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Why Emotion Is Key in Experiential Marketing
Jaycen Thorgeirson, Founder and CEO of UviaUs, joins the Content Experience Show to discuss building emotional connections through experiential marketing.
In This Episode:
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Full Episode Details
Emotional Connections in Experiential Marketing
In today’s market, no matter what product your business sells, there is a 99 percent chance that someone else offers a very similar product. Consumers do not become your customers simply because you are the sole provider of whatever it is they are looking for. Consumers are looking for an emotional connection—a relationship—and that is the foundational thought behind experiential marketing.
A common practice with many businesses is to send gifts to important customers. This is a good way to capture attention and remind them that you will go above and beyond to cater to them personally. According to Jaycen Thorgeirson, if you’re going out of your way to send a gift, you should seize that opportunity to turn a nice gesture into a truly unique experience.
By incorporating a personal message through video, you can create a one-on-one interaction that builds real emotional ties with you and your business. You’ve already cleared the hurdle of getting your customer’s attention, so seize the opportunity to stand out and build a lasting relationship!
In This Episode
- How to define “experiential marketing.”
- Why moods are contagious.
- How B2B interactions can be fun.
- Why people connect with emotion over production quality.
Quotes From This Episode
“In our nonverbal cues, we can influence another person.” — @JaycenThor
“We’ve heard the terms ‘human-based marketing,’ ‘personalized-based marketing,’ but really what we’re saying is ‘developing emotional connections.’” — @JaycenThor
People connect with emotion rather than production quality. Click To TweetResources
Content Experience Lightning Round
What do movies get right and what do they get wrong about sailing?
According to Jaycen, movies often portray the amazing experience of sailing well. What they often don’t show is just how much knowledge and understanding of the various systems of a sailboat you need to be able to sail successfully and safely.
See you next week!
Episode Transcript
Randy Frisch: Welcome to the Content Experience Show. This is Conex. I'm Randy, with Anna, and we are going to breakdown the next 20 plus minutes where you're going to hear all about how to combine a whole bunch of trends. Right, I mean, we're talking tactile marketing. We're talking video marketing. We're talking experiential marketing. We're talking everything that we care about as marketers today, and that's because we had a chance to connect with Jaycen Thorgeirson, and I always screw up his last name. Hopefully I did not there. I do know how to pronounce his company's name, which his tricky in itself, UviaUs. Once you look at it long enough, it starts to make sense. I've known Jaycen for years, Anna. He's one of those guys who I think was on to something before everyone else realized he was on to something, because he was telling me about this idea like six, seven years ago at an event, and we unpack how he engages accounts in a very personalized way. You've been engaged in that way, right? Anna: Yeah, so on this episode we talk all about experiential marketing, and the example that I give at the top of our podcast here is how Randy, you and Conex, sent me this beautiful welcome gift that was so personal, and so wonderful, and it's so funny, because on the last episode, or a couple episodes ago, we did the part of the interruption with the 2019 trends, and we didn't even know, but when we were talking about that, we were talking about personalization, account based marketing, and tactile marketing, or direct mail, and literally came full circle on this podcast today on how to do it all correctly. Randy Frisch: Absolutely. So, tune into this podcast if you want to hear a really cool execution, how we pulled it together, and I'll throw out just a buzz term. I don't know if this is going to become a buzz term. The rest of this was very trendy, but the term mood contagion. I don't know. Do you like it, or do you not like it? I mean, Jaycen's no longer on the podcast. He may listen to it. Are you yeah or nay on mood contagion? Anna: I don't hate it. It's just one of those things that when I hear contagion, contagion is associated with other things, but it is just sort of viral. Randy Frisch: Like that scary ass movie. Anna: Yeah, it is viral, though, and it spreads quickly, so I see where it's coming from. But I think maybe we can take it back and own the word contagion in a positive way. Randy Frisch: Yeah, let's see, let's see. Let's give it a try. Listen to the podcast, let us know what you think. Are you into contagion? Anna: Hey, Jaycen. Thank you so much for being with us today. It's great to have you here. Jaycen T.: I am excited to be with you. Anna: I am excited for you to be here, too, because you're going to talk about something really cool, no pressure to start off with immediately. But before we jump into talking about some things, why don't you give everybody a little bit about Jaycen? Jaycen T.: Yeah. So, my name is Jaycen. I'm the founder and CEO of UviaUs. I'm a bootstrapped entrepreneur of, like I was saying before we got started, I'm more of a marketer at heart. For the past 12 years, I've really been working with brands and agencies to help them effect more meaningful experiences, cut through, gain attention, and then once we have that attention, trying to drive more engagement with that audience, start to build trust with that audience. So that's kind of me in a nutshell. Anna: