Drilling for Diamonds

Back in 1999, Joseph Pine and James Gilmore wrote a paradigm-busting book called The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage.

Pine and Gilmore argued that the future of marketing would belong to companies who moved from pushing goods and services to delivering “sensational” value-adding experiences.

Since then, a barrage of books have appeared on customer experiences. But the best book I’ve found is Experience the Message, How Experiential Marketing is Changing the Branded World.

Max Lenderman is creative director of GMR Marketing, one of America’s top event marketing companies. Lenderman has written a must read book. My copy is marked heavily with annotations.

Pine and Gilmore remain the heavy-weight thinkers in this field. I call their book The Experience Economy, the “old testament.” Lenderman’s book deserves the title “new testament.”

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I’ve had lots of fun recently visiting ZARA fashion stores in Barcelona and Paris.

Customers flock to their stores, literally grabbing the latest fashions which seemingly come into their stores in a never-ending stream.

Zara is not just cool for its modestly priced, affordable clothes. What makes Zara really cool is its ultra-competitive business model which allows it to design and deliver product to its stores within 15 days.

Competitors typically take 9 months.

Zara’s designers start by attending the fashion shows looking for cool designs. They then produce small batches of imitation cool product which is shipped to stores to test for demand.

Product runs for popular lines then are scaled up. Zara avoids the big mistakes its competitors regularly make. Plus it doesn’t have to spend much on advertising because its customers are always coming back looking for the latest cool wear.

Compare that to competitors, where you wait around for the end of season sales.

No wonder Zara is so cool. Or should I say hot?

If you haven’t already, make sure you check out my other blog, The Naked Negotiator - The Secrets of Big Deals, Big Sales and Big Pitches - laid bare.

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