Exemplary experience design

Why the Alamo Drafthouse's sneak premiere was so dang good

By now, you will have heard about the Alamo Drafthouse Theater's amazing coup with the new Star Trek movie. If you haven't heard, here's the plot:

1. The scene: a cool but globally insignificant cinema in a rather insignificant town.
2. The background: everyone's talking about the new Trek film. Opinions are divided, emotions are high. But the film is not out yet, and when it comes out it will first be seen somewhere globally significant. Somewhere far away. Not here. (See point 1). No sir, we are too insignificant for that. Sigh.
3. Because we are too insignificant to see the new film, we content ourselves with watching an old classic instead. Better than nothing, eh? It's a fun idea that fits our theater, but it has a slight aftertaste of valiant loser (see point 1). Sigh.
4. But then - the old classic melts and burns in the projector. The aftertaste of valiant loser gets stronger.
5. Sigh.
6. The management take the stage and try to get a discussion going while the film is re-spliced. Unfortunately, nobody has any questions.
7. Sigh. Sigh...
8. THEN... Mr Spock walks out on stage. MISTER SPOCK!
9. Mr Spock asks us if we'd rather be watching the new film. The one that isn't out yet. The one we are too insignificant to see first.
10. Mr Spock - MR SPOCK!! - tells us that the world premiere for the new film is here and now! Losers we are not!

This is just brilliant experience design for a bunch of reasons. So many, it almost becomes a "best of". How about:

• It takes your customer's expectations (go see an old movie) and exceeds them (go see the World Premiere of the hot new movie presented by your childhood hero in person). What a terrific surprise!

• Beforehand, we have the burned print and the lame discussion attempt. This massages our expectations down and makes the upswing to the climax even more dramatic. (Remember, this only works with captive audiences).

• Of course this wrong-wrong-right is the classic one-two-and-a -THREE! of bait-and-switch dramatic structure seen in jokes. Two points are enough to establish a tendency, which you break with the punchline.

• This whole shebang is supported by of the excellent customer community set up around the cinema. These guys have theme nights, food, live heckling by stand-up comedians, customer tours for renegade karaoke parties, their own beer...

• The management have obviously gone the extra mile for their customers on this one. Not only did they get the world premiere of what is potentially the film this summer, they also got Leonard Nimoy - the nearest thing to a saint in the Trekiverse - to present it. That was more than one phone call, I suspect.
  

• The idea and its execution shows the Drafthouse crew as hard working real people with the same groove as their audience. Remember, people buy from people.
  

• The whole story is eminently tellable, as evidenced by its rapid dissemination through the internet today.

Great stuff. Oh, and here's the YouTube link.

Via Church of the Customer.
Trekpik by TCM Hitchhiker at flikr.

Instant USP - for free

Your people know how

The human factor is probably the biggest single piece of your customer experience. If you have good people working for you, agree on the goals and then let them be themselves, it might even be this good:



Fair enough, not everyone has this gentleman's charm or musical talent - but his rap is most successful because he is initially not completely sure if he can pull it off. He shows his humanity, and that is the crucial part. He could have been equally successful doing something far less spectacular - as long as he were doing it his way.

The customers see a real human being doing something unique and - most tellingly - they know they wouldn't get anything like it from the competiton.

Are you brave enough to let your people be this good?

Via the Creative Generalist
PS. Hmm. I wonder if he has read this?

What we do for freebies

How to make a splash in the blogwelt...

Canada's Biz-wiz-joke-bloke Andy Nulman is a master of surprise - it has been said* that he "owns" the term - and he's up to his (un)usual tricks again over at his excellent Pow! blog.

In my eyes, the best bit of his "200 free books" post is the last line - "Or could there be, perhaps, maybe, something up my sleeve?"

The ideal partner of surprise is anticipation.

I've emphasised before that it works at a deep psychological level. Put it like this: surpassing your audiences expectations is always great, but pumping those expectations to a higher level and then topping the elevated hopes is unbeatable.

