This week I’m excited to join Joe Pine in hosting a workshop that will kick off our Experience Platform Multiclient study.
Joe is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and management advisor. He is co-founder of Strategic Horizons LLP, a thinking studio dedicated to helping businesses conceive and design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings. His best-selling book written with Jim Gilmore, The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage, shows how goods and services are no longer enough; what companies must offer today are experiences – memorable events that engage each customer in a personal way.
Joe and I have teamed up to explore the many ways in which platforms are now intersecting with the Experience Economy in powerful ways. We have undertaken the first global survey of experience platforms, creating a rich data set that provides insights into the types of experience platforms and how to leverage them for future growth and competitive positioning. These range from large experience marketplaces to smaller specialized platforms that match curated or newly created experiences to select target groups, such as company employees or highly valued customers. The study is designed for senior decision-makers thinking seriously about enhancing their experience platform strategy and engagement.
We have organized the Experience Platform Multiclient study to deliver this analysis and are thrilled by the response. A diverse and influential group of companies have decided to join the project. Multiclient studies are an interesting and compelling way to explore a new emerging space. It offers the opportunity for a client to fund in-depth and actionable research on a topic of strategic importance. Because it is jointly funded, it provides an opportunity to secure strategic research and actionable insights at a much lower cost than a direct consulting engagement.
We recognize that companies may be willing to share information but obviously not all. Certain information needs to remain confidential for competitive reasons. For this reason, we will also engage each participating company on a one-on-one propriety basis. The final deliverable of the Multiclient study will be a combination of the analysis and collective dialogue with additional propriety analysis that builds on the one-on-one consultation. So, while it is an approach that brings together a group of companies, participating companies will also receive exclusive analysis and insights.
We have a lot of ground to cover in the workshop this week, not least is how the demand for experiences will unfold over the next year and beyond. No one expects business to return exactly the way that it existed at the beginning of 2020. However, there are strong signs there is considerable pent-up demand for experiences. Recent press reports point to demand beginning to rebound across a wide range of experiences.1
At the same time, the rise of platform business models is changing how experience stagers can connect with customers, often at significant scale. We are going to explore many different experience platforms in our workshop this week. By reducing transaction costs and enhancing network effects, experience platforms are well-positioned to shape how supply and demand will be met.
Let me illustrate one fun example here. Last October Sendoso and Cameo announced an integration.2 The agreement enables Sendoso’s customers to connect with prospects or customers by sending custom-recorded celebrity videos available through Cameo’s platform. This tie-up is further enhanced by an integration with Salesforce, an even larger platform providing customer relationship management services to thousands of enterprises worldwide.
In the past, it would have been nearly impossible for a marketing, sales, or CX team member to secure a personalized video from a celebrity like Lance Bass, Carol Baskin, Shooter McGavin, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Bethany Frankel, or Paula Abdul that they could send directly to a prospect. With these integrations, it is not only possible but relatively easy. It merely takes scrolling through Cameo’s sizable inventory of athletes, musicians, comedians and actors, selecting one, and sending them a outline of what they should say and who they should address. The explosive growth of Cameo and the many positive reviews it has received suggests these experiences hit the mark.3
As this example shows, the growth of experience platforms offers enterprises new ways to create personal, fun and even dramatic experiences.
To learn more about the power of combining experiences with platform business models, see the 30-minute webinar that Joe and I recorded last November.
If you would like learn more about the results of multiclient study, see the XPlatform Toolkit. The XPlatform Strategy Toolkit provides the context, frameworks and specific steps leaders need to develop an experience platform.
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Footnotes
https://sendoso.com/blog/october-product-launch/
https://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/celebrity-video-messages-cameo-review/