Usefulness. Inspiration. Invisibility.

Max Lenderman—founder of School, a Project agency, recently visited our Sydney & Melbourne offices to deliver an epic pressie on the Future of Experiential.  The video link below recaps his keynote and shares the three main factors of experiential marketing that showcase purpose and set brands apart in the future.  After all, it was our founder George P. Johnson that first stated, Make No Small Plans.  Are you ready to build the Trifecta together?

What drives us?

Your teams across ANZ are at full throttle through the end of the year creating, building, and delivering epic work. We asked a few to tell us what they’re up to, what drives them and connects our purpose day to day.

Companies can disappear overnight if they dare to decide they know what’s best for their market, instead of listening to what their customers are saying what they want.

People 1st

Demonstrating her purpose to create experiences that inspire the world, our recently promoted Senior Account Director, Trish Strong, was just named 2019 Producer of the Year by the Australian Event Awards.  Trish was unable to be at the award gala as she was on-site in San Francisco, however, we Facetimed her during the show, and asked her to respond.  Once she thanked the Academy she told us, “it’s been an epic year on my team from the number of events and the type of activations we’re bringing to the table. Bringing a new pulse to the event industry in Japan was one of my proudest moments, and I am grateful for the opportunities that have been dealt my way. I’ve grown tremendously since joining GPJ 18 months ago, and can’t wait to see where the journey goes.”  Congrats Trish on your Producer of the Year win, as well as your recent promotion to Senior Account Director! Hip, hip, hooray!

The coolest purpose you never knew

What do homewares, insurance, toys, food banks, and birds have in common? Kick-ass purposes, that’s what. We love discovering which brands are driven by a greater purpose and how it’s showcased in products, people and marketing.

The thinking behind author Eric Ries’ book ‘The lean start-up,’ has revolutionised the business world by helping companies realise it is not important to create or supply a ‘perfect’ product or service. The key, rather, is to provide a product the customer actually wants and is happy to provide feedback on, for a continuous improvement loop.

Dropbox proved this concept when they increased their customers by 3900% by iterating their product much faster in order to test what customers really wanted, early and often. As referenced on The Lean Start up website.

So, can you give the customer the experience they want to generate better results?

The key is 3 simple concepts:

1 – Listen to your customers to better understand what they want.

 Exceptional customer service is vital, and it is not just for online companies like Amazon, The Iconic and Zappos. Providing ultimate satisfaction to your customer sells itself. You rely on your marketing tactics to draw in new customers, but it’s just as important to use customer service-based marketing to strengthen relationships with existing ones. Retaining existing customers ensures you retain revenue.

Listen to your customers. They are the lifeblood of your business and it is vital to engage with them. Successful brands understand their customers want to interact with peers and learn something of value. Make them feel part of what you are selling, conduct surveys, hold roundtables, host focus groups, share customer stories, host experiential events. Most of all, thank them for their support and loyalty.

2 – Engage in building stronger customer relationships through communication.

– Build more accurate and detailed customer personas.

Personas are essential for marketing efforts, as they help you define whom you’re creating content for, what your audience cares about, and what they need to move through the buyer’s journey

– Two-way communication.

To retain customers and maintain the momentum of your online growth, you’ll need to keep those customers as engaged as possible. Ask questions, gather feedback, respond to comments, and engage your followers in conversation. The more responsive you are, and the more your followers feel they’re heard, the more likely they’ll be to stick around and become advocates.

3 – Deliver personalised experiences based on insights.

Make customers feel like they’re the only one having a particular experience. To effectively reach and engage audiences, brands need to create personal experiences by optimising their online and offline touchpoints and gathering data to gain insights into customer wants and behaviour. Yet organisations are struggling to get to grips with the vast amount of data available to them. Nearly two-thirds of businesses (62%) often feel overwhelmed by the volume of incoming data and only 27% can turn it into useful, actionable information. As reported by Oracle.

Doing nothing isn’t the answer.

While many organisations are in the same boat, there is no excuse for complacency in the drive to turn customer experience into a competitive advantage. It’s time to focus on speed of implementation (or growth) of the above three concepts in order to provide the finest experience for your customers – and generate real results for your organisation.