Experiential Marketing

Chapter Six Experience Design

The growth of experiential marketing spawned a global creative Renaissance and, as a result, a new design discipline formed: experience design.

Experience design represents the consolidation of a dozen design silos (including architecture, industrial design, theatrical design, and graphic design) into a single creative platform. The first mainstream multi-disciplinary creative format, experience design is critical to the success of experiential marketing in that it provides both form and function—and dictates the look and feel of live experiences. Experience design fuses strategy, creativity, and structure to communicate a message to a defined audience and stimulate a specific and pre-determined reaction.

Experiential marketing drives a brand’s strategy, but experience design translates that strategy into living, breathing, shareable moments. Only when you combine the strategy of experiential marketing with the engagement of experience design can you allow people to feel your brand.

Upwards of 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual. And because we absorb images 50 times faster than we absorb words, a brand experience is the fastest way to impact the hearts and minds of an audience—and motivate action. Experience design succeeds when it encourages and creates connections, both among the participants within a space and between those participants and a designed environment.

Creating Living Stories

The best experiences are designed ...