Nice. So one of the things that I'm so excited to talk about that I gave in just that little preview was the fact that UviaUs does experiential marketing. I think a lot of people throw this term around pretty loosely, but I don't think anybody's really executing on it very well, but you guys actually do some very cool experiential marketing, so real quick, just so everybody's on the same page, how do you define experiential marketing? Jaycen T.: Yeah. That's a good question, because in the world of experiential marketing, I think most people think about activations and event based marketing. That's kind of the general buzzword around it. But for ourselves, we like to think about it more as a one-to-one experience, and how do you tailor an experience around an individual rather than a group of people. So, from our perspective, we're more about trying to understand who your target audience is, really what they're passionate about, get to know them, do some advanced legwork, so to speak, to really get to know them before designing an experience, and that comes from not only the strategy, but the content experience that you're going to deliver, the messaging that you're creating. If you're creating interactive experiences, video experiences, online experiences, whatever that is, we're really getting to know who it is that you're reaching out to first. Then in terms of what we specifically do, we're all about blending the physical with the digital, kind of these digital type experiences, so basically delivering something that's tangible and tactile, something that really differentiates from everything else, all the noise that's being pushed because it's easy to distribute content. We're trying to say how can I deliver something truly of value that creates this moment of impact, or what we call a remarkable moment, to get someone to stop, to think, to say, "Wow." And lead them to then engage with that content, and then start to talk about it, whether that's to yourself, by outreaching to them, or to others. Anna: So, I have actually been lucky enough to receive an experiential marketing piece that you and UviaUs did with Uberflip, and real quick. I know Randy is dying to talk about this, because it is really cool, but I just want to say from the recipient perspective, it was one of the absolute coolest things I've ever received. So, for context, everybody, the amazing Conex Conference was last summer. I did a great workshop there, and I did a little bit of speaking there, as well, and as a thank you, Randy and team worked with UviaUs to send this beautiful box, custom box that had Conex branded on it, and when you opened it, it had a mini screen on it, and it was a personalized message from Randy. It was truly personal. It was to me. It wasn't just generic, thanking me, talking about the show that we do here, and then there's this beautiful bottle of wine. It was so cool to receive. But how did you guys even come up with this? I mean, Randy, this was an amazing idea. UviaUs, Jaycen, this was amazing. How did you guys pull this off? Randy Frisch: Well, I'll jump in, Jaycen. First of all, we met, what? Like how long ago was it? I'm thinking at least five years, six years ago. Jaycen T.: That's what I wanted to say. The first time we met was at a C-Suite conference. Randy Frisch: Yeah, Jeff Hayzlett. I love that guy. This was always in the back of my mind, and we tried to create, as you put it, Jaycen, like really great experiences for all those speakers who come to our conference. One of the things that I think has established us as a big event was we got great speakers. The way we got great speakers was we created an event that they wanted to come to, and that they would talk about, because these guys are out speaking all year long. How would this be different than all the other ones? So, this was a lot of fun to execute. I will tell you that on my side, I did basically nothing. I think I stood in front of a camera for probably two hours. We sent out about 30 of these packages. So, I just sat in front of the camera. I did a little bit of a blurb about why it was meaningful to have each speaker, and then we passed that on to our digital team who cut up all the assets, and handed that off to your team. You want to jump in there? I mean, I don't know what happens after that. Jaycen T.: No, yeah, no, that's beautiful. Basically, so, and this is how we like to work. Obviously, collaboratively with our clients, understanding what they're trying to do, what's the experience that they're trying to deliver. In your case, obviously, it's an appreciation piece, right, and you really, truly want to one, just show your appreciation for those speakers taking the time out to be at your event, but also creating this personalized experience, it comes down to the execution of the content, and so just from that perspective and seeing the video content that was done from your team and yourself, I think that's a great way to execute a personalized experience. From our standpoint, it's more about how do we create a branded experience that truly represents you and your brand? Right, so we take this one-to-one approach with the clients that we work with, so we want to understand your identity, we want to understand about the Conex, specifically the event, what that experience was like, and then transition that into this physical experience. So from our standpoint, it may be creating this totally unique form factor. It may be branding the piece. So this was like a wooden gift box that had Conex printed on the exterior of the box. When you open it up, it had that personalized message, and then it had other swag, et cetera. Randy Frisch: It had wine. It had wine, which I honestly, the video in there was cool, but I think [inaudible 00:09:22] win people