The Brand Experience Strategy Guide
Over here at Just Honest, we think that great brand experiences shouldn't start with the venue, the format or the creative idea. We believe they should start with a question:
What needs to be different because this experience happened?
What could that difference be? Is it how someone thinks about your brand? or what they understand about it, how they feel, what they should do next, or, the relationship they build with you over time?
Many experiences are developed in the opposite direction. A format is chosen and a venue gets booked. Then creative concepts are developed. Technology is added. Content is planned, and, somewhere towards the end of the process, someone asks how success will be measured...
At Just Honest, we believe great experiences are designed backwards.
We start with the business objective. We define the change you need to create in the audience. We identify the behaviours that would demonstrate that change, and then we design an experience capable of creating those behaviours.
Business Objective → Audience Change → Behaviour → Experience → Measurement
We believe that's the real difference between organising an event and strategically designing a brand experience.
What is brand experience strategy?
Brand experience strategy defines the role an experience should play in achieving a wider brand or business objective. It answers the strategic questions before the creative questions:
What are we trying to achieve?
Who needs to respond?
What do we want them to think, feel or do differently?
What behaviour would demonstrate that change?
What experience could encourage that behaviour?
How will we know whether it worked?
The result isn't necessarily going to be an "event".
It could be a brand activation, product launch, pop-up, community programme, retail experience, exhibition, hospitality experience, cultural moment or an ongoing series of interactions.
For us, the strategy comes first and the format comes later.
Brand experience strategy isn't event planning
Event planning and experience strategy are connected, but they solve very different problems.
Event planning asks:
Where will it happen?
When will it happen?
Who is attending?
What suppliers are required?
What needs to be produced?
How will everything be delivered?
Experience strategy asks:
Why should this experience exist?
Why should the audience care?
What needs to change?
What behaviour are we trying to create?
What value are we giving people in return for their attention?
What should people remember?
What should happen afterwards?
How will the experience contribute to a wider marketing or business objective?
Both disciplines matter, but, flawless execution cannot compensate for an unclear strategy.
And, an impeccably produced experience can still achieve very little without the right strategic thinking.
Great Experiences Are Designed Backwards
Experiential briefs often begin with an output.
"We need a launch."
"We need an activation."
"We need an event."
"We need something immersive."
"We need something people will share."
But those are formats and tactics. They aren't objectives.
Instead, we start at the end:
If this experience works, what will be different afterwards?
Imagine a brand wants to increase consideration for a new product?
The audience needs to understand why that product is relevant to them, and for us to create that understanding, perhaps we need people to explore the product rather than simply see it.
That means the experience needs to encourage active discovery, rather than just passive observation.
In this case, the creative brief changes...
Instead of asking:
"How do we make this launch look impressive?"
We'll ask:
"How could we design an interaction that makes people curious enough to discover the product for themselves?"
The seven questions every brand experience strategy should answer...
1. What are we actually trying to change?
We'll always get briefed on these common outcomes:
"Create buzz."
"Drive engagement."
"Build awareness."
But these objectives won't give an experience enough direction. We challenge these and ask;
What would awareness actually enable?
What does engagement mean in this context?
What should someone know, believe or do differently after interacting with the brand?
The more precisely we define the intended change, the more deliberately and intentionally we can then design for it.
2. Who needs to change?
A demographic isn't an audience insight. Understanding age, location and job title may help define who is attending, but it tells us very little about how to design an experience for them.
Instead we ask:
What do they already know?
What do they care about?
What are they sceptical about?
What competes for their attention?
Why would they participate?
What would make the interaction valuable to them?
Great experiences aren't designed around the audience a brand wishes it had.
They're designed around the people who will actually walk through the door.
3. What do we want people to do?
Behaviour creates the bridge between strategy and creative design. So, what do we need people to do?
Stop?
Enter?
Explore?
Taste?
Play?
Learn?
Talk?
Create?
Share?
Connect?
Buy?
Return?
Each requires a different experience.
If we can't define the behaviour we're designing for, it becomes very difficult to judge whether the creative idea is right and whether it will actually work.
4. What value are we giving in return?
Attention is an exchange and people won't participate simply because a brand wants them to.