The feeling of expectation gets the primeval juices churning (it's all about emotion, folks!), then the surpassed anticipation wows on an intellectual level too, as well as giving a story to tell.

So Andy, I'll take the bait and line up for a copy of your book. You've lost a sale - I'd have bought one anyway - but I'm keenest of all to find out how you're planning to Pow! me this time...

After all, it's not like the man who can do everything needs help with publicity. ;)

Adam

PS You have my address. :)

* By Andy, but why not? ;)
Picture and film made at that fun Kodak site, Andy image from Pow!.

Customer orientation - sometimes it is easy

You work it out

Q: Imagine you have a maternity hospital in Taiwan. Who will your main customers be?
A: Erm, maybe, perhaps ... young Taiwanese women?
Q: Very good. What is the most obvious, stereotypical thing that young Taiwanese women go crazy for? Hint: it has no mouth. *
A: Ah. Obviously that cat:


Q: OK, what would be a good decorative theme for your maternity clinic, if you can get the licence?

A: Erm... This?

The maternity hospital in Yuanlin has hit on a gold plated winner, I am sure. Not only have they got a clear and apparent USP (still amazingly rare in the medical world) and a powerful affinity market, they will be reaping outcome benefits from the psychological effects of branding their facility with a much loved and highly reassuring character. How scary can a nurse in a Hello Kitty apron be? (By the way: it's crucial that the logo is huge and not just a pocket emblem.)

This sort of thing would be easy for small medical practices to do - especially ones catering for the young. It needn't be an expensive licensed figure, just something that shows a bit if humour, understanding and humanity instead of those terrifying white coats. It's costume, folks, costume.

* I am privileged to know several young Taiwanese ladies, and the answer to this question is most apparent after about 20 seconds in their charming company.

Hello Kitty pic from Sanrio.
Thanks to BoingBoing for the heads up.

Wacky-pack-attack

And why not?

Choosenick put me onto this wonderful little clip:



Of course, it's a gag - but comedy is always made of truth and pain. (The truth here is that we want to celebrate our cool new toy, the pain is that we can't.) So: why not?

Everything up to the point where the guy presses the red button is possible.

So why not take it that far? Then... holographic chorus girls are tricky just now, but there are a bunch of cheap and cheesy fun effects which could replace them.

What about the little melody chips you get in birthday cards? They could play an appropriately quirky tune, celebrating the purchase (no corporate jingles, please!).

How about the tiny voice recording chips I've seen? Why not hear a pre-recorded message from your guy at the store saying "Hi Adam, this is Gary. Thanks for buying this phone - if you have any problems setting it up, call me on my direct number...."

What about the clever techniques you see in modern pop-up books?

What about a little light show with supercheap LEDs? Or a smoke bomb and laser projection on your ceiling...

Erm, well, maybe the lasers are still sci-fi, but you get the point.

Whatever the gimmick is, two things would be important:

1) The manufacturer must realise it's just a gimmick, and keep it fun.
2) It must be replayable, so you can show all your friends...

Using opposites to emphasis experience

A burning contrast

It would be a disservice to Flash Art to describe their work as "firework displays" - they combine fire, lasers, water and music in world-class spectacles, like the closing display of the 2006 World Cup final. Here's a great tip from Flash Art pyrotechnics wizard Markus Katterle, interviewed in Focus.

"If I want the audience to experience the colour red in the sky especially intensely, I first need to colour the sky green for one minute."*

Those of you who played with a colour wheel at school will remember that red and green are traditionally considered complementary colours - perfect opposites. Mixed together, they give a dull sludge, but they can placed in opposition to dramatic effect.

Contrast is a vital tool in experience design, and Markus' quote can be applied to much more than just light. Any loud chord seems louder if it crashes out of silence, and we all enjoy that cup of piping hot cocoa most when we are truly frozen.

One of the best uses of contrast in experience design I ever encountered is in the German National Museum in Nuremberg. The lobby here is very light, warm and airy, with acres of glass and glaring white walls. At the back, you pull open a heavy door and step - Pow!- into a cold, dark medieval cloister. The contrast is quite simply startling, and the feeling of time travel inescapable. Great stuff.

