Stone Mantel Experience Strategy Blog
Meaningful Motivation Principle 2: Measure what matters
As we continue our tour through the key design principles of Meaningful Motivation, our next stop is Meaningful Measurement. There are many elements that come to play in meaningful measurement, but for today, we’ll focus on one of the most important and often overlooked elements.
From KPIs to OKRs plenty has been written on measurement, but from a Meaningful Motivation perspective, we have to understand that as important as process is, humans are motivated by results. If you’re in the Motivation business, your customer is going to measure the value of their time spent with you and invested in your products and services, based on results.
Most companies focus on quantitative measurements, like pounds lost, dollars saved, or blood pressure lowered. Compared to qualitative measures, they are easier to measure, and therefore, demonstrate results. Unfortunately, these results usually aren’t compelling or consistent enough to maintain sustained engagement. To keep your customer focused throughout a process that will inevitably have ups and downs, you need to also be able to measure progress toward the benefits of these metrics. That’s where a compelling “why” comes in.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Why Students Should Be Treated Like Customers
It’s time to start treating students like customers. Historically, higher education hasn’t leveraged modern customer experience techniques to support students throughout their journeys. In this episode, Cindy Casper, the first insights strategy consultant in higher education, makes the case for taking a fresh look at students’ needs. Tune in to discover the powerful insights and experience strategies Cindy and her team employed at Arizona State University to better support students at their institution.
Meaningful Motivation Principle 1: Start with Understanding
We’ve spent years interviewing and observing thousands of people to understand what motivates them meaningfully. In this eight-part series we will share the eight key design principles for Meaningful Motivation that can be used to inform experience strategies. Whether you're working in financial services, health systems, spiritual or religious systems, family dynamics, wellbeing, education, employee experience or travel, if your job is to support customers in achieving a goal, then you need to understand meaningful motivation.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: The Collaboratives With Mary Putman
In this episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast, we are joined by Mary Putman, Lead Digital Strategist for The Collaboratives at Stone Mantel. We discuss how The Collaboratives make learning and research an interactive and transformative experience. Unlike conferences which provide ideas, but rarely support integration into your real-life scenarios, or traditional research that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per project, or development programs which can take years to complete, The Collaboratives teach you skills and frameworks to lead digital, hybrid, IRL Experience Strategy in your organization, while solving complex real-life problems at a fraction of the cost of even a single research project.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Ancient Principles for Staging Modern Experiences
From Aristotle and Plato to modern brands like Disney and Apple, staging and