There needs to be something valuable on the other side.
That value might be:
Entertainment. Knowledge. Access. Utility. Connection. Status. Discovery. Reward. Belonging.
Any of these create an understanding why the interaction is worth someone's time.
The strongest experiences create a clear value exchange between the brand and its audience.
5. What should people feel?
Emotion shouldn't be an accidental by-product of experience design.
Curiosity produces different behaviour from excitement.
Belonging produces different behaviour from exclusivity.
Trust requires different design decisions from surprise.
Before deciding how an experience should look, we'll ask how it should feel and then design the environment, interactions and journey accordingly.
6. What happens next?
An experience shouldn't exist in isolation. We have to consider what happens:
Before it.
During it.
Immediately afterwards.
Days later.
Across social and content channels.
Within CRM.
At retail.
Within the wider campaign.
Content strategy belongs here too.
If content is important to the campaign, the experience should be designed with content opportunities built into it rather than trying to manufacture them afterwards.
The event can be the start of the marketing, not the end of it.
7. How will we know it worked?
Measurement should be defined before creative development begins. Not afterwards.
If we know the business objective, audience change and desired behaviours, we can identify the signals that would indicate whether those things actually happened.
Instead of simply measuring what is easy to count, we can measure what matters.
The Just Honest Experience Architecture™: Turning strategy into experiences
At Just Honest, we use our propriety Just Honest Experience Architecture™ to connect the strategic objective of an experience with what audiences actually experience and do. The system works through five connected stages:
Business Objective
What does the organisation need the experience to achieve?
This could be commercial, behavioural, cultural or relational. The objective gives the experience a reason to exist.
Audience Change
What needs to be different for the audience?
Perhaps they need to understand something.
Trust something.
Feel differently about a brand.
Discover a product.
See another person differently.
Feel part of a community.
Or recognise an opportunity they hadn't previously considered.
Behaviour
What would people do if that change was happening?
This is where an abstract objective becomes observable.
They might stop.
Explore.
Ask questions.
Participate.
Contribute.
Connect.
Share knowledge.
Try something.
Return.
Purchase.
Advocate.
These become the behaviours we design for.
Experience
What needs to happen to encourage those behaviours?
Now we can design.
The journey.
The environment.
The interaction.
The content.
The moments of participation.
The value exchange.
The physical and sensory experience.
At this stage we use our own proprietary 7-S Design System™ to explore how the experience itself should be brought to life - Not every experience needs to activate all seven.
The purpose is to make deliberate design choices around the senses and environmental cues that will support the intended audience response.
Measurement
What evidence will tell us whether the intended change happened?
The measurement framework follows the strategy;
Business Objective → Audience Change → Behaviour → Experience → Measurement
It means creative decisions aren't being made simply because something looks impressive or because a format is trending. They all have a defined role within the wider strategy.
We design for participation, not attendance
Attendance tells us someone arrived, but it doesn't tell us whether the experience worked, as someone can spend an hour at an event and remain almost entirely passive.
Instead, we think about the progression through an experience:
Attention → Curiosity → Participation → Reward → Memory → Action
At every stage there is an opportunity to lose someone. So we ask:
What will make them stop?
What will make them curious?
What will make them participate?
What are we asking them to give?
What are they receiving in return?
What will make the interaction worth remembering?
What should they do next?
This shifts the design conversation from:
"What should we put in the space?" to. "What should people do in the space?"
That is a fundamentally different creative brief.
How should brand experience be measured?
There is no universal experiential KPI. The right measurement depends on what the experience was designed to achieve.
If the objective is awareness
Useful signals we might include:
Reach
Footfall
Content reach
Earned media
Brand recall
If the objective is engagement
We'd consider:
Participation rate
Dwell time
Interaction completion
Repeat interaction
Conversation
Content creation
If the objective is consideration
We'd consider:
Product exploration
Sampling
Lead capture
Intent
Follow-up behaviour
If the objective is community
We'd consider:
Connections created
Return attendance
Member participation
Referrals
Contribution
Opportunities created between members
If the objective is conversion
We'd consider:
Leads
Redemptions
Trials
Sales
Bookings
Pipeline influence
The principle is simple:
We don't measure what is easy to count. We measure what tells you whether the intended change happened or not.
