuff I imagine coming out with things like Ben and Jerry’s Magnum pleasure stores was pioneering and I know that they will be thinking about how they can constantly evolve those concepts.
00:17:34:08 – 00:17:40:21
So being able to tap into those really big brands are doing some really interesting things. They’ll be leading the way.
00:17:40:26 – 00:17:54:16
So yeah while I said my mind went blank there is actually some people doing some interesting stuff with this. It’s so far to go. This is really the very incubation stages. And I think there will be a really really exciting area to watch.
00:17:54:18 – 00:18:09:27
Yeah it’s where the consumer and the brand meet. Isn’t it truly understand the brand history and proposition where it came from and living that experience so you have that aspiration has to deliver a lot really those experiences. Yeah I mean I think when you talk about
00:18:10:17 – 00:18:21:02
Experience people do often think about kind of oh the novelty factor and worry that it’s a bit flippant and worry that you know or can you tell the ROI on something.
00:18:21:11 – 00:18:54:19
And I think that it’s almost like you’re asking the wrong question like if you’re just focusing on what is the ROI on an individual experiential activation you’re not really thinking about the customer experience as a whole entity in relation to all the touch points that has with your brand. And it’s a little bit like thinking about bricks and mortar stores in a sense of what is our direct ROI on sales on this particular unit. And that doesn’t apply anymore no retail units are gateways to your brand.
00:18:54:21 – 00:19:12:27
They’re a way of directly communicating with your customer. You should really be thinking about those as the way that you lure people in and you show people what you’re about. And then if they go and buy you know online afterwards then that should not a problem for you and you shouldn’t be scared of it. You should be embracing that.
00:19:13:21 – 00:19:42:07
And I’ll tell you who, just a kind of personal experience Loaf springs to mind where they’ve really looked at you know how do consumers buy furniture beds mattresses you know soft furnishings what are all the pain points. And they’ve mapped that in their experience you know online and off line so kind of profile raising to bring you into the outlet. Look at all the pain points you are trying to shop for a sofa with kids in tow.
00:19:42:24 – 00:20:05:09
They’ve got games and ice cream machines and all the things that kind of keep them occupied and not just the token table in the corner with some crayons but actually thinking about all the different age groups of children they’ve got computer games and they’ve got colouring and they’ve got and they’ve got. They allow you to lie on the bed obviously not in your pyjamas because that would be the ultimate test.
00:20:05:16 – 00:20:16:05
As per the brand you mentioned earlier you know that’s exactly where it’s at isn’t it have a shower but you put your pyjamas on but you had space on it almost almost recreate the experience that you probably have at home.
00:20:16:08 – 00:20:41:20
Well I do anyways and think about how you can overcome all these problems you know giving you the tape measure to go home and look at where that bed fits in and then purchase online because that’s absolutely fine. Yeah it’s part of the journey it’s been mapped out after you’ve had the experience and you’ve been sold on that and we’ve given you all the apparatus from a fabric sample and we’ll tape measure that is exactly the dimensions the bed to go home with.
00:20:41:22 – 00:20:52:27
Now go online as opposed to having as you talked about earlier transaction to transaction on just an item is the experience that comes with it.
And that’s worked because they own their entire customer journey.
00:20:52:29 – 00:21:09:27
They do have a they have a complete ownership of that and they know exactly what they’re doing and they know how to communicate with their customers and when to communicate with them. And so this is essentially kind of wholesale model. They don’t have to worry about that because they’re not losing out by somebody online.
00:21:10:07 – 00:21:12:05
It’s still part of the entire journey.
00:21:12:07 – 00:21:18:22
Yeah they own you right they do own the entire journey which you know is rare is rare in today’s world.
00:21:18:24 – 00:21:20:08
But the multiples and so on.
00:21:20:10 – 00:21:32:21
I mean I think it’s I think that they’ll definitely be an increase in certain markets of DTC and people wanting to own their own journey and saying actually this is where we can we can do this we can have more control.
00:21:32:23 – 00:21:37:04
And it’s interesting kind of I work in luxury the luxury market as well.
