The "Shanghai Rose" that has swept Xiaohongshu has brought these three inspirations to store experience marketing

During the Valentine's Day that just passed, we gained a lot of ideas for visual creativity and experiential marketing. The giant roses in Shanghai dominated the screen. The romance and response brought by the giant roses are actually a microcosm of experiential marketing. This article reviews the experiential marketing of stores and shares it with you.

If you are in Shanghai on Valentine's Day this year, you may be flooded with the following words: "The Bund BFC giant rose Zhang Garden giant bouquet North Bund waterfall rose Sinan Mansion garden building"

The giant rose standing on the rooftop terrace of the Bund BFC Financial Center uses the form of an art installation to visualize the scene of Valentine's Day, creating a romantic atmosphere to attract people. Even though it was rainy that day, there was still an endless stream of people checking in.

The Bund BFC Giant Rose

The romance and response brought by the giant rose is actually a microcosm of experiential marketing. "The experience economy will surpass the service industry and become the next economic form after the service economy." The prediction of American futurist Alfred Toffler in "Future Shock" became the beginning of experiential marketing. Later, Dr. Robert Schmidt systematically pointed out in "Experiential Marketing" that it is a way of thinking that redefines and designs marketing from the perspective of consumers' senses, emotions, thinking, actions, and associations.

Samsung was the first to verify this theory in the business arena. In the mobile phone market, which was dominated by three powers at the time, Samsung was the first to set up experience houses in crowded places such as department stores and high-speed rail stations, allowing consumers to directly experience the product functions. "This move is considered the key to Samsung's rapid market dominance."

IKEA has developed a more advanced version of experiential marketing. It cleverly broke the fragmented sales method of the furniture industry at the time, using the method of building model rooms to create a real home atmosphere and sell products in sets. This method not only highlights the brand's own recognition, but also triggers a buying boom.

Compared with sensory experience, Haagen-Dazs cleverly traced back to the Danish love story, transformed itself into the material carrier of love, and created a sense of emotional belonging. Nike Experience Center provides consumers with a way of sports life, liberating clothing, shoes and other products from a single object dimension and sublimating them into the experience of physical action. Harley chose to become the spiritual symbol of "the integration of machine and humanity", and motorcycle-related products and tattoos are regarded as identity symbols by consumers.

It is not difficult to see that experiential marketing has evolved along the direction of "sensory satisfaction-emotional belonging-spiritual totem-value target".

In recent years, experiential marketing remains a hot topic in the business world. Whether it is a large brand that has been around for more than 50 years or a new consumer that is just starting out, how they choose to activate the "experience" code to face young people with more diverse personalities and choices has become a new topic that is constantly being challenged.

With the inspiration from roses, we reviewed some brand cases of experiential marketing, and tried to give you some inspiration from two aspects: old methods verified by history and new ways of brand exploration.

01 The key to experience is atmosphere

Going back to the early days of brand creation, especially for fast-moving consumer goods brands that target young people, using experience to capture people's hearts has always been an important strategy for brands. Daofa Research Institute has observed that some methods that have been proven successful by history are still effective. For example, adding experience areas to stores to start a new scene. I DO, which Daofa observed not long ago, stood out from a group of mature and stable jewelry brands by adding experience areas outside the sales area of ​​regular stores.

Another obvious example is Decathlon. As a retailer of sporting goods, Decathlon realized early on that encouraging consumers to experience a sport is an effective way to accelerate consumer decision-making.

In the past, Decathlon set up small sports experience scenes in its typical warehouse-style shopping space, such as table tennis, basketball hoops, and hula hoops. However, in the ever-changing market environment, Decathlon placed trampolines and outdoor equipment in a targeted manner according to the store location and community customer characteristics, creating a children's play scene and turning it into a public space in the community. Insights into customer groups tailored to local conditions and a high degree of "autonomy" by store managers have become the key to marketing success.

In addition to adding new areas and renewing scenes, the brand will create social interactions and marketing events in stores, allowing store employees to meet with users face to face, creating interpersonal communication scenes and a sense of presence.

