“What they want is products, communications, and marketing campaigns that dazzle their senses, touch their hearts, and stimulate their minds – that deliver an experience.”

It is those companies that can deliver the right experience to customers that will succeed in the global marketplace today. Businesses will live or die not by the attributes they promise, but by the experience they offer customers at every touch point – in the store, at the website, with the product, and through events and advertising.

Most current advertising still relies on obsessive proliferation of the brand through mass media that seek economies of scale – the more eyeballs, the better. But consumers want more than mass messages sent to eyeballs. They want respect, recognition and relevant communication, and they've indicated that the best way to give it to them is through experiences that are personally relevant, memorable, sensory, emotional and meaningful.

“Today, customers take product quality and a positive brand image as a given,” writes Columbia Business School guru Bernd H. Schmitt in the seminal book Experiential Marketing .