Contrast need not always be extreme, and it need not always generate a feeling of surprise. Use it to draw attention to your experience's best aspects, and to provide variation in your customer's emotional curve.

Where could you use contrasting light in your customer experience? And what about sound? Texture? Temperature? Aromas? Activity? Price?

* Focus magazine, 31.12.07 pg 83. Translation by Adam.

Colour wheel from jasmic at flickr.
GNM pic from bsnu.

Step 1. Steal Underpants

The Big 3 Strike Again!

It's a well known fact that there are three essential components to any hit. They are:

1. Sex
2. Humour
3. Death

The excellent KnickerPicker site combines the Big Three in a great online experience.

(The site may be NSFW if your work environment objects to underwear being sold in public. If it does, get a new job.)

At KnickerPicker, a trio of virtual ladies will model top brand underwear for you, helping you choose just the right set for your own self, or your better half. You can change the outfit, get the girl to turn round, even come closer. There is an online shop and delivery service, of course.

Go on, try it.

Here's why I like it:

1. Sex: the site uses sexy girls to sell sexy undies. Nothing new there, but it's nice that the girls come in three sizes from "ouch!" to "real woman". And the fact that you can influence the models' actions makes it a little sexier somehow. (Blush).

2. Humour: it's good clean (?) fun making the girls walk up and down and turn round, and their expressions seem beautifully ironic at times. The ladies find it fun too - Marie Claire made it their "favourite new website". Best of all, though, is the "Boy's Buying Guide" for men faced with the terrifying task of finding out her size...

3. Death: let your lady catch you spending too long with the wrong sized model, and you are in big trouble.

KnickerPicker: a great site, combining a fun experience with a genuinely useful service.

Vintage undies photo from antiques.about.com.
More about the importance of stealing underpants here.

Unexpected... and thus authentic

Avoiding the cliché

I was flicking through my review copy (thanks Joe! - I'll review as soon as I possibly can) of Pine & Gilmore's "Authenticity", and I got to thinking about authentic places.

I've written now and again about why I prefer Dominica to other Caribbean islands I have visited - Antigua and Martinique, for example. A lot of my love for the place comes from its unspoiled character, from the pioneering feeling you get from being one of very few tourists, and from it's non-sanitised atmosphere. (Yes, it can pong a bit.)

Another reason that strikes me is that Dominica is not like you expect. We all have a vision of "Caribbean" in our heads, comprised in varying measures of beaches, cricket, rum, Bob Marley and Jack Sparrow. When you arrive there for the first time, you find Dominica looks very little like that. "Hey," you think, "this isn't like the catalogues - it must be the real thing!"

This Heineken ad (a very popular beer in Dominica, though I prefer the local Kubuli) hits the nail on the head.

Avoid the cliché, if you want to be authentic.

Fishermen picture by the author. Ooo!

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Comedy smooths conflict

Classroom tips for all

So, I'm visiting the primary school at Mahaut, and listening in on a young teacher with her class. It's a scorching hot day and despite her lively presentation style the pupils are slouching at their desks.

Young Teacher has two options:
1. Yell at them to sit up straight (expected result: grudging compliance, and the kids think she is a slave driver).
2. Give them a cheery suggestion of the "hey kids, let's all stand up and shake out the tiredness" variety (expected result: the kids do it, but roll their eyes, and think she is a dweeb).

Of course, like the young Tony Blair she finds a Third Way.

She gives a huge yawn, and cries "OH! I am SO tired!" Surprised, the kids all look up. "Oh! I can hardly stand," she continues. "I have to sit down!" As she staggers theatrically to a stool, the kids start to smile. The smiles turn to laughter as - bump! - her head hits the desk. And when the snoring starts, pure hysteria reigns (hey, they are seven years old). Then - another yawn, and she starts to stretch, to stand, to straighten up. Of course, the kids are right there with her - stretching, wide awake, and thoroughly impressed by their new teacher.

Good NLP, good psychology, good comedy, good job.