"If I could do it again, I would never be so shy. Even if I had to resort to any means and risk my reputation, I would still run forward! Facing the cold stares and ridicule, even if I fell in the crowd, I would still crawl to you and shout out the four words I want to say the most: Give! Me! Full! Up!"

This joke comes from McDonald's "Golden Bowl" campaign. As long as you bring a golden container to the store, the staff will fill you with a free bowl of McFlurry. Young people bring their own pots, pans, and bowls of various sizes and shapes to the store. The bustling scene is no different from the excitement of a market, making "bring your own bowl and work hard" a popular social media trend.

In the cross-border linkage with the game "Genshin Impact", KFC used a similar interactive approach. Users need to loudly say the connection code "Meet in another world, enjoy delicious food" to the store clerk to get the limited set meal and limited joint badge at the same time. The slogan with a strong middle school atmosphere and the wonderful sense of humor of the collision of real life make almost every KFC store perform "social death scene" at all times. Related topics have also become hot topics, bringing new traffic and a younger impression to the brand.

This approach of "using interaction to create hot spots and attract customers to the store" actually transforms users from one-way passive information receivers to active two-way interactive players with the brand. The rational and emotional consumption needs of users are respected to the maximum extent.

From this perspective, when brand stores attract young people through interactive promotion, young people also endorse the brand through interesting experiences. Both parties gain what they want and achieve a win-win situation.

02 Stores become “pilgrimage sites”

If a moderate "sense of atmosphere and interactivity" is a direct and effective method, then how to turn the store itself into an ultimate destination for experience requires brands to spend more time exploring and analyzing. The Knife Skills Research Institute has noticed that brand stores are exploring differentiated forms of experiential marketing. After observing the actions of some store entrants, we have summarized three directions for experiential marketing: fan pilgrimage sites, cultural atmosphere fields, and life test circles.

1. Treat stores as the evolution of brand personality, and build pilgrimage sites through spatial narrative and immersive experience

For stores, "appearance" is an extremely important weapon. Lucy Johnson, the author of "The Art of New Retail", once emphasized that turning stores into art galleries, turning product selection and display into performance art, and turning consumption into a journey of discovery are the winning strategies for offline stores.

Apparel retail is a category that focuses on consumer experience, and offline sales have greater room for growth than online sales. Consumers are also eager to enter stores out of habit, and experience the fabrics and textures through actual wearing experiences and visiting exhibitions. Bananain has made it clear that its stores will become a city destination. In the details of the location, layout, and furnishings of its first store in Shanghai, it pays attention to meticulous craftsmanship, showing a "redesign" that breaks the routine.

The colorful socks wall at the entrance of the store, the simple and technological store design, the classified digital labels, and the matrix-like display create a technological experience. It also conveys a differentiated brand symbol - Bananain is a technology company.

In addition to grasping the two keywords of "appearance design" and "space experience", some brands have also given their own set of storytelling logic to create user minds in the creation of store experience. Bosie's store on Huaihai Road was born out of the concept of interstellar travel, deconstructing the mystery and science fiction of the interstellar into space scenes. The original single clothing category has been extended to a complex format of superimposed fashion toys, snacks and desserts, interactive three-dimensional installations, and pet intimacy under the joint planning of user needs and brands. Its founder once publicly stated that super stores should be positioned as "churches" or "dojos."

In addition, the store's display layout and the design of the game-like mechanism have also become essential tasks for creating a store experience. When the "personalized" shopping guides of traditional beauty and cosmetics stores were criticized, HARMAY used larger and more comprehensive warehouse-style shelves and a "big brand sample" sales model to turn the store into a tourist attraction.

Young people's visit to Huamei is like traveling. There may be hidden Easter eggs on every shelf. The "no makeup in, full makeup out" trial brings great fun of exploration. From "buying" to "shopping", Huamei's spatial experience and scene proposal are the core blessing to extend the stay time.

