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[This is a tran­script of the free audio pro­gram, Experiential Marketing Today. The audio ver­sion of this con­tent is avail­able at: Episode 008: Interview with Robyn Waters]

Voiceover:

Welcome to Experiential Marketing Today.

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Todd Austin:

Welcome to this episode of Experiential Marketing Today. This show is about the the­ory and prac­tice of using expe­ri­ences to engage audi­ences with the authen­tic nature of a brand or com­pany. We believe that it may be the most pow­er­ful tool mar­keters have, but it’s also some thing of a mystery.

My name is Todd Austin and I will be your host for this episode.

Episode 8: Interview with Robyn Waters.

The 2008 Event Marketing Innovation Tour recently made a stop at Nashville, which was the 6^th of nine cities on the tour. The Event Marketing Innovation Tour pulls together the lat­est ideas and best prac­tices in event and expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing for a half-day sem­i­nar. This year’s keynote pre­sen­ter for all nine stops on the tour was Robyn Waters.

Robyn is the for­mer Vice President of Trend, Design, and Product Development for Target. She is the author of two books: The Trendmaster’s Guide: Get a Jump on What Your Customer Wants Next,  and The Hummer and the Mini: Navigating The Contradictions of The New Trend Landscape.

She is also a con­tribut­ing author (along with Tom Peters, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell) for The Big Moo. We caught up with Robyn about an hour before her pre­sen­ta­tion. The fol­low­ing inter­view took place in the hall where she was about to speak.

Todd Austin:

So, Robyn, this con­cept of design has fol­lowed you around like a puppy. Guys like Seth Godin and Daniel Pink either talk about you by name in their books or they talk about the work that you did at Target. How has design become so impor­tant, how did we get here?

Robyn Waters:

Well, I can give you a lit­tle bit of a back­ground. When I came to Target in 1992, it was a $3 bil­lion retailer dis­counter, it was an also ran. Wal-Mart was 10 times big­ger; K-Mart was three times big­ger. We had a very vision­ary CEO, who looked at the num­bers and said, you know, there is no way we can win on scale, economies of scale, cut­ting expenses, we need to truly differentiate.

And so what he did was, inno­vate, reframe a unique space in the retail land­scape between a dis­counter and between a high-end depart­ment store. Therefore Target cov­ered out the space: upscale dis­counter. In order to achieve that, for a dis­counter to go into the mar­ket to buy goods, the goods that were out there weren’t trend right, they weren’t well designed, they weren’t great qual­ity, so we had to do it a dif­fer­ent way.

And what we ended up doing is cre­at­ing an inter­nal design depart­ment, so that we would have exclu­sive design-driven trend-right prod­uct. People often ask me what is the secret to suc­cess, what made Target “Tarzhay?” And there are three things. It’s the idea that the com­pany wanted to bor­row on their depart­ment store her­itage and be trend right. Notice I didn’t say trend for­ward, but trend right.

The sec­ond is they were going to be guest focused and guest is in the tra­di­tion of Disney. So, trend right means what are the trends, research them out there, but then trans­late them, trans­late is the key effec­tively for the guest, but design was a secret sauce. Design was the tool that we used inter­nally to cre­ate exclu­sive prod­uct, based on that trend research, based on know­ing our guests and track­ing the trends around the world and then trans­lat­ing them effectively.

And so, we became really the first bas­tion in the US for what peo­ple now call demo­c­ra­tic design or cheap chic. And we had peo­ple whose mod­els we can fol­low, IKEA was doing at in the Scandinavian coun­tries. So we didn’t inno­vate that whole idea, but we applied it to retail for the first time.

And so as the head of the design depart­ment try­ing to design, I lit­er­ally hired the first designer and hired the 100^th designer and there has been many more hired since then. So, that was a 10-year period, three bil­lion to 42 bil­lion in 10 years, Target to “Targe” in 10 years because of great design.

Todd:

What are some exam­ples of some of those prod­ucts that came out of that design focus?

Robyn:

There is a story about a sippy cup. It was designed by Philippe Starck. It was one of 5p prod­ucts in a Starck real­ity design pro­gram. Unlike any other sippy cup you’ve ever seen, it was on a pedestal, it was made out of clear plas­tic to look like cut crys­tal and it had lov­ing cup han­dles and it retailed for $3.49.

When the buy­ers first saw this pro­to­type pro­posed design that Philippe Starck rec­om­mended, they looked at it and they go, no way, it’s not what a sippy cup looks like, you know, why would you put it on a pedestal, what­ever. And what Philippe Starck did was demon­strated that good design is about more than function.

