10/28/05

Why did you write this book?

Rhea:We’ve had a front row seat to observe the world’s best companies’ attempts to innovate and we have had the privilege of helping define industry’s best practices. We’ve been able to see those practices evolve. We now see the next evolution and want to share it because we know it works.

Shedroff: In essence, we’ve learned that providing a meaningful experience to customers is the best way for companies to gain an enduring competitive advantage.

What is the key take-away of the book?

Diller: Innovation is the best way to grow and the appropriate goal of innovation is evoking a meaningful experience. Making Meaning givescompanies a road map to organize themselves in a new way in order to innovate.

Rhea: To put it even more simply, the highest level of value for customers is meaning. For innovation to succeed, you need to focus on what customers value most.

Shedroff: Making Meaning is the fulfillment of the promise of experience marketing.

What is meaning?

Diller: Meaning is what we all use to make sense of our world. It is what gives us a sense that our lives have value.

Shedroff: Meaning is our understanding of how the world works. It transcends, and at the same time captures, those things such as emotion, status, lifestyle and values.

By naming 15 different “meaningful experiences,” couldn’t just about any contemporary marketing campaign qualify as “meaningful?” And haven’t most of these concepts been around in some form or another for decades? What’s new about this?

Diller: Through our work at Cheskin over the last 60 years, we’ve looked at thousands of product and brand innovations and expressions. Many are good but few are meaningful. They have been designed to provide different experiences, but very few touch people in a way that changes their lives. What’s new is that we’ve focused on those experiences that give people a sense that their lives have value.

Shedroff: We’ve often observed that companies touch on meaning accidentally. I’d add that what’s new is our belief that providing a meaningful experience can be a deliberate part of the innovation process.

How can all 15 of the meaning experiences be equally important? Wouldn’t there be some sort of hierarchy?

Rhea: We don’t believe that there is a natural hierarchy. Meaning is highly individual – it’s what is important to you as a customer. The question is how the customer individually relates to a product experience that creates a high level of value to them personally.

Shedroff: We’ve chosen to list meanings we believe are universally appealing. There is no hierarchy and the list is by no means exclusive.

How do you distinguish “meaning” from “values”?

Diller: Values are applied methods for acting on what we care about. But the common, underlying motivation is a meaning. Meaning is expressed in different values and behaviors depending on the individual and culture.

For example, the right to bear arms is a value guaranteed in the Bill of Right in the U.S. Constitution. But, the underlying meaning is peoples’ desire for security. Security is a meaning. In Japan it’s against the law own a gun, even for law enforcement. So, in Japan, the same meaning, “security,” is be expressed through very different values.

Duty is a meaning. Our country encourages expressions of duty through acts of patriotism, but expressions vary. In school children say the pledge of allegiance to the flag while some people fly the flag only once a year on the 4th of July and still others burn the flag in protest. The expressions vary dramatically, but the motivation – duty to one’s country – is the consistent underlying meaning.

Shedroff: To add on to what Steve is saying, values are associated with preferences and can be shaped by those around us, in other words “how do I define myself within this community?” How one chooses to express their values serves a greater personal meaning.

What gets in the way of meaning? (for business; for consumers)

Shedroff: A lot of things get in the way of meaning. Technology – people build things because they can. Emotions – we become enamored by the feelings we have and that can get in the way. Price – companies make decisions based on price and miss the opportunity to increase value. Function and delivery. Building a poor customer experience. All these get in the way of creating meaning.

Rhea: It’s the norm in business to define improving functionality, efficiency or profit margin as the path to creating value. But, if you’re focused on your own definition of meaning rather than the customer’s you miss the opportunity to do more. It’s the customer’s definition of meaning that counts. Once defined, the customer does the lion’s share of the work in making a meaningful experience.

What type of research have you done to show that meaning is important, is something companies should tap into, and is going to be a trend?

Diller: We’ve talked with thousands of people every year about the widest variety of products and services. In ALL cases it became clear that there’s an opportunity to focus on something of ultimate importance to people that marketers haven’t been aware of. Meaning itself isn’t a trend. We hope that making meaning will be a trend when companies realize they can use it to create lasting competitive advantage.

Rhea: Meaning must be unearthed through a carefully designed process rooted in customer understanding. We think the trend is that increasingly, customers are demanding that business provide meaning, not simply through great jobs but by creating meaningful experiences in the marketplace.

As a marketer, why should I just assume that meaning is important? How is this different from traditional marketing? How is it different from experience marketing?

Diller: Experience marketing doesn’t have the basis to distinguish between trivial experiences and more powerful ones. Trivial doesn’t deliver competitive advantage.

Shedroff: Meaningful experience is the fulfillment of the promise of experience marketing. In the book we explain that experience marketing has 5 dimensions – meaning is by far the most important.

Aren’t there plenty of wildly successful companies that do not do a good job at creating meaning? What does this tell you?

Rhea: It tells us that the competitive environment in that category is not keen. In some cases, it may be sufficient to just have the lowest price, or the product may have a functional advantage that no one else has. But if you’re selling in brown sugar water, you better consider creating meaningful experience. Meaning isn’t the only way to be successful but it is the most enduring.

In what market or industry is “meaning” most likely to be achieved? What industries are more likely to be successful at this? Why?

Rhea: Meaning can be achieved in any industry. Where it is most relevant is in categories that are most competitive. The most effective way to compete is to evoke meaning. Method cleaning products successfully competes against well-established, global companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Clorox because they are competing at the level of meaning. Method does what everyone else in the category does, but it provides these attributes within a context of meaning that connects with its customers’ desire for an experience of oneness and harmony. It has transformed cleaning from drudgery to a joy and overcome the perception that environmentally sound household cleaners are too weak to be effective.

Shedroff: In addition, success is more likely if a category is more reflective than habitual. An example is the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. It evokes the meaning of beauty by asking customers to reflect on the idea of real beauty before they buy soap and it allows them to expand their product line into a related category, skin care.

How do we know that meaning is what makes the companies successful? i.e., Maybe Starbucks is just popular because people prefer the coffee, or because they have more options, not because of some greater sense of “meaning” that they get from it.

Diller: We’re not saying that you have to connect at the meaning level to be successful – we’re saying it’s a differentiator. We know that Starbuck’s operates at a meaningful level through the way the customers describe their experiences, because they go beyond emotional description and status. Research shows that meaning is what people associate with the brand. Starbucks evokes the meaning of community.

What’s to say that efforts by companies like Kraft to create a “meaningful image” aren’t just PR tactics to overcome their negative reputations (i.e., being owned by Phillip Morris)?

Shedroff: Making meaning is not tactical it’s strategic. It’s not added at an end point but rather is the goal of a strategic development process.

How do we know there’s a demand for meaning among consumers if there’s no good way to measure this demand?

Diller: There are, in fact, many very effective ways to measure this demand, and we “detect” it quite strongly whenever we search for it. Regardless of the methodology, all it takes is asking well-crafted questions about what meanings matter to people and you get very easily-analyzed results. In the book we talk about indirect questioning as one technique to get at meaning. Combined with the right approaches to market sizing and framing the opportunity, there are ways to quantify demand.