The Just Honest Experience Architecture™ in practice:
Our methodology doesn't dictate a particular type or scale of experience.
The same strategic logic can be applied to a three-day consumer activation or a small community gathering. The execution and format changes, but the strategic questions won't.
Lets review some of our recent work that showcases the Just Honest Experience Architecture™ in practice...
Wellness Wonderz: Designing for participation
For Wellness Wonderz, the challenge wasn't simply to create a branded presence.
The experience needed to encourage people to stop, participate and spend meaningful time interacting with the brand.
Business Objective:
Create meaningful engagement with the brand within a highly competitive live environment.
Audience Change:
Move visitors from passive awareness to active curiosity and product engagement.
Behaviours We Designed For
Stop → Explore → Participate → Complete → Discover → Reward
Experience
Instead of relying on passive product display, the experience was built around a gamified participation journey: Quiz → Key → Locker → Reward
Participation wasn't added to the creative concept. Participation was the creative concept.
The mechanic gave visitors a reason to stop, something to discover and a clear reward for completing the interaction.
Measurement
The campaign generated measurable participation and dwell against the objectives set for the activation.
The results mattered because they related directly to the behaviours the experience had been designed to create.
Crew: designing for deeper connection
Our Just Honest Experience Architecture™ can also be used to design something much less tangible like
relationships, it's not limited to just consumer activations.
Crew wanted to create greater value between members by moving beyond conventional networking and enabling them to understand the businesses and people within the community more deeply.
Business Objective
Increase the value of the Crew community by creating deeper understanding between members and uncovering opportunities for them to support, connect and work with one another.
Audience Change
Move members from: "I know this person" to "I understand this person, their business, their challenges and where I might be able to add value" which is a very different relationship.
Behaviours We Designed For
We wanted members to:
Listen.
Ask better questions.
Share knowledge.
Contribute ideas.
Connect information.
Identify opportunities.
Understand the story behind the business.
Experience
Rather than creating another traditional networking event, the experience was structured as a "field trip."
Members entered another member's world.
The business and founder became the focus of the experience, creating a reason for conversation beyond introductions and job titles and founder storytelling created context.
Prompts and conversation encouraged members to contribute their own knowledge. The group activity to capture the experience encouraged belonging and participation.
The environment gave the group something tangible to discuss and the experience created space for connections to emerge organically from a deeper understanding of the person and business in front of them.
Measurement
The strongest evidence wasn't simply who attended, it was what happened within the room and the conversations that sparked follow up actions;
Members became actively engaged in the conversation.
Previously unknown parts of the founder's story and business surfaced.
Members began connecting dots in real time.
Potential opportunities emerged from those conversations.
And feedback from the featured founder was strongly positive, with the experience leaving her feeling empowered by the community around her.
Feedback from guests on the intentionally designed elements was overwhelmingly positive too.
We didn't design a networking event. We designed the conditions for deeper understanding, contribution and opportunity.
See the full Crew field trip case study here →
Common brand experience strategy mistakes
Starting with the format
"We need an event" isn't a strategy.
Neither is "we need a pop-up" or "we want something immersive".
We start with the problem before deciding what the answer looks like.
Designing for the brand rather than the audience
What the brand wants to say isn't automatically what the audience wants to experience.
We find the point where the two become mutually valuable.
Confusing attendance with engagement
Bodies in a room tell us very little about the impact of an experience.
We ask what people actually did once they arrived.
Adding technology without a reason
Technology should enable behaviour, remove friction or improve the experience.
Adding a big screen or novelty technology product alone isn't strategy.
Treating content as an afterthought
If content matters, we design for it from the beginning.
Every interaction, reveal and conversation can become a potential asset when content is considered as part of the experience strategy.
Measuring afterwards
So many people leave this til after the event or experience. Looking back and then defining what was accidentally captured to justify ROI. Measurement matters. Let's define this upfront and showcase what's truly happening.
Trying to create every emotion at once
Memorable experiences usually have a clear emotional intention.
