Foundations of Creating a Branded Experience, Part II

Our most recent article on the Foundations of Creating a Branded Experience dealt with more of the emotional undertones that undergird a Branded Experience. Today's article gets into a bit more practical matters...

Branding is the means that the business entity uses in order to manage the dynamic range of expectations that the potential customer has in order to both make the sell as well as to service the product should it prove to be deficient. It is a representation of quality in order to sell the product, and a promise of future support. Servicing the product after the sell is necessary in order to maintain the reputation, and the reputation is necessary in order to keep existing clients as well as a means of spreading the news in order to insure that new clients are added, thus increasing the profits of the business.

The creation of a Branded Experience concerns the quality, from entry to exit, of a person entering a space, experiencing the space, and leaving the space. Although the space is a three-dimensional construct, the experience that a person has of it is linear. The 'linearity' of the person's experience thereby takes the architect's mission merely from being the design of a building to the design of an experience, from beginning to ending. If you would like, we could compare designing Branded Experiences to designing levels in a Role Playing Immersive Video Game.


In a Video Game, a synthetic world has been created that defines a branded experience. In it, there are certain functions that the player must accomplish in order to progress. The overall story has a multitude of key points that are moving toward an ultimate conclusion, but those key points may or may not be experienced in a sequential order. However, in order to solve the game, each of the component parts must be solved according to a pre-determined plan, many times created as a story or script. We liken these individual parts as interchangeable modules in the experience of the player, and are similar in the way that a person encounters a space.


The narrative of the experience of the space is based on the story that the brand is seeking to communicate, from start to finish, with all of its highs, lows and eventual denouement. Each aspect of the 'story' should be agreed upon by the client in the process of working with the space designer... moving from emotions, to smells and colors, light and phenomenology, textures, and eventually forms and displays of the object or objects being sold. The product being sold is not, "the thing" - as much as the experience that one should have in the process of encountering "the thing".

So as far as branding goes, there is the design of the object that is the focus of the transaction. But, there is also an additional set of contextual factors that are involved which facilitate the transaction. These factors include but are not limited to the friendliness and knowledge ability of the staff of the products and services. The factors include the place or environment wherein the transaction is occurring. The place has an impact of the workers at the business, in that if it is orderly, clean upscale attractive, then the business worker is going to be able to be more focused in his or her job.

Likewise, if the environment is a fun, interesting, dynamic, or otherwise appropriate place for customers to conduct business, then there is a certain amount of oil or lubricant that is added to the inherent ‘resistance’ that may come from the customer in purchasing the product. This is where the architect or experience designer comes in.


We are seeking an accumulation of associative meanings that, due to sequence and intensity, combine to form a unique experience. More on how this happens in our next post.