Making the Experience Match the Promise

The ornate Stock Exchange Room at the Art Institute of Chicago was buzzing as hospital marketers lined the room, chatting animatedly. But the discussion was not a result of a networking session-it was an orchestrated part of special speaker Gary Adamson’s presentation.

Adamson, CEO of Starizon, an experience design firm he cofounded in 1999, turned his speech into an interactive audience-directed presentation in the spirit of his patient- centered care ethos. By calling out topics represented by images on a handout, audience members could decide what Adamson spoke about next.

“This is going to be an audience-centered presentation,” he said, as he stepped down from the podium and walked onto the conference room floor. “You’re going to direct the presentation, not only the content and flow, but its duration. It’s all in your hands.”

The first image selected was a colorful graphic that read, “Are you experienced?” For this portion of the event, Adamson asked audience members to circle every brand they had experienced on a sheet of paper containing 72 company logos. Next, he asked all participants to line up around the room in order from those with the least number of brands circled to those with the most. Adamson then split the line in half so that each person was paired with someone from a different part of the “experience continuum.” The couples were then given a few minutes to discuss each partner’s favorite experience.

Once everyone had returned to his or her seat, Adamson asked the audience to share what they had learned from the exercise. Several responses followed: “Everybody has had an experience.” “Everybody’s experience is different.” “Some experiences are actual and some are perceived.” “People have different experiences for the same brand.”

The purpose of the exercise, Adamson said, was to show that everyone is an expert in the experience economy, regardless of where they fall on the experience continuum, and that everyone can implement what they’ve learned from other businesses in their healthcare institution. He also said it is important to make each patient feel as if his or her experience was created just for them.

Adamson elaborated on this point when someone selected the image of LEGO blocks. LEGOs can teach marketers a lot about staging experiences, he said, because they are the ultimate example of mass customization. Though the individual blocks are always the same, the creation is unique to the person connecting them.

“The whole idea is that unless it’s personal, unless it’s meaningful, unless the individual is engaged on an emotional, spiritual, and physical level-it’s not an experience,” he said.

The point of creating this type of presentation was to stress the significance of tailoring positive customer experiences. Constructing valuable patient experiences is becoming an essential business strategy, Adamson said, because consumers are increasingly placing importance on authenticity.

“The staging of an authentic experience is an expectation of business,” he said. “This isn’t just an improvement in service, but a whole different requirement of business. Not only do the experiences have to be meaningful and engaging, they have to be perceived as genuine and authentic.”

Most healthcare organizations, however, have trouble delivering these patient experiences because there is a divide between communications and operations departments, Adamson said.

Communications departments express a hospital or health system’s brand promise, and operations is charged with fulfilling the brand experience-but there is generally no overarching authority ensuring correlation between the two. This divide is especially problematic, Adamson said, because when the brand promise and brand experience do match, it creates brand authenticity.

“We’ve got to twist in new ways, and one of those forces that’s going to force that twist is marketing,” he said. “If it doesn’t come from you, I don’t know where it’s going to come from-and it will make the theory of the experience economy real in your place.”

In closing, Adamson gave a list of tips for marketers to create an experience-based culture in their healthcare organizations. One of the basics, he said, is to realize what makes a good story.

“The mash-up of the experience economy and marketing is going to turn us into storytellers,” he said. “It isn’t just about making wonderful advertising and calling it good-there’s a lot more operational aspects to it.”

A large part of that, Adamson said, is making sure the look and feel of the facility matches the experience marketers are trying to create. He also said it’s important for marketers to be authentic and develop marketing experiences, not experiential marketing.

If a hospital or health system can perfect its patient experience approach and form true cohesion between the brand promise and brand experience, Adamson said, the organization will become renowned for its brand authenticity.

“When you customize an experience for a person so much that it changes them, you’re in the transformation business,” he said. “We have the opportunity to put together a set of experiences for a patient and their family that they can’t help but be changed. It’s a much different bar than what we’ve set for ourselves.”

–Marianne Aiello