Let's decide what you want people to feel and design accordingly.
So, When should you bring in an experiential agency?
An experiential agency can add the most strategic value before the solution has already been decided.
Consider bringing in the right experiential partner when:
You know the business objective but don't yet know what the experience should be.
You're launching a new brand, product or proposition.
Your existing activations aren't generating meaningful engagement.
You need to connect a physical experience with a wider campaign.
You want people to actively participate rather than simply attend.
You're trying to measure experiential activity more effectively.
You need strategy, creative thinking, design and delivery to work as one system.
The earlier strategic thinking enters the process, the greater the opportunity to influence the outcome.
Frequently Asked Questions About Brand Experience Strategy
What is a brand experience strategy?
A brand experience strategy defines how an experience will contribute to a wider brand or business objective. It identifies the audience change required, the behaviours that would demonstrate that change, the experience needed to encourage those behaviours and how success will be measured.
What should a brand experience strategy include?
At minimum, it should define the business objective, audience, desired audience change, behaviours, value exchange, experience journey, creative principles and a measurement framework.
What is the difference between brand experience and experiential marketing?
Brand experience describes the relationship people build with a brand through interactions and touchpoints. Experiential marketing uses deliberately designed experiences to influence that relationship and achieve a marketing or business objective.
What is the difference between experience strategy and event planning?
Experience strategy determines why an experience should exist, what it needs to change and what behaviours it should create. Event planning determines how the resulting experience will be organised and delivered. Both are important, but they solve different problems.
How do you create a successful brand experience?
Start with the outcome rather than the format. Define what needs to change for the audience, identify the behaviours that would demonstrate that change, then design an experience capable of encouraging those behaviours.
How do you measure brand experience?
Measurement should reflect the original objective and desired audience behaviour. Depending on the strategy, useful metrics can include participation, dwell time, interaction completion, recall, lead generation, sentiment, purchase intent, conversion, referrals and post-experience behaviour.
What makes a brand activation engaging?
People need a reason to participate. Strong activations create a clear value exchange and make the desired interaction intuitive, relevant and rewarding.
What is the Just Honest Experience Architecture™?
The Just Honest Experience Architecture™ is Just Honest's strategic system for connecting a business objective to audience change, behaviour, experience design and measurement.
What is the Just Honest 7-Sense Design System™?
The 7-Sense Design System™ is Just Honest's creative experience design methodology. It examines how to determine how environmental and sensory design can support the intended audience response.
When should we hire an experiential agency?
Ideally before the format or creative solution has been decided. Bringing an experiential agency into strategic development gives it greater opportunity to align audience insight, creative thinking, experience design, production and measurement.
Can Just Honest develop the strategy without producing the experience?
Yes. Just Honest can work as a strategic partner, creative partner or end-to-end experiential agency depending on the requirements of the project.
Put the strategy into practice...
Understanding our systems and frameworks is one thing. Applying them to a live brief is another.
Book a call in with our Strategists to work through:
Business Objectives
Audience Change
Desired Behaviours
Value Exchange
Experience Journey
Measurement
Just Honest Experience Architecture™
We also have a handy workbook that can help you apply to your own brief. Want a copy? Book a call with out team and they'll walk you through it.
Planning a brand experience?
Bring us the objective and we'll help you find the right solution.
Just Honest works with brands and marketing teams to turn business challenges into experience strategies, creative concepts and physical experiences designed around what audiences should think, feel and do.
Always Honest. Never Ordinary.
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The content published on this blog is for informational and inspirational purposes only. While we strive to provide up-to-date insights, expert opinions, and industry trends, the information shared should not be considered as professional advice tailored to any specific event or business need. All views expressed in our blog posts are our own and are intended to inspire creativity, spark innovation, and provide valuable insights into the world of brand experience, event marketing, experience design, event design and event management. However, event strategies, technologies, and trends evolve rapidly, and we recommend consulting with a professional before making any major event or experience-related decisions. Additionally, any third-party tools, platforms, or services mentioned in our blog posts are referenced purely for educational purposes. We do not endorse or receive compensation for mentioning them unless explicitly stated.
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