MarketingProfs

The meal was delicious, but the service was slow. The hotel was comfortable, but the air conditioner was loud when it kicked on during the night. The iPhone is handy but why can’t you cut-and-paste text? I prefer that Starbucks because the staff is friendlier.

Creating a product, service, or brand experience is a puzzle where all the pieces need to be present… and neatly fit together.
If you recall some of the best experiences of your life – whether a vacation, a business meeting, or a retail/restaurant experience – I’ll bet what made it so great was that “everything came together.”

Creating Magic

One of the masters at getting everything to come together is the team who designs and builds the Disney theme parks.
It takes a ton of coordination and forethought to build a place designed to “create magic” and “fantasy.” Suspending reality is easier for kids. But, we adults can be tough cookies. One of the few occaions we do allow ourselves to be swept up is while watching a good movie.
Actually, the Disney theme parks are designed so that way YOU are the camera in an elaborate movie set. They have taken care to ensure you can’t see the future of Tomorrowland while standing in Frontierland. Cowboys and Astronauts don’t mix. They created ‘utilidors’ – a basement beneath the Magic Kingdom in Florida – that allow cast members (employees) to travel directly to their attraction from beneath the scenes in their themed costume. The guy wearing his silver Space Mountain costume would look quite alien strolling to his shift along Victorian Main Street USA.

Attention To Detail

The Disney Imagineers go to great lengths to eliminate contradictions. Elements that would break the spell and ruin the experience. Walt Disney taught his team to pay attention to details and to think things through to the very end. They don’t leave the experience to chance, it is all calculated.
Disney does it to create magic, an environment, an experience, to tell the story. And, you should do it for the same reasons.

Cafe Contradictions

Founder of Starbucks Coffee Company, Howard Schultz, used to get so angry when he would tour stores and find hand-written signs… Whether it was to indicate a change in hours of operation, or to promote a new product – they were unacceptable. When you’re asking customers to pay 4-bucks for a latte, trying to provide a high-quality in-store experience, you don’t junk it up with sloppy penmanship on the back of a scrap of paper. This creates a contradiction.
Slow service at a restaurant? A loud air conditioner in a comfortable hotel room? A really neat gadget, like an iPhone, that doesn’t allow you to cut-and-paste text? These are all elements that create contradictions, where everything is not coming together.
Do you, or have you had contradictions at your company or with a product or service?

Nobody’s Perfect

Disney’s not perfect. The construction of the Dolphin and Swan hotels at the Walt Disney Resort in Florida caused (and still cause) major issue for Disney fans and cast members. In the 80s, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, Michael Eisner hired designer Michael Graves to create two new hotels to be erected just behind the World Showcase at Epcot. (The World Showcase is a sort of a World’s Fair, showcasing different countries with architecture, food, and shops). Legend has it, Eisner liked the designs so much he decided to make them HUGE.
You can see the Swan Hotel in the picture below.

Disney created a MAJOR contradiction in the show. The Eiffel Tower had been scaled down (a movie set technique) to make it appear ‘in the distance’ while you’re walking down the “streets of Paris” at Epcot. When they built the Dolphin and Swan hotels to this huge scale, a contradiction was created. The Eiffel Tower looks like a prop. The illusion is ruined and the fantasy broken.
Image Source: Blogography.com