Or, as the kids on Dominica say, "Faaaan-tastic!"



PS Young Teacher is the lady jumping highest in this video. Her colleague on the right had just had a flood-bourne boulder take out her classroom. More on the blond lady and her work at show-me-wow.com.

The Big Three

How to guarantee a hit!

They say there are three surefire components to making a hit concept. They are:

1) SEX!
2) DEATH!
3) HUMOUR!

Actually, I should qualify that a little.

Sex can be replaced by nudity, or bare legs (or, in Japanese animation, little brief shots of little white briefs). Death need not actually occur - the threat of it is enough. And you do not always need all three to make a hit. Baywatch was sex and death with very little humour; Benny Hill was sex and humour with very little death; and Die Hard (or any other action movie) is death and humour with usually just one sex scene.

But if you can squeeze all three in to your concept, you will probably find yourself laughing all the way to the bank. James Bond is one obvious example - though his narrative structure helps.

And here's another one...

The Heart Attack Grill is a brilliant example of using experience design to make a thoroughly commoditised product - burgers and fries - into a hit. The fatty food is advertised as dangerous but "worth dying for", with burgers getting names like "The Triple Bypass" and cigarettes being sold as the ultimate desert. The staff are dressed as naughty nurses and dorky doctors. Any of course the neighbours are furious.

Sex, death and humour, folks - in a burger joint. The place is a runaway success - and they are getting eighty e-mails per hour asking for the franchise.

Look, gasp, and learn. Just keep your hands where we can see them.

(Another great example of a service using the Big Three here.)

Naughty nurse image by RocketCityPoet at flickr

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Starting badly - on purpose

The art of lowering expectations

The Blog-o-Sphere is going crazy for this guy. If you've not encountered him yet, he's Paul Potts, a Welsh cellphone salesman who turned up on a TV talent show in a cheap suit, with a bad haircut, and the facial expression of a freshly beaten puppy-dog. "Aw," we all thought, "a valiant loser", and prepared to cringe.

Then, he did this.

Oh my goodness, goodness me. And yes, you are seeing a professional TV presenter in tears.

Now I do not want to take away from Paul's gifts at all. He has a terrific voice, and a unique star quality. The record labels are lining up to sign him, and I think he will do very well indeed. But his gutsy musical performance was not the only reason that the crowd went crazy.

Deliberately or not, Paul massaged the crowd's expectations downwards before he started to sing. His appearance, his manner, and most especially his self-demeaning expression caused us to file him under "mostly harmless". Then, when he did a very good job, he blew us away by exceeding our expectations so thoroughly.

It's an old showbiz trick, seen in it's simplest form when the juggler drops a ball during an early, fairly simple part of his routine. Later, when he is juggling the six razor sharp knives we are all thinking back to the dropped ball and expecting disaster. But of course, the dropped ball was a deliberate play, lowering our expectations to make the later material seem more impressive.

I've even used it myself - starting a stage musical with one guy thrashing gamely away on an ill-tuned piano. You could sense the audience thinking "Oh God, two hours of this?" just seconds before the fake backdrop fell and the (previously hidden) professional rock band blew in on the twelfth bar...

I've talked a lot about what I call the Boom-wowowow-BOOM! dramatic structure in various posts. One way to really make the first eye-opener hit home is to briefly lower customer expectations just before things get really good. Then, when you hit 'em with both barrels, the Boom! effect is even more pronounced. (A great example is the Star Trek Experience in Vegas, with it's purposefully cheesy opening set-up.) It's a combination of two factors - heightened contrast between our low expectation and what we finally get, and the simple tension release that comes from things turning out better than we feared.

So, deliberately lowering expectations is a highly effective technique to use in any experiential offering. It's also a bold one, as it can easily go wrong if the customers walk out before you turn the corner. Just make sure that your audience is already committed to staying more than a few seconds (or is unable to leave) before you start to scare them with carefully rehearsed amateurism...

