Creative Realities has been around for thirteen years – creating emotionally relevant brand experiences in retail and other environments using the latest technologies and interfaces. In fact, we are already well-known for our ability to concept, design, install and support complex digital installations, which includes a 24/7 customer support call center. But two things have made us realize that it is time to take our core competencies to a broader audience. 1) More and more CMOs have come to realize the importance of delivering a cohesive brand experience to their customers, shifting the emphasis away from advertising campaigns and into interactive experiences. 2) Innovative interactive technologies have increasingly moved off the browser and into physical spaces as well as into peoples’ hands.
Even though marketers are prioritizing experiences, their agencies are often delivering communications – TV campaigns (even if they are now virally delivered), print ads (even if they now have an interactive equivalent) and web sites (even if they now have social components). We don’t believe these activities, even if they are integrated, can deliver the brand preference and loyalty our clients are ultimately seeking. So we start from a fundamentally different place. We start with a deeper understanding of what the customer wants to feel at key moments in their brand experience and design an experience plan out of those emotions. We then execute that plan using our core competencies in digital design.
We believe marketers have missed an opportunity to capitalize on something that is not only universal to the human experience but also a subconscious driver of virtually all our behaviors including our purchase behavior. And that is our dreams. We apply both qualitative research and our own proprietary research to align the dreams of various customer segments with the brand experience we are delivering for a client in a way that will ultimately drive the behaviors we are seeking.
Yes, this is still a key offering of the company and one that we are helping to re-imagine with our clients using our experience planning approach. The decision of whether and how to integrate digital technology into the brand experience is a big one, and it involves multiple departments from the client side including marketing, operations and IT. We are adept at working with these constituents on the solution that is right for their brand, their business and most importantly their customer. We consider the entire digital ecosystem of the brand and how the digital network will connect to and support it. We consult with clients on the hardware and software solution that is right for them as well as the creative and content solution. Not only do we consult, we also design and build the network solution and install it in locations around the world. We even help clients maintain the solution through our call-center. We can help clients who are just starting out in this process as well as those who have already installed a network and are not getting the results they would like. We see digital networks as a critical component to the increasingly digital relationship businesses have with their customers.
Our technology team actively participates in forums focused on tracking new technologies, and our technology partners keep us informed of what is coming down the path. We also commission at regular intervals a proprietary study benchmarking current and near future technologies, and we are sponsors and participants in curriculum development at leading colleges where new technologies are the focus.
Unlike advertising agencies, which are typically staffed with writer/art director teams, our creative teams are made up of designers with varied backgrounds including product design, web design, architectural design, theme park design, application design, set design and technology design who work together to concept experiences that align with the brand and the marketing objective but are wholly original. We’re not trying to reinvent the advertising model.
Another differentiator is the fact that we can build and install interactive solutions at thousands of locations if necessary. We can support the installation around the clock through a call-center that we own and manage, and we can train our clients’ employees on the technology and how best to deliver the experience.
We have worked with all kinds of companies including B2B companies that interact with their customers in the field; packaged goods companies that are considering a ‘pop-up’ environment; a hospital network that is repositioning its brand; a media company that is dimensionalizing its brand in new ways. We can apply our model to virtually any kind of company and come up with ideas that have never been considered before (by the client or the consumer).
All of our experience plans include measurement recommendations so that clients can track and optimize the behaviors that matter most to them, but we have also partnered with a marketing analytics expert to design a proprietary model for clients who want a larger view. Our model can predict the behavior that will result from the various experiences we recommend so we can prioritize them. It can also help us track the success of our program with more granularity so we can nuance the experience mix to meet specific business goals.
It’s true that interactive designers consider the user experience within the browser, event marketers design experiences in specific venues and architects build physical experiences. And we partner with these kinds of specialists all the time. But we don’t believe that any one firm has been able to think neutrally about the experiences consumers dream about in all contexts and deliver that as a cohesive strategy that can be executed against as a collaborative group.
Many of us have worked for agency holding companies ourselves and understand their inherent limitations and the frustration they create for clients. That’s why we think our independence is important because it enables us to collaborate freely with an expert talent pool to build totally new experiences for clients without the constructs of the past. This ‘talent without territories’ ethos is a part of our culture, and we have designed custom technology platforms to help us execute it with clients.