over, too. Anna: That was ... I mean, I was a fan. Jaycen T.: Let's take it ... imagine it, and really what we specialize is embedding our you video, or video playback tech within packaging experiences, but if you were just to send a box of wine, or a personalized package, and we see a lot of that, especially in account based marketing today, where people have messaging, and then they have something, a physical item, with the send, it's cool, and most would say, "That's cool." But to me, and maybe even from your perspective, Anna, is like on receiving it, now that you've got that attention that you've said, "Wow, like what is this?" You open it up, now you have that person's undivided attention. You're not competing for their attention anymore. You have it, and so we believe in the power of storytelling. We believe in the power of video, and creating that emotional connection, and that emotional experience, and we feel that there's no better to do it than holding that attention through a physical experience, and then leveraging video, the power of video, doing it personalized, and creating more of that one-to-one connection, because it's the next level. It's basically what we're doing here, right? Whether that's a web conference, or a chat, or in person, video's the next level to be able to scale it. Randy Frisch: I couldn't agree more. I mean, this is a true story, guys. I'm going to sound ungrateful, which I often do when I tell some of my stories. But over the holidays, over the Christmas holidays, I got many gifts put on my desk. There are two times I got gifts, and I still don't know who they're from. There was no nothing. There was no card. They weren't bad, like they were nice gifts, but I had no idea who they were from, and it's so silly, right? They got my attention, I engaged in this item, but then there was no connection to tell me the story behind it or anything about that. I think what's really cool about what we're talking about here, is, Jaycen, a lot of ... Anna if you remember, we did an episode of the podcast just a few ago if listeners want to listen back, if they haven't heard, it was part of the interruption version we did, and we talked about the top 10 trends for 2019. I feel like this example we're talking about here hits on so many of them. One of those trends was tactile marketing, right? But it's the combination of them. Another one of the trends was video, and a third one was the idea of content driven experience. So, it's the opportunity to pull together multiple trends, and catch people, and create an ongoing opportunity, and I think that's what hits on the psychological aspect. That's the part I'd love to dig deeper in. We're going to hear from some of our sponsors, but then I know both Anna and I have got a lot of questions for you in terms of what is it that creates that wow moment, Jaycen? So we'll be right back. We'll dig into that. Jay Baer: Hi, friends. This is Jay Baer from Convince & Convert, reminding you that this show, the Conex Show podcast is brought to you by Uberflip, the number one content experience platform. Do you ever wonder how content experience effects your marketing results? Well, you can find out in the first ever content experience report, where Uberflip uncovers eight data science backed insights to boost your content engagement and your conversions. It's a killer report, and you do not want to miss it. Get your free copy right now at Uberflip.com/ConexShowReport. That's Uberflip.com/ConexShowReport. The show is also brought to you by our team at Convince & Convert Consulting. If you've got a terrific content marketing program, but you want to take it to the very next level, we can help. Convince & Convert works with the world's most iconic brands to increase the effectiveness of their content marketing, social media marketing, digital marketing, and word of mouth marketing. Find us at ConvinceandConvert.com. Anna: All right, so Jaycen, so before the break, we talked a little bit about really getting people's attention, and making it so personalized. You know, you're right. When I was thinking about the difference between receiving a bottle of wine, and then receiving the Conex gift, it was so unexpected when I opened that box and the video autoplayed. That was the coolest thing, is like you open the box, the video autoplays, and there's Randy. It was so personalized, and it really was memorable, and it really made this connection. One of the things I know that we were talking about off air was this concept of the mood contagion, and how that's kind of part of it, that truly personalized thing, and what really helps sort of solidify some of those emotional connections. So talk to us. I know you're really into mood contagion. What exactly does this look like? How did you get into it? What does this look like? Jaycen T.: I stumbled on the term because I'm reading a little bit about emotional intelligence as just in terms of leadership. But the more that I hovered around this term in leadership, the more I saw that this plays out a lot in terms of the content and the experiences that we deliver, especially as it pertains to video. Basically what mood contagion is, it's a neurological response to another individual. There's been tons of studies. One study is really fascinating, where these scientists observed individuals just staring at each other, silently, for two to three minutes. What was interesting they said the most emotionally expressive of the three, of those three people that were tested, they broadcast their mood to the other two. Isn't that fascinating? So just in nonverbal cues, we can influence another person. To illustrate, I'm going to smile really big right now. Naturally, it makes you want to respond to that, doesn't it? Then they say that