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Finding unusual experiences is a not-so-secret pleasure of mine.
Over the last two years I've:
- Picked grapes in a vineyard on the Finger Lakes
- Visited the Berenstain Bears tree house at The Strong Museum of Play
- Sipped fresh-from-the-tree maple sap in Sharon Springs, NY
- Taken an underground boat ride through the largest accessible cave on the East Coast
- Watched a Great Blue Heron take off from the Everglades
- Waded through several random streams and brooks in various corners of New York and New Jersey
And more.
You can't compare purchasing a new product to visiting a new place. Real-life experiences are immersive. They involve every one of your five senses.
You feel the wind pounding against your face as the airboat rushes through the reeds of the Everglades. You smells the sweetness of the sap. You hear the water drip-drip-dripping down the moist walls of the cave.
But even if buying your product can't be as invigorating and stimulating as a trip - there are things you can do to make it less of a chore, and more of an experience. By creating a little "world" for your customers, where each touchpoint of ad, email, product page adds another detail to the landscape, you create a place people want to return to.
It has to be done with thought, though. Imagine if the Berenstain Bear treehouse was plopped into middle of the Finger Lakes vineyard near the entrance of an underground cave.
Hard no, right?
But sometimes, brands do this. They say, "oh, that's a great thing, people love it, let's do it". And soon there's a mishmash of different tactics and ideas that are so mismatched it doesn't work.
Goldie Hirsh, an English-Yiddish translator, posted the following on LinkedIn
As I'm scrolling my LinkedIn feed this morning, I couldn't help but wonder at the idea of the games LinkedIn added recently. What struck me the most, however, was the subtext:
"8 connections played".
Is playing a game on a "business platform" something to be proud of? Why would I want anyone to know that I just wasted five minutes on something totally pointless? If I want to play something, especially when I should probably be doing something more productive like work or network, I think I would want to keep that private!"
Here's what I think.
I like the idea of adding gamification - but not the way LinkedIn did it. If I was on the LinkedIn marketing team, I would think of a way to gamify the actual networking activities that LinkedIn is made for.
I.e. some kind of bingo grid that gets filled out if you've connected with 3 people from 3 different industries today, commented on 5 posts, etc. And each day it can be a competition to finish a row on your bingo board, with a running list of bingo winners at the top of the LinkedIn feed.
It doesn't have to be this bingo idea, but the point is it should be something directly related to the value prop of LinkedIn, as opposed to random games.
Because then you feel like the Berenstain Bear treehouse was plopped into middle of the Finger Lakes vineyard near the entrance of an underground cave.
Maybe LinkedIn can get away with it, because as of yet there's no real alternative to LinkedIn yet. But it's definitely not helping them. And doing something definitely won't help you.
Part of the Tell Your Story package process is laying out what your content should do, and what it should not do. What you should say, and what you shouldn't say. So you can avoid doing things like LinkedIn did and instead build a place where customers are excited to visit. If you want that for yourself - let's talk.
Touching the giant stalagmite was fun,
Chavy