The more things change the more they stay the same

My MBA project was on service marketing, specifically how art theaters in the UK could market their films. I wrote about customer experience, building a community by teaching the customer about the experience, what it had to offer, and that it was good. I wrote about the ins and outs of marketing art, and how important the experience was for art marketing.

I reread it the other day (mind you I wrote it in 1997) and it was interesting how the verbiage may have changed but the concepts haven't. We may do a lot of business over our websites, but we spend as much time considering how people navigate them as we spend analyzing how the customer experiences them. We talk about change agents, and influencers and empowering, all using social media tools. These are the new teachers; the people that help us understand the process and understand the experience so we can enjoy it. A large part of enjoying art is experiencing art.

This last bit is interesting to me, as it seems we are moving towards the idea that, whatever the product might be, a major part of purchasing or deciding to purchase is the experience. At one time this was strictly a “marketing the arts” concept. But now we are becoming an "experiencing" society, where the experience is just as important as the product itself. This can be tricky and exciting all at the same time, as experience is very subjective.  But it is fascinating to discover all the ways a person can experience something. Forums/chat rooms/blogs are wonderful examples of this. And I quite enjoy it.