Experiential Marketing Example – Glenwood Canyon Brewpub - An Interactive Case Study

John Vachalek - 7.26.2011 6:30 AM

Experiential Marketing deals with an overall customer or client experience.  It focuses on how the customer feels and what they experience during their entire engagement with your business. This engagement might begin to occur before they actually meet with you via the correspondence you have before they come in.  It occurs while they meet or visit with you and it has the ability to continue as long as the communications continue.

This continuance of the communication provides a huge opportunity for businesses to stand out and keep the experience of their brand alive in the customer’s mind. In an age of social media, this continuance of your brand experience is far more likely to occur.

This post will serve as an interactive case study in the areas of Experiential Marketing, Social Media  Marketing, Marketing Trends and more. Read on and see what you think.

On May 30, 2011 my family and I visited the Glenwood Canyon Brewpub at the Hotel Denver in Glenwood Springs.  The experience we had at dinner that evening was nothing short of horrendous.  The food was bland, the service was slow, and it was just one of those awful dinners out that becomes comical due the fact that things were just so continuously disappointing. We complained (nicely, of course) a couple of times to our waitress and even had a visit from a very nonchalant floor manager. But short of the quick “I am sorry,” no one did anything to remedy the situation.  Our waitress’ comments included, “Yeah, our kitchen has just been off tonight,” and, “At least one dish turned out okay” (she sort of laughed when saying this).

However, after finishing what we wanted of the meal and paying our bill, something interesting happened. We were given a comment card. This card said,
We Welcome Your Comments
Come Join our Social Network. Let the public know how we’re doing too. Tell it to our Face(book). Advise on Trip Advisor or Tweet on Twitter @glenwoodbrewpub. Tell the social world what you think about us. We look forward to hearing from you.
If you would rather make suggestions privately email our General Manager Trudy at trudy@thehoteldenver.com or call her at 970-945-1276
It also had Icons for: Facebook, Twitter & Trip Advisor

After the experience we had and all the feedback we had given during our meal, I was amazed they would ask us how they were doing and encourage us to “Let the public know how we are doing.”

So, for our case study, I am posting this experience on our blog.  This will go out to the search engines. I will share this post on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.  Our first test will be in the area of Social Media. Is the Brewpub listening and monitoring the use of their name on the Internet?  If so, what will happen?

How to use this information
If you are going to ask for feedback and tell your customers to ask the world about you, you must make sure you are providing an amazing experience all the time.  In today’s world every customer has the ability to share their thoughts and feelings about your business.  Make sure your entire team understands this and strives to ensure that everyone has positive things to say.

Please share your thoughts and comments below.  Future posts will let you know what happens as we follow this live case study.
 

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