How Placemaking Works from Authenticity

I love the free time I seem to have this week, although I look out the window and see the first part of nine inches of show that's due to come down before 6PM....

Anyway back to the subject at hand...

The book continues using The American Girl stores as the shining example of products that are true to themselves in terms of Authenticity(ie offering a place where the product can be experienced-where the average stay is over 4 hours(!) and customers spend over $100 per visit), while trashing the Walt Disney and Warner Brothers store model-static stores with no real experiencial element. The trashing occurs because as stagers of experiences elsewhere(in their theme parks, in movies, etc), they should know better, and therefore the stores are detracting from their brands-which probably accounts for their relative disappearance in the last 10 years.

A quote in the book from Peter Drucker really caught my attention: "The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous". Wow. Reminds me of something I was thinking about regarding godd direct mail pieces- that should be able to hand it them and not open your mouth, and they would know why the event was important, why they needed to go and why they needed to take action now and how to register". Reminds me also of Stephen Pia's quote to me in one of my SISO articles: "it's not selling, it's helping people buy".

The author's carry on with the concept that "placemaking makes advertising superfluous". Wow advertising companies are in trouble if this catches on.....

Happy New Year to all....