There's No Business That's Not Show Business: Marketing in an Experience Culture

Say goodbye to "business as usual"--to succeed today you need show business!

How do you market in today's "experience culture"--as conventional advertising grows increasingly ineffective, and customers grow increasingly independent? Companies and brands from Altoids to Volkswagen have discovered the answer: bring show business into your business!

There's No Business That's Not Show Business demonstrates how to use "show biz" techniques to cut through the clutter, engage your customers personally, differentiate your product or brand--and create real, long--term value.

These techniques can be adapted for any product, service, or market--consumer or B2B. You'll learn how to clearly identify strategic objectives and expected outcomes; target your high--value customers; ensure that "show biz" marketing promotes your core brand message; extend your impact via PR and CRM; and, above all, achieve quantifiable results.

• The right show, the right media, the right venue

• Choose, invent, and re--invent media around your unique marketing needs

• Keeping your show "on brand"

• Drive your core branding message: don't distract from it

• Shows for customers, with customers, and by customers

• Use show business to strengthen all your customer relationships

• Integrating show business and leadership

• Persona, myth, and ethos: shape the experience of your own company

• Not just show: business

• Practical measurements, credible budgets, real ROI

Show biz techniques that cut through market clutter--and delight and engage your customers!

• Building experiences that engage, surprise, and dazzle your customers

• Tying "show biz" marketing to measurable business goals

• Breakthrough techniques for consumer, B2B, even internal marketing initiatives

• Mobile marketing, street evangelism, customer events, theater, and much more

• Altoids to Oracle, Volkswagen to Victoria's Secret: new case studies in experiential marketing

Customers today are more independent than ever, and advertising less effective and more costly every day. There's No Business that's Not Show Business shows how smart companies can use creativity, humor, and play to reach out and engage customers through a new kind of experience. This book provides winning case studies and "show business" techniques that can be used to dazzle customers, launch products, build brands, generate buzz, and build great customer relationships. From road shows to street evangelism to multi--media theater and beyond, it offers a new generation of marketing that can work for every customer in every industry. Most of all, it offers tools to link your "show business" to your brand, to core strategic goals, and to measurable results. Your business can be in show business too--and to reach customers today, it must!

Praise for There's No Business That's Not Show Business

"This book cleverly and insightfully makes explicit a clear (if upsetting to some) trend, i.e. 'all the world's a stage.' As the emphasis has moved from the physical product (or service) to customer experience, how consumers relate to products in their own authored "play" has increasingly become the focus of marketing thought and practice. Using a variety of well--known (e.g. Victoria's Secret, Intel) and less obvious (e.g., the Guggenheim) examples, the book explores the implications of a focus on the show/experience in an entertaining way. Importantly, however, the book also provides a seven--step procedure for moving from identification of a desired image to the quantitative measurement of performance. This raises the book above the level of identifying a phenomenon to the position of suggesting something useful to do about it. The real value of a book is whether it causes the reader to think as well as stay awake. This one succeeds on both counts."

--Don Lehmann, George E. Warren Professor of Business, Columbia University Graduate School of Business

"This will be one of the most important business books you'll ever read! It will convince you you're really in show business and that if you're not, you'd better be. Implement the star--studded findings the authors reveal, and you'll have a huge competitive advantage over your competition. Let the show begin."

--Jason Jennings, worldwide bestselling author of It's Not the Big That Eat the Small--It's the Fast That Eat the Slow and Less Is More

"Bernd Schmitt is unquestionably one of the most creative and original minds in marketing. Well worth the price of admission, his new book with David Rogers and Karen Vrotsos provides sharp, witty insights and engaging case studies that brilliantly illuminate how entertaining experiences can build strong brands."

--Kevin Lane Keller, E.B. Osborn Professor of Marketing, Amos Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College

"Schmitt, Rogers, and Vrotsos demonstrate vividly that there is a New Marketing Mix without which your products won't grab any attention, spark any interest, or build any memorable experience."

--Philip Kotler, Northwestern Kellogg School of Business, and author of Marketing Management, 11th edition

"The authors practice what they preach by presenting a book that is both entertaining and thought--provoking. This book is an important contribution to our deeper understanding of the complex experiences surrounding the consumption of goods and services."

--Gerald Zaltman, Professor, Harvard Business School, and author of How Customers Think