As part of our ‘Love business’ month, we’re excited to bring you this interview with Max Lenderman, one of the world’s leading experts on experiential marketing.
As well as being a lecturer at University of Colorado’s Boulder Digital Works and a founding board member of the International Experiential Marketing Association (IXMA), Max is an author, a sought-after public speaker, and a media commentator and mentor on the subjects of strategic branding, experiential marketing and emerging global business trends. He is also founder and CEO at School, a purposeful advertising agency that helps make the world a better place.
1. How are you doing what you love?
I help run School, a creative agency in Boulder, CO that hopes to make and invent inspiring work while also helping kids in developing countries get access to educational opportunities.
School in Boulder specializes in strategy and creative for digital advertising
We are passionate about crafting culture that takes the world to a better place from where we first found it. We are equally passionate about giving people the ability to express themselves fully, to learn everyday, and be good to each other. And the best part of this is that the work that comes out of our agency is truly exceptional because it comes from a place of love.
2. What’s the philosophy behind experiential marketing? How is it changing the world?
Experiential marketing is a “human centric” medium. In other words, the best experiential campaigns are deeply human – almost existential – and serve us by creating moments of visceral connection, cultural empathy and personal meaning.
When wrote my book about it, I felt it necessary to make the first rule of experiential marketing to be all about delivering a benefit to people first and foremost. That ethos hasn’t escaped the work that we do in experiential channels.
Lenderman’s breakthrough work, Experience the message, was a Business Book of the Year Finalist and has been cited as “the best book on experiential marketing”.
3. How were you introduced to experiential marketing?
Craft beer. I was a journalist in NYC and covered the emerging craft beer craze (I’m dating myself). Those small brewers were competing and beating the big guys like Bud and Miller with great, authentic stories and a lot of free beer sampling. I learned all I needed to know about experiential marketing talking to these brewers: have a great origin story, be authentic and create opportunities to get the product in people’s hands.
4. What personal influences/experiences have had the biggest impact on your work?
I think great creative directors need to be great readers and learners. They need to be in a constant state of inquisition. We need to be insatiably curious. The best thing I did after college as to join the Peace Corps. Not because of the altruism behind it, but the fact that there was a lot of downtime to read. And I read voraciously. Great literature helps us learn about the world and our place in it. This is probably the biggest requisite for experiential – the knowledge of people and what makes them share, participate and act in the stories that creative directors create.
5. How are developing countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China leading the experiential marketing trend?
They don’t have 60 years of television, radio and print advertising to fall back on – so they are inventing new ways to create branded communications.
Max’s second book was published by HarperCollins in April 2009 and has been translated into five languages
6. Your agency, School, has become a home for entrepreneurs in the advertising business. How does it help brands, businesses and organizations do better by doing good?
Purpose is the new digital. It will change the commercial dynamics in the same way that digital transformed (and is transforming) the way people buy and sell stuff. The brands of the future will all have a purpose beyond just making a profit – in other words, people will support brands that want to dent the world for the better. Almost all the new tech partners that we work with want to beneficially impact the world, not just line the pockets of investors and shareholders. It’s not enough to just make profit anymore (although that’s very important); the profit has to come with a purpose.
Max delivering a speech at Advertising Week. Watch him in action here.
7. What are the latest trends in experiential marketing? What excites you most about the way things are going?
Some of the best commercials are experiential campaigns that are filmed. More and more “live” work is being done and that’s exciting. There’s a rawness to it. Creating bridges between physical and digital experiences is the latest and most potent trends I see. Our lives are both inexorably digital and physical, and campaigns must blur and transcend that line all the time to create memorable experiences.
Max is a sought-after public speaker on the subjects of guerrilla marketing, experiential marketing & youth marketing strategies
8. What is the most influential marketing campaign you’ve seen recently? Why was it so effective?
Like a Girl. So simple. So experiential. So powerful. The best kind of work there is.
9. What’s been your favourite project to work on to date?
My daughters.
10. What are you enjoying working on at the moment?
Growing School and creating collaborative opportunities for brands and businesses that are on the cusp of greatness.
11. What would be your dream project?
I’d like to rebrand the United States to the rest of the world. Not tourism. But the unique selling proposition of this country and what it stands for. It needs a brand refresh.
12. What do you do in your spare time?
What’s this thing you call “spare time?” I’ve never heard of it.
13. What words of wisdom do you live and work by?
Give a shit.
14. What are your top tips to help people re-shape or better market their business?
- Start with the right reasons for starting your business.
- Take extra time – as much time as it takes – to hire the right people.
- Find an authentic voice, a fundamental reason for your existence, and never waver from it.
- It’s much better to show people rather than tell them. But it’s a lot better to involve them than it is to just show them.
Find out more about Max at his website.