actually happiness and those moods are the fastest ones to actually stimulate that response, whereas depression is the hardest to transmit to someone else. So, I've been thinking about this in terms of how we deliver content, especially in terms of video content. We're seeing a lot of people publish video content, especially over social media, LinkedIn, obviously. A lot of people are putting out video content. You think of individuals that always have a very expressive smile on their face, it transmits to ourselves, and so I say that when we're thinking about delivering content, or delivering an experience, what are we trying ... what type of emotion are we trying to resonate with those whom we're trying to connect? We know it's harder than ever to connect with individuals, and so if we understand that happiness is one of the fastest ways to get there, are we coming with that when we're developing these content experiences? Is it an emotion that we're trying to transmit in what we do? Anna: Yeah, and this is even funny thinking about even in terms of voice, tone, and style. I'm a massive ... I hammer tone, voice, and style really hard a lot, and I ding some clients, right, I get a little bit harpy about it, but it's because it's exactly what you've said. When we read flat, lifeless content, or we get marketing pieces that don't really have a personality, or don't really showcase exactly what the brand is, it just falls so flat, and no matter how good that messaging is, no matter well that piece is produced, it doesn't produce the same effects as when you have that really amplified voice and tone, and actually communicate something with those nonverbal cues, and you just exaggerate that feeling. Jaycen T.: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, especially as we do a lot in the B2B space, right B2B marketers, and I think sometimes it can feel a bit stale at times. Right, people, especially when it's developing content. It may be technical in nature, and sometimes they'll go to the extreme of being more an explanation than really trying to connect, right? [inaudible 00:17:20] or an experience that resonates with another human. We've heard this term of human based marketing, personalized based marketing, but really what we're saying is developing emotional connections, right? Heart-to-heart experiences. When people make emotional decisions, they spend more, right? They make them faster, these decisions, they're more meaningful, they're more lasting, right, as connections, so it's just like always getting back to that side when we are developing experiences, thinking about what's the emotional impact that I'm trying to drive. To me, that should be the top priority that we drive to as marketers. Anna: So, quick question, and then a follow up to what you were just saying, because I'm not quite sure where everybody got this notion that B2B marketing has to be super dry, or super stale, or they can't do fun B2C, and I'm using fair quotes here, like B2C things, because I think that's absolutely false. So I'm wondering I'm wondering if you could give an example of an experiential marketing piece or campaign that you did for someone that was B2B that was actually fun, but was very human, and made this emotional connection, had all this emotional contagion behind it. Jaycen T.: Yeah, that's a great question. Honestly, we still struggle with that, I mean, with helping people realize the value of making that type of connection in their messaging. I was trying to think of a specific example in the B2B space that we've recently done that they did a good job. I think one of them is an example for, basically, a credit card processing company, BillingTree, and I think in terms of their example, being playful in the way in which they experience is delivered, right, is a way to get someone kind of fundamentally guessing, and thinking, and starting to connect with the experience. I think they did a really good job at doing that. Then I think in terms of the way in which the story was told, which is just as valuable as gaining someone's attention, is the content that you deliver. So we get involved with developing that content, and in their case, we made it a very light, funny, light-hearted video right in the experience, and to me that's where it really did a good job at connecting on that emotional level. So that's where I see the most opportunity for business to business marketers if you're developing an experience, especially around video content, is considering the choice of video, the style of video, the message behind it, that's a place that you can start to get emotionally engaged with your audience. Randy Frisch: It's really interesting that you hit on that, because it kind of lines up something I've been thinking about as you guys have been chatting about this the last few minutes, which is I've actually had someone else ABM me, if you will, with one of your deliveries through UviaUs before. I got excited, because I kind of could tell it was going to be your technology, but the video was a let down. I'm not going to let you know what company it was. It was dry. It didn't leverage that attention, as you put it, I had. It wasn't the type of thing that I was going to share, because it wasn't personalized for me in any way. It didn't feel like it connected with me. Now, and I post a lot of video on LinkedIn. I find the stuff I get the most engagement in is sometimes the stuff that looks the most raw or the most off the cuff. I'm wondering if you see ... we started by talking about this opportunity to create a one-to-one opportunity, or one-to-one engagement. So how do you find that balance between raw, uncut versus polished in terms of how we engage in these types of tactile activations? Jaycen T.: Yeah, no, that's a great