Jonathan Yaffe is not joking when he says our economy is changing. No, he isn’t talking about the rise and fall of the stock market or the way consumers distribute their money. What he is talking about is a culture shift, from a things economy to one focused on experiences. Jonathan knows this because he saw it shift first-hand during his days with Red Bull, where he learned the power of experiences, but also the deficiencies within the experience industry — especially when it came to ROI.

“We were spending billions of dollars a year on experiences and it clearly worked. But what drove me absolutely crazy is that we had no data. We had no ROI. We believed that we were changing people’s behavior by creating these massive large-scale experiences all over the world. But we had no idea how they were actually working real-time.”

On this episode of Marketing Trends, Jonathan, who is now the Co-Founder and CEO of AnyRoad, discusses why it’s time for marketers to stop focusing on their products, and instead think about r how to turn their brand into an experience that will drive lasting lifetime value. Jonathan also details wheat makes for successful experiential marketing strategies and which companies are doing it best.

Main Takeaways:

• It’s a Lifestyle: Most companies will need to shift their focus toward marketing experiences and away from actual products. As more and more consumers begin participating in experiences, their brand loyalty is more likely to grow, which will lead to more sales from that consumer over time.
• Are You Making Money Though?: One of the biggest issues currently facing experiential marketing is that most brands do not have a comprehensive strategy behind how to understand the ROI their experiences are bringing in. In order to successfully understand experiential marketing, you need to have a 360-degree view of who your customer is, what drives their buying behavior, and how you can build loyalty with that customer over time.
• Changed Behavior: Experiential marketing is not about pushing products but rather it’s about changing a consumer’s behavior so their buying habits naturally increase over time. If a consumer only visits a yoga class once a month, marketers need to begin to figure out ways they can alter that same consumer’s buying behavior so that they will visit that same class multiple times a month.

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