Sometimes our clients ask us why they should invest in deep experiences. Regardless of who your stakeholders are – customers, employees, board members, or the general public – creating deep experiences can elevate the connections and relationships you have with them.

What do we mean by deep experiences? In short, deep experiences help create emotional resonance between the client or brand, and their stakeholders.  

Read about how HOL creates deep experiences for our clients here. 

For more than a decade, we have helped our clients build stronger, deeper, and more positive relationships with their stakeholders. The payoff of these efforts are not small. 

When executed correctly, a sound experience strategy can enhance brand equity, grow a loyal following, improve business outcomes, and turn your audience into advocates.

But where should you start?

It may sound obvious but the first step is to make sure you have a thorough understanding of your stakeholders. What are their needs and desires? What are the beliefs and values they hold dear? How do they tend to behave in different circumstances and situations?

You may also want to understand more about the kind of experiences your stakeholders would favour if there were no constraints or limitations on their time, resources, and so forth. Gathering such relevant information could be onerous. But, they will help you design actionable insights that have real impact. More about that later. Here, I want to share a real-life story.

Move hearts, change minds

We once had the opportunity to collaborate with a client to create an experience centred around Singapore’s economic success story. At the venue, the client was concerned to see an elderly visitor standing in front of a display with tears welling up in his eyes. When our client approached him to ask if he was all right, the visitor shared that one of the photos reminded him of something that happened a long time ago.  

In the 1960s, when the government started to clear farm land in Singapore to make room for industrial development, the elderly man was one of the government employees sent to convince land owners to give up their farms for development. He recounted how the owners would set their dogs on him –forcing him to run for his life. 

Now, looking back at how Singapore has changed, it made him feel emotional. He suddenly saw the hardship he went through in a different light – he had played a small but important part in Singapore’s success story.

The visitor’s response is an example of what a good experience strategy can do in terms of creating emotional resonance. We had intended to create an experience that would enable visitors to feel that they have a part to play in the economic success of Singapore, regardless of how big or how small. Afterall, where would we be without the contributions and sacrifices of individuals? 

Where do actionable insights come in?

A key part of the process of creating a deep experience depends very much on being able to obtain impactful, actionable insights through our research.

Actionable insights will tell us what stakeholders want, so that we can accurately address their likes and pain points. With the right strategy, we can convert these pain points to opportunities. By focusing on uncovering actionable insights, we can better understand the unspoken thoughts and feelings of our stakeholders.

But, how do we know what are impactful, actionable insights?

HOL works closely with our clients to make informed and accurate decisions in the storytelling, curation, design and development of deep experiences. It all starts with impactful, actionable insights. These are the key aspects of impactful insights:

Impactful insights endure, they are not based on fads and are able to withstand the test of time. They connect with the audience at a deeper, emotional level and inspire meaningful actions that solve real problems.

More examples of actionable insights

Our Children’s Heroes

Parents were hesitant about bringing their children to museums, galleries or science centres. While they wanted to expose their children to enriching experiences, they did not want to be in a position where they were unable to answer their children’s questions about the exhibits. Most parents want to be heroes in the eyes of their children and do not want to appear ignorant. Our solution was to provide a parents’ guide and clear explanatory labels to facilitate quality parent-child interaction. Equipped with the right knowledge and suitable talking points, we removed the potential discomfort for parents.

The Value of Storytelling

An heirloom is usually part of an enduring story that is unique to the family. For some, the story is worth more than the price of the gold, silver, or diamond cast on the jewellery itself. For anaccomplished individual, the most precious thing they will leave behind for their loved ones and thenext generation is their legacy – the story of a life well lived. Our approach to developing deep experiences for brands is to focus on what they stand for. We know that customers often relate more to the brand’s values than the physical objects.

What if you don’t need to create deep experiences? Do you still need to invest time and effort to uncover actionable insights?

Yes. Because actionable insights can inspire desired action and drive new ideas, thinking, and behaviours in your organisation. It may even help energise your team because actionable insights can help you solve real problems. 

Last year, a client approached us to conduct a stakeholder engagement study. They had implemented many initiatives in the past but the outcomes did not yield the desired results. This affected the morale of the team so much that they became hesitant to try new things. Through a detailed study, HOL was able to provide the team with actionable insights supported by data. 

One of the unexpected but positive outcomes of the study was that it helped galvanise the team, change their mindset about success and finding new ways to approach the problem. The team gained renewed enthusiasm and optimism through the process. 

Conclusion

Having actionable insights about user behaviour can help you make more accurate decisions on everything from product or service improvements to pricing and messaging. You can help your stakeholders get the results they want or need without wasting time, resources, and money. In a nutshell: To be able to move hearts change minds, you need deep experiences. And, to create deep experiences, you need actionable, impactful insights.

Angeline Tong is an architect of narratives and Chief Experience Officer at HOL, an experience and engagement strategy consultancy. Angeline has a Master of Education (Human Development & Psychology) from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Museum Studies from Harvard University. She currently resides in Singapore.

To contact Angeline, email atong@hol.sg