How our social lives became storified

Memorable experiences sit at the heart of women’s social lives, and as founder and CEO of the World Experience Organization, James Wallman’s mission statement is: “Every Moment matters”. Stylist's head of brand, Susan Riley, asks him how we got so experience obsessed… 

SR: 82% of women say their social lives have changed dramatically over the last couple of years. What evidence have you seen of this in the experience economy?

JW: It's the rise in popularity of [experience events]. People are getting used to the immersive thing. Escape rooms have morphed into these playable spaces. Phantom Peak is a good example which is opening in Westfield, it’s a playable video game. And Wake the Tiger, opening in Westfield in October. It’s psychedelic wander-through art experience coming from Bristol from the people behind the festival Boomtown. Boomtown isn’t just a rave or party in a field. It’s more than that. There's a whole story architected around it that you can play with. [All this] is a fascinating shift; trends happen on a supply and demand basis. 

SR: So, demand is definitely rising?

JW: I wrote a book years ago called Stuffocation, How We've Had Enough of Stuff And Need Experiences More Than Ever, and the stuff in there was about Secret Cinema and Punch Drunk. And guess what? Those guys are not just still going, they’re mainstream. When they first used to do it, it would be secret, for the cognoscenti, and could go on for five, seven hours. Now it fits in with your normal day, and you can go after work for three hours. Secret Cinema’s Battersea takeover which they started last summer, they're doing again this summer for Grease. The same show, second year running. There's a lot of changes around the business model. 

SR Why do you think a drink and a chat is no longer enough for us? 

JW: Social media has helped with that kind of thing, right? It used to be that going to a theme bar was the crappiest, most embarrassing thing ever. That has completely flipped around. You think about The Friends experience at Excel. People want to be in their TV show, they want to take a picture of being somewhere interesting. You need a story to post. They're called stories on social. If you go on a date and you go somewhere not very interesting, you haven't got any story to show your friends, right? So, you need a story. And the easiest way to share a story is to step into a story that someone else has created. it's changing the dating scene. It's changed life.

SR: The fact we want to become part of these stories – is that trend being set by the experience industry or being led by us as people? 

JW: Truth be told, there's bigger, wider things out there that are happening. But I would say the sophistication of experience design is accelerating really fast. At WXO we've got 1,300 members in over 50 odd countries sharing ideas about how to make better experiences that are memorable and meaningful and transformational. The magic of going to Grease – and I went last summer – is you go with a bunch of friends, everybody's dressed up, you talk to loads of people you don't know. And it's a joyous way to spend your time. It's multi-generational, whereas the single generational things tend not to work as well. When you've got a good piece of IP that brings different generations together, [that’s when it works].

SR: What else has done multi-generational well? 

JW: The Barbie experience in Amsterdam is brilliant. Barbie’s been around since 1959, so you've got the mums, the grandmas and the girlfriends, and everyone gets to dress up a bit and have fun. But it’s also got history; there’s a museology to it and you change the perspective of how you think about the brand. It goes from through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and each of those told you something about the social world at the time. Then the exit through the gift shop was done nicely because you could buy pink food. So, you have a really full Barbie experience that’s engaging and weird and fun. 

SR: A lot of experiences now are stacked events – a sauna and rave, a coffee and run – which equates to social efficiency and like social experiences are being optimised 

JW: I think the optimisation point is bang on. It’s the evolution of our culture. We’re time poor, partly because of devices and multi-tasking. Why not do two things at the same time? But it's also coming from the innovation – the experience design community seeing what’s working and what isn’t and being aware of what it is that makes people not just go and enjoy it but absolutely love it. 

SR: Experiences are of course integral to brands now. What are your thoughts on the intersection of brand identity and experiences?  

JW: I’ve been thinking about this a lot and went to Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, actually, to go and talk to people at brands to figure this out. Brands have a fundamentally different question to what experience designers ask. Experience designers ask the question: how do I make a better experience? Whereas brands are looking for impact on the brand: affiliation, purchase… Those two are associated, but different.  

SR: What was your advice at Cannes? 

JW: Like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there is a hierarchy of experiences. You can't make a transformational experience unless you've made a meaningful one. You can't make a meaningful experience unless you've made a memorable one. So, if you're looking to do is transform the person to care about your brand and have that kind of impact, brands need to create something that’s meaningful for somebody. And lots of people skip the insight bit. With so many of them, you're like, nice experience, who cares about the brand? When it's done cleverly, it's about inserting the brand into culture and creating something that is obviously connected with the brand's values, but also making it memorable, meaningful and transformational. 

SR: Which brands are doing experiential well while also making their brand more famous and more desirable? 

JW: There’s a difference between experiential marketing, brand activations and experiences, obviously. [But all] experiences are about engagement and dwell time. Starbucks is sometimes cited as an example of the experience economy from years ago, because an espresso bar used to be something you’d get somebody in, sell them a drink and get them out as quickly as possible to sell the next one. Starbucks took that idea, flipped on its head and said, stay as long as you like. That seems like a bad model at first but the longer somebody stays, the more they stick around, spend and come back again. There's also a lot of learnings to be got from sports in terms of how you create something that people want to come back to again and again.

SR:What’s the most recent brand experience that’s stuck in your mind?

JW: At Cannes, Bloom Nutrition did a diner pop-up and created a world where people can live in their brand. It looked beautiful and was fun and relevant. Is it just an experiential billboard that gets shared socially? Maybe. But a lot of experiential marketing is for a few and shared so it reaches many. The magic of any experience is you've got a chance to really engage with somebody and land something in their mind.

The World Experience Organisation hosts an annual Experience Week.

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