00:21:37:06 – 00:21:41:12
And now yesterday Gucci announced that they weren’t going to do fashion shows anymore
00:21:43:00 – 00:22:17:03
along the schedule of the Fashion Week which happens globally because they felt like they were being forced to produce to a calendar that wasn’t good for the environment wasn’t good for their creativity wasn’t good for how they produce collections and they want to take back ownership of that process. And I think across the board it will be there’s going to be an increase of people like changing the way that things have been done historically and not necessarily having to sell into whole big wholesale kind of department stores on seasons and stuff like that.
00:22:17:05 – 00:22:25:19
And again that’s taking back the brand saying back bit more ownership of how they decide they’re going to communicate with their customers because they know what they want.
00:22:25:21 – 00:22:40:16
So the other great thing about experientially is you can learn more about your customers if you’re standing there and you have your own tea there directly communicating with people then you’re going to find out what they want. There’s nothing better than being able to speak to people face to face.
00:22:40:27 – 00:22:45:27
Yes it becomes a form of insight. And then the cycle goes round and round.
00:22:47:18 – 00:23:02:27
So thank you so much for sharing all of your experiences today about the experiences ba dum tss. So, see what I did there. Yes. What would be your one key tip you would give to marketers on their future activation.
00:23:02:29 – 00:23:38:23
I would suggest that they stop thinking about brand activations as a kind of separate tag on an arm that they passed on to their PR agency to organize and they make it the very heart of their strategy and they think about all the additional benefits that we’ve discussed today. So gaining insight of being able to directly communicate with your customer you know lots of different being up to own that customer journey and think about it so that it’s something that you really implement from the very start of any kind of marketing strategy.
That’s perfect.
00:23:38:25 – 00:24:09:08
And actually I was writing down my summary notes of today’s podcast that was the one I just wrote down so aligned on that one. So if we look at you know topics that we covered today and thank you Meredith for your time we are looking at brands where consumers want to have a relationship and how we can use experience to bring that to life. Coming away from that transactional products experience and ensuring that you’re offering an experience that goes with it from product to experience you need to have a mix of crazy and commercial.
00:24:09:10 – 00:24:18:19
To have that creativity you’ve got to have that air of curiosity in order to map a true consumer experience you have to think end-to-end not online and offline.
00:24:18:21 – 00:24:36:11
Insight is fundamental throughout this whole process really understanding your consumers and what they want but also using those experiences to allow you to gain insights and make sure that’s not a separate take on experiences aren’t just there for PR. They are there for they’re actually for the consumers to build that connection.
00:24:36:17 – 00:24:38:13
I believe that’s that’s everything.
00:24:38:15 – 00:25:00:06
I mean what I would say is that a lot of brands and actually agencies that I speak to don’t have the people that have the right skill set to be thinking about it because it is something which is evolving as they seek out those people that really understand the experience economy really understand the benefits of these things and understand how to design an experience strategy that’s going to give you the results that you need.
00:25:00:08 – 00:25:16:09
So those are very specialist but those people are out there and bringing it to life as well as that you know it’s great to have it on a drawing. It’s a whole different thing to bring that experience that has been aspired to life with the same high quality that it has in the thought process.
00:25:16:11 – 00:25:54:17
Yeah I mean I think from that side of things I think people really worry about bringing things to life and I would say that you shouldn’t have to because that’s some amazing production companies out there and people that are really experienced. So if you have somebody that’s designing that strategy for you and understands how this works in the whole ecosystem they’ll know the right people to bring those things to life and ensure that the quality reflects your Brand. Ultimately this is about you communicating as a brand who you are to people and if you’re a luxury brand they experience needs to be luxury. And if your you know a trainer brand then it might mean it could be a bit maybe down and dirty but essentially that’s all part of the design.
00:25:54:19 – 00:25:57:23
Perfect. Thank you so much for that top tip.
00:25:57:25 – 00:26:06:20
Thank you for tuning into the whole marketing podcast. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode please do click follow below for more weekly podcasts. Thank you.