point. I think what you hit on is I think people connect with emotion rather than production quality. Right? Regardless if you have it or you don't, it's the quality of the content, and it's the quality of the experience that you deliver, and so I've seen the exact same thing, Randy, and it's frustrating at times, because even as from a marketing perspective, like we've gotten involved much more in the content execution portion of it because of that. We can guarantee and gain this attention with your targeted audience, but if you deliver a message that falls flat, what's the point? What the value of that? So, we've been trying to do our own thing, right? Trying to demonstrate more of delivering on what we're telling clients, so I was thinking about some of the campaigns that we're driving right now. The production value on them, obviously, they're in-house production. We have more capabilities than probably our average company, but we're not putting a ton of production value in producing the content. We're trying to think about our audience, creating a fun, again, this idea mood contagion where we're trying to create a fun theme that gets people laughing about the experience, because we feel that that's infectious, right? It's going to put them in a positive place to be responsive to follow up, and that's usually what happens in an account based marketing approach. You're going to deliver something of impact to gain awareness, but there's going to be follow up. If someone's following up on something that fell flat, and the content experience wasn't that good, you're not going to be that receptive to that person calling, are you? So it's like we're just trying to how do we deliver on creating laughs that they connect with our brand, that puts us in a position of "I'm willing to listen to what you have to say." Randy Frisch: I love it. Jaycen T.: Yeah, it's less about the production quality, more about the content experience, understanding who you're targeting, and being raw, being real. Randy Frisch: Love that. Jaycen, I think that's a great concept to kind of end on for the day, being raw, being real. We want to do that with you, though, for a few more minutes here, because we got to hear all about work. We're going to go and hear about the raw, real behind the scenes right after a short, little break, so stick around, and you'll hear a little bit more about Jaycen. Anna: Hey, everybody. We have Jaycen here, so we got to know the professional side of Jaycen. Now we're going to get to know a bit of the personal side. So, Jaycen, are you ready? We have basically one question for you, but I think it's going to be a pretty good one? Jaycen T.: Yeah, all right. I'm ready. Anna: Okay. We were chatting off air, and you had mentioned you are a huge fan of sailing. Jaycen T.: Yes. Anna: So, what kind of sailing in general? And this isn't the question, but just so we have a frame of reference. Jaycen T.: What do you mean what kind of sailing? Anna: I don't know. Is there a different kind of sailing? Because what kind of boat do you have? Jaycen T.: I have a Ranger 33 sailboat. Anna: Okay, I don't know what that is, but it sounds impressive. Randy Frisch: It sounds legit, doesn't it? Anna: It does sound legit. Randy Frisch: [inaudible 00:24:13] Ranger. Anna: All right. So the only thing that I really know about sailing is what movies have shown me, so on that note, what do movies actually get right about sailing, and what do they get completely wrong? Jaycen T.: Oh, that's a good question. I think my movie knowledge, when I'm thinking about sailing, I think what they get right is the experience. It truly is an amazing experience, and I think in most movies, they kind of depict that. You see the water, it's very quiet, the wind in the sails. Depending on the movies, that you're watching, I guess. But that's kind of my takeaway from seeing movies. I think what you don't get in the movies sometimes is that it takes a lot of knowledge in terms of understanding all the systems on a boat, and there's times in which you have to know those systems, right? The wind changes, the wind picks up, there's moments on the boat where you're like, "Oh my goodness. Can I do this?" So, those are some of the things I haven't seen in many movies where they're depicting some Titanic type event happening on a sailboat. Anna: Good to know. I did go sailing once. It was in Hawaii, and it was the most relaxing, beautiful experience ever, so it was not like a horrible movie style, like we're going to need a bigger boat Jaws level of floating out in the ocean. Jaycen T.: Right, right. Anna: So that's good. Jaycen T.: It's not Randy experience. Anna: No. Randy Frisch: Yeah. Anna: No, no. Randy Frisch: Yeah. If people don't know what they're cringing at, you can check my LinkedIn where I wrote a recap of a escape from a very dangerous boat explosion over my holidays. Jaycen T.: I have not had that, thankfully, yet. Randy Frisch: No. No, it was out of the movies. The movies doesn't catch that shit, let me tell you. Anna: Well, good news is everybody's safe. Randy Frisch: Exactly. Anna: And now we know what's real and what the movies don't show. So, Jaycen, thank you so much for being here. It was so fantastic to have you. Jaycen T.: Likewise. Thank you guys for the privilege. It was great talking with you both. Anna: Fantastic. So, everybody, thank you so much for listening. On behalf of Randy Frisch from Uberflip, this has been the Content Experience Show podcast. Do us a favor whenever you listen to us, wherever you listen to us, please go ahead and leave us a review. Let us know what you'd like to hear more from us in future episodes, and we will happily work it in. Until next time, talk to you soon.
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