He filled it full of grape juice and he tipped it over and noth­ing spilled. So he said see it’s func­tional, it works. It’s func­tional, it’s inex­pen­sive, we can retail this for $3.49, but that’s not why you should buy this design. And he took out a pic­ture of his daugh­ter, he had a lit­tle daugh­ter who is two years old and he said here is why you should buy the sippy cup.

And what he was say­ing was that this lit­tle girl, who­ever used this sippy cup should feel like a princess when she drank from her sippy cup, just like mom and dad did when they drank their Veuve Clicquot Champagne from a cut-crystal Waterford cham­pagne flute.

So it wasn’t about the cup or even the design of the cup, it was how that design made that lit­tle girl feel and that is the essence of design with heart. So that was one prod­uct out of thou­sands in the years that I was there.

There was a very famous toi­let brush cleaner from Michael Graves that made a full color spread in “Time Magazine.” We had a Coach’s Whistle Teakettle from Michael Graves that retailed for 24.99 that was in every hot design mag­a­zine around the coun­try. So it was every­thing from garage stor­age and orga­ni­za­tion to kitchen tow­els, to bed­ding, to dorm room sup­plies, even food. There wasn’t an aspect within Target that the design strat­egy wasn’t applied in order to cre­ate more design-oriented products.

And it is the whole essence of their brand promise: expect more, pay less. You could expect more trend, more design, more qual­ity, more fash­ion. Then you pay less for it, but not just less for it than if you were buy­ing at another dis­count, but you could get the same thing, the gold plated charger plate at Target for half what you pay at Crate and Barrel and it was made in the same fac­tory. So that was a big part of the success.

Todd:

You are the keynote speaker at all nine tour stops for the Event Marketing Innovation Tour. This will be sixth of those I believe that you are about to do today, what is the con­nec­tion between design and event marketing?

Robyn:

I am pre­sent­ing a talk called “Design with Heart” and I found so many great ideas and so many exam­ples of great design with heart in each of the six cities that I vis­ited. And by that I mean, there is a per­sonal, emo­tional con­nec­tion to the audi­ence, to the clients with me as the guest speaker and I have seen tremen­dous differentiation.

There has been a con­sis­tency of the qual­ity of the event, very high qual­ity, beau­ti­fully designed, but every one is dif­fer­ent. And it is really kind of a para­dox, they are alike but they are dif­fer­ent. And each one is dif­fer­ent because they take the heart and soul of the essence of who their employ­ees are, what their mis­sion is, who their clients are and they have applied them beautifully.

I have been in a 16^th cen­tury church in the mid­dle of a farm field in Philadelphia. I am here at the Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. I have been at pro­duc­tion sites and ware­houses that have been turned into beau­ti­ful… I have danced with a robot. It has been a really great amaz­ing visual inter­ac­tion of great design turned into a great expe­ri­ence. It is design­ing a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence by using the emo­tional prin­ci­ples connecting.

Todd:

If you were to give us a state of the union of how far we have come in event design, what would the short answer to that ques­tion be?

Robyn:

I think phe­nom­e­nal. And I think that there is so much an indus­try can do to the indus­try at large out there, because I go and I speak at a lot of events. Many of them are same old same-old. They are inter­ac­tive, they are just some­one on a stage presenting.

And what I have seen are so many great tech­niques and ideas to involve the audi­ence, to get them to par­tic­i­pate, to inter­act with them that there is just so much pos­si­bil­ity for an indus­try and com­pa­nies like this to deliver that out to the big­ger pic­ture. So it is just been outstanding.

Todd:

Robyn, if folks would like to find out more about your work, find out more about the books you have writ­ten and the research you have done, how would they do that?

Robyn:

I have a web­site, it is www.rwtrend.com. I’d like to say that I have a free monthly newslet­ter called Trend Counter Trend and if you click on “Robyn’s Newsletter, ” you can hear from me once a month.

Todd:

Sounds great, thanks for your time.

Robyn:

Thank you very much.

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Todd:

We hope you enjoyed that brief inter­view. The con­tent Robyn gave us in that inter­view was a pre­view of what she cov­ered in her full pre­sen­ta­tion and it is our intent to give you that full pre­sen­ta­tion as the next episode of Experiential Marketing Today.

In the mean­time, we have posted links to some spe­cific resources related to Robyn and to the Event Marketing Innovation Tour on our web­site. You can find those listed under Episode eight at www.experientialmarketingtoday.com.

And as always, we appre­ci­ate your input and feed­back. On that same web­site, there is a tool for post­ing your com­ments or you can send us an email using the address feedback@experientialmarketingtoday.com or you can call our voice com­ment line and leave a mes­sage. That num­ber is area code 615−690−6796. We look for­ward to shar­ing Robyn’s pre­sen­ta­tion with you in the next episode and we hope you will join us.

Voiceover:

Thanks for lis­ten­ing to Experiential Marketing Today.

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