Newsflash: Paul won the competition and is now recording his debut CD.
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Star Trek Experience image by cromely at flickr

Marketing for the bladder

Making the most of customers who "just drop in"

We had a monster event in my town yesterday - for the first time in 45 years, our team was in the final of the cup. I'm talking about football of course, the type you play with your feet. (If you are one of those who play football with their hands, you can think of it as the Superbowl, German style.)

As might be expected, the town was packed. Everything was decorated red and black, the public viewing areas were full, and every pub, restaurant and ice cream parlour had TVs inside and out. This being Germany, beer flowed copiously, and - of course - the public toilets were overstretched.

But not as overstretched as the pub landlord we encountered at one of our favourite bars in a side-street beside the main viewing area. He was (politely, but with obvious signs of stress) asking everyone approaching his door if they wanted to buy a drink, or just use the facilities. Every one who just wanted to pee, he turned away. He must have turned away literally hundreds of fans. They took it well, but that's not the point.

Now, two things are important to know here.

1) This is a truly excellent bar with terrific food, but which is not especially well known in the town.
2) All the people he was excluding were local folks (after all, they were there to support the team).

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

This landlord was presented with an opportunity to impress a couple of hundred local people with a good experience. Lord knows how much he would spend on advertising to get that many people to put their heads inside the door. Instead of politely disappointing the happy throng, he could have given them a cracking welcome.

It would only have meant buying in a few dozen extra toilet rolls, employing an extra member of staff to keep things clean, maybe even decorating the loos in football colours. Better still, he could have given those few hundred casual visitors a positive surprise - how about a free drink next week, or a half-price voucher for his excellent (but widely unknown) food?

Folks, if you are in the hospitality biz, all those people coming in to use the "bathroom" are potential customers. Do you want to send them home, or give them a reason to come back and stay?

P.S. The result of the game?









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Work•Play•Experience: get the book

My e-book is ready to download

Twelve show business tools for your business:

• Storyboarding
• Showing hidden values
• Prequels and sequels
• Depth and meaning
  
• Stagebuilding
• Backstage
• Light
• Costume
• Rehearsal
• Getting the lines right
• Letting stars be stars
• Timing

Download the 20 pages here. It's free.

All comments and feedback gratefully received...
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One man, one blade, & twenty Microsoft execs

Theatrical presentation style brings big bucks...

It's a rare day when I post a direct link to another article (I like my blog to be as rich in original content as I can make it), but this was just too terrific. My treasured Service Innovation colleague Markus Hormess pointed me to this FastCompany piece.

The backstory: It's 2004. Microsoft has invited three brand designers to present identities for the Xbox 360. Two huge firms (responsible for clients like FedEx and Amazon), and a little company from Vermont, called JDK Design.

"... Some 20 members of the gaming division gathered to hear the back-to-back-to-back presentations. First up was Michael Jager, JDK's creative director. Standing before the tribunal, Jager illustrated his vision through a combination of street theater, design psychology, and cultural fluency.

Comparing the original Xbox with the Incredible Hulk, Jager used a razor to slash an X in a sheet of paper and then thrust his head through the hole. "X today is all AARGGHHH!" he bellowed. Pure aggressive power. He then withdrew his head, flipped the paper, and revealed how that X could become a doorway, "an invitation to an experience."

Jager acknowledged power as a critical component separating Xbox from its competitors but urged the company to see it--and express it-- differently. "Our approach was to transition Xbox from this hulk of escaping power into this quiet power with elegance and grace," he recalls. "The analogy we used was Bruce Lee." And thus were two firms felled by a single stone.

"We were all just blown away by JDK," (Xbox boss) Hall remembers. "As soon as Michael and his team walked out, I looked around the room and knew it was just a formality to sit through the other presentations.
(Quoted in part, edited for length, original here.)

What a terrific tale. One man with a theatrical mindset, a flipchart, and an good undertanding of experience meaning blows the big guys out of the water. And in doing so, he underlines several of my own personal business theses:

- 99 times out of 100, a flipchart is better than Powerpoint.
- Theater is a powerful route to emotion.
- The presentation is YOU!
- People buy from people, dammit.

Rock on, JDK!

Flying the boring skies...