2. Use stores as a vehicle to discuss hot social issues and emphasize cultural experience

Rather than being keen on thinking about how to enhance brand power through immersive experience, some brands are more concerned about how to showcase the brand’s cultural values ​​and continue to attract core customers.

Since 2021, Starbucks has opened a series of special theme stores. Among them, the intangible cultural heritage experience store builds a bridge of communication between intangible cultural heritage and modern cities; the shared space concept store meets the needs of multi-functional flexible office and business social space; and the green workshop creates an immersive garden business office experience.

The stores have become a vehicle for Starbucks to explore social and cultural issues, providing a cultural experience and atmosphere for the new generation of consumers. This phenomenon of "the brand tracing cultural issues and letting consumers pay for the experience" is a marketing attempt by the brand to dig deep into traditional culture and explore the cultural atmosphere "nearby". The internal motivation is the public's inner desire to "seek rooted identity and belonging".

If you walk into Santonban's "into the force" concept store on Anfu Road in Shanghai, you will find that the brand has deliberately ceded about 50 square meters of space in front of the store to the Anfu Road neighborhood. This move is not only to integrate into the cultural texture of the community, but also shows Santonban's determination to establish a symbiotic relationship with the surrounding area. At the same time, employee catwalks, retro markets, and flash mobs have become Santonban's means of exploring the possibilities of spatial experience. As a window for direct dialogue with consumers, more cultural explorations are brewing and staged in the store.

Returning to the brand level, one thing cannot be ignored: experiential marketing is not just a product war, but also a cognitive war. Douglas Holt, a professor at Harvard Business School, pointed out in "Cultural Strategy" that "consumers flock to brands that embody their ideals because these brands help them express their personal wishes."

"Culture" was originally an abstract concept, but in brand stores, it is translated into a concrete cognitive experience.

3. Create new scenarios for product categories through periodic activities and store linkage

Behind the intensive store operations, the core principles of many brands seem to be the same: to cater to young people and to maintain innovation. The difficulty lies in how to use the form and content to create an experience that exceeds expectations time and time again.

Cross-border stores and periodic activities have become the direction of some brands' attempts. For example, Nayuki chose to open a bookstore and launched a reading space-style store; Mixue Ice City built the Snow King Castle experience store and launched coconut milk stewed noodles and buttermilk ice cream; Heytea built a pet experience store to build a new life and leisure landscape... Brands are trying to redefine the scene connection between products and users, and establish experience stratification and categorization from standard stores to various theme stores.

At the same time, cooperation with novel IPs and sub-circles, original theme exhibitions, flash events, etc. are common experience methods used by brands in recent years. For example, creating markets, attracting fans from different groups, cross-border flash events, and exploring new consumption scenarios. Periodic activities bring unique trendy social experiences to stores.

03 Behind experiential marketing, stores need to define the discourse power of lifestyle

Behind the store experience marketing, there are certainly considerations of offline traffic pools, potential transactions, and brand value preaching. But the deeper point is that brands want to enter the context of young people and grab the right to speak on "young lifestyles and ideal life pictures." As "The Fourth Consumer Era" said: "The ultimate meaning of consumption lies in how to live a more fulfilling life." This means that more and more consumers are willing to invest their energy in things that truly improve the quality of life for themselves and others. In terms of the priority of consumer choices, compared with rational functional decisions, the new generation of people pay more attention to sensory experience, emotional connection and meaningful scenes.

This requires brands to truly understand the needs of young people and their underlying values. After all, what brands need to continuously create experiences is insight that goes far beyond creativity and whether there are new stories to tell.

In addition, it is worth noting that when brands create new experiences through stores, this is not the end of communication, but the starting point for managing user expectations.

How can brand stores avoid falling into the trap of homogenization while innovating scenes and accepting consumers? After the temporary excitement, how can the scene experience be precipitated into a truly long-term influence? These are still issues that require long-term renovation and thinking.

Author: Yincheng; Editor: Jingmin

Source public account: Knife Skills Research Institute (ID: DigipontClub), insight into new consumption, empowerment of new brands, analysis of new marketing, and creation of good Chinese brands.