By Michelle Rowling

I have never actually marketed a product. I’d even go as far to say I’ve never marketed something you can physically hold – because I am a proud experience marketer. 

I’ve marketed newspapers, but I was never actually selling the paper. 

I’ve worked across hospitality, but I did not market food and beverages. 

I’ve worked across iconic attractions, but I didn’t market just the rides at Luna Park Sydney, and I won’t be selling animals in my new role at Sydney Zoo. 

I market feelings, associations, memories and milestones. When a brand is an experience, it’s so much more than a product. 

Experience brands are the absolute pace-setters in hyper-personalisation. The best things about working at Luna Park Sydney were the smiles, joy and memories that the iconic heritage-listed amusement park evoked. 

Whether seeing people experience the brand in that very moment or having someone recall their fond memories, I was right there absorbing their experience, truly enthralled by their brand storytelling. No one thrill, photo or story was ever the same. Every experience is personal. 

Brands that are experiences evoke transition. Products change by way of size, labelling, design and certainly price. But it’s experiences that transcend time and become multigenerational. 

Take an example of a family trip to the Sydney Zoo. It’s an experience that all generations can relate to, recall and that resonates with them. Tickets won’t move by listing animals and features. It’s storytelling and celebrating milestones of more than 150 species that will ignite experience-making and drive our brand. 

If a brand’s success has the intention and ability to outlive current consumers, marketers need to market product experiences over product features. Because when every generation can identify with a brand, the lines of products to experiences blur. 

So, what is it that marketers need to market experiences? Do we juggle all 7 Ps and see what sticks? Do we need to spend excessively to be the ‘loudest experience’ and saturate the competition? 

Marketing an intangible experience is a challenge. Everyone’s already had loads of experiences and will have many more – often they are not a need and are instead completely discretionary. Experiences can be swapped for alternatives with ease, and consumers are often paying with intention, effort and time much more than they are with money. 

It’s content that will always market experience brands: 

Content will reposition – If ever an experience needs to shift or create a reason to engage or transact, it’s content that has the ability to reshape an experience into the consumer’s next ‘need’ they may not have even contemplated. Thus, this will be their next brand transaction and chapter in the brand’s story. 

Content creates seasonality – To experience in a new season, new light or new theme is to experience a brand again. Seasons create reasons to engage with experience-led brands, and experience marketers need to understand and lean into every season.

Content shapes endorsements – Gone are the days when posters and images of celebrities next to a product or partaking in an experience would resonate with a consumer. Content-led endorsements building influence and advocacy are all about brands being able to evoke experiences. Seeking content that uniquely shares the story of an experience, marketers can lean on others to create content in a completely bespoke yet highly impactful way. Forget brand guidelines and punchy taglines, it’s the experience of others that will generate more exposure. 

Content builds relationships – When a consumer is in a positive and ongoing relationship with a brand, loyalty and advocacy are simultaneously unlocked and a bond can barely be broken. We are engaging in a two-way roundabout where it’s the content that generates consumption, and it’s consumers generating the content. When guests are aspiring to not only share but be reshared, then marketing superpowers transcend to those who’ve actually paid to engage. This is a relationship where the heavy lifting of a clever marketing strategy is now literally repaying itself. 

By creatively generating content, experience marketers will never ‘run out’ of stories to tell or ways to engage new customers. After all, the next experience is always waiting to be had. 

Michelle Rowling is the head of marketing and sales at Sydney Zoo

Read more: Content is no longer for ranking, it’s for being remembered