Thursday 15 January 2009

Authentic experience - the next level of economic value?

I know it is becoming a little bit too much of a recurring theme, but today's TED lecture is a cracker. It is fairly uncontroversial and familiar terrain (the progressive shift from products to services and then to selling experiences to differentiate to the customer). Joseph Pines basically argues that "authentic" experience is becoming a key to successs and provides a nifty corporate 2x2 matrix ("true to self" vs "be what you say you are") to show various flavours of experience. He gives a few simple commercial experience examples and manages to frame it all with a quote from Hamlet, all in 14 minutes.

Here it is:

1 comment:

Ronaldo said...

Another interesting TED clip. I agree with the authentic experience idea, although I don't think it's new or can be considered the "next level" of economic value.
The key, in my mind, is "rendering the experience as being authentic".
The rest is nice packaging: ladder, 2x2, fancy quote...very clever presentation though!

In the end, it's about brand image, marketing, advertising and understanding the customer. All focused on making the customer "believe" the experience is "more authentic" than what the competition has on offer. But I'll bet two tailors on a high street 100 years ago tried equally hard to convince potential customers their "product" (which is based on a commodity - textiles - turned into goods - clothes - sold as a service - hand-made to fit) was the more "authentic".