Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

I wrote earlier about the M-Squared event at the Presidio of San Francisco, a great half-day conference on the future of marketing. I had the opportunity to follow-up with Chip Conley, Founder and CEO of the Joie de Vivre hotel chain and one of the most interesting speakers of the day.

You spoke about building each of your hotel concepts around a particular psychographic.  Do you think of guests as having a fixed personality, or have you found that guests want to try on different moods at different times?

People have different moods, and more than ever, people are likely to shift.  It’s harder to predict what a customer will want at any given time.  When you bring your Blackberry on a personal trip, are you in a work or a play mindset?  People are trading up and trading down. The purpose of their trip is what’s key here.

There are plenty of famous consumer product brands that mirror their customers' aspirations: Williams-Sonoma, Harley-Davidson, Red Bull to name a few.  Are there are other services companies that you feel are successful at what you've called "identity refreshment"?

Is Whole Foods a product or a service company?  They’re an aspirational brand. Their customers are shopping for a product, but they’re also looking for a certain level of service.  It’s the same with Netflix. It’s a product, but you are definitely getting a service with their mass customization.  In our sector, W Hotels and Ian Schrager are service companies and competitors who also help create identity.  Geek Squad has a unique identity and is probably an aspirational brand as well. They are saying “tech can be fun”.

Can a service experience be budget and/or ubiquitous (think Waffle House, if you know the Southeast chain, or Dunkin' Donuts if you're from the Northeast) and still meet unconscious needs? Or does a top-of-Maslow's hierarchy experience necessarily need to be high end?

In-N-Out Burger is a good example.  There’s something aspirational about their All-American brand.  It’s slightly hip. The beauty of the brand is that they have people coming from both directions on the economic spectrum.  "Joe Lunchbox" is trading up from McDonald's, the professor is trading down from a more formal dining experience.  Target is also simultaneously about trading up and trading down.  Southwest Airlines is definitely a trading down brand. But it’s definitely a service experience.  Both Geek Squad and Southwest are doing something very interesting.  They’re taking something very serious – air transportation, or your PC – and saying, “hey, you can have a sense of humor about this, and we can have a personality”.  They’re creating an emotional connection with the customer.

The reality is, if you’re a mass brand but you have a personality, you can still capture people on a budget who don’t care about that aspect of your brand.  I started Joie de Vivre [by renovating the Phoenix Hotel] when I was 25.  I wanted to create hotels I could afford to stay in! 75% of our product line is in the 2-3 star range. That means we are competing with Holiday Inn, with Radisson.  Our personality is what differentiates us.