How airlines could change their world - for free

(This blog post was written in 2007. then, some of these ideas have become reality - but airlines still offer largely indistinguishable flying experiences.)

I have done a lot of flying lately, and - like for most frequent fliers - it has been slowly driving me insane. It's not just the interchangeable interiors and workclothes of most airlines, it's the really simple stuff - things that could be changed for free for a far better experience.

Take in-flight announcements for example. Why are they all the same? "We would like to welcome... thank you for choosing... stow your tray-tables ... range of duty-free products.... pleasant rest of your journey..." I mean really, guys, I can "talkalong" with every one of those announcements. Aaaargh!

What a huge opportunity for an airline to stand out from the pack - for absolutely no cost!

The ones who did this best in my recent travels were Liat, the smallest airline I used. The chief stewardess simply got on the intercom and told us a little about our destination as part of the standard announcement. It was mildly interesting, rather charming, and it got people talking. How easy is that?

Imagine a big airline flying into JFK. Why not show a five minute image clip of the city just before landing* - you'd get the film for free from the NYC tourist authority. Why not tell me what the big events in the Big Apple will be this weekend, and let the crewmember (or even passenger) with the best Noo-Yoik accent recommend their favourite parks or local dishes? Heck, let's keep in super-simple: why not just play New York New York on the dang intercom as we come in to land? "Staaaaart spreading the news...." This would cost nothing, folks!

Or, for a small investment, get a good copywriter, author or - better yet - comedian to write your inflight announcements. They could even record them for you.

Another low-tech idea, that wouldn't cost much. When folks get into the plane, give them free postcards. Let them choose between the city they are leaving, and the one they are heading for. The cards could be prepaid, and have a discrete airline logo on the back. Then, when they get off the plane, offer to post the cards for them. Cheap advertising (with an implied endorsement factor), and it extends your user experience both ways...

Given a little more cash, technology could make the flight a heap more interesting. If GoCars can combine GPS technology with a travel guide CD in a scooter, then a big airline can do it for a 747-400. How about a "What's out the window" track on the inflight audio channel? (On flights with very regular routing, you wouldn't even need the GPS). In the more distant future, I can imagine interrogable airplane and car windows. See something interesting out of the window? Just click on it - and learn all about it.

Or how about a seat-to-seat text-based "chat" system? Find out who else on the flight is awake, interesting, and happy to converse. In the business class, it's an instant networking party. For the rest of the plane, it's establishing a community of your customers.

I sometimes feel that airlines - like Victorian mental institutions - are just trying to keep us as quiet and sleepy as possible. Commoditisation, here we come.




* Fabian Segelström points out that this film might interrupt the end of your in-flight-movie. Good call. Instead - what about after landing, during the taxi to the parking position, instead of the boring "Welcome to XYZ, the time here is ABC, and the weather is what you can see out of the window. Thank you for flying Boring Air".

Surprise and pleasure?

When can unfulfilled expectations cause a smile?

I've recently been moving further into stand-up comedy, diversifying from the situational comedy which is my main work. While reading up on gag writing, I stumbled across this statement by stand-up guru Basil White:

"We know people assign expectations to an experience while they're still having the experience. We know that when people become aware of how they assigned the wrong expectation to an experience, the brain gives us a pleasure response that makes us laugh."

There is some very "experiential" language in there. Coincidence?

Basil's words got me thinking. I've always been a firm believer that the easiest way to make a customer happy is to give them more than they expect. We also know that surprises - even simple ones like suddenly appearing or disappearing - are an old slapstick tradition. I wonder how the themes surprise, pleasure and customer satisfaction (or, more interestingly, customer sacrifice) interrelate? What is the brain circuitry or conditioning behind it?

Of course, there is a difference between comedy and service design here, as customers invest more than audiences do. Their investment allows them to demand pleasant surprises - you're not going to gain a lot of fans by pouring icy water down the customer's trousers at the checkout. Mind you, they might enjoy it if your trousers were the ones getting the soaking.

So, some thinking homework for everyone - what function should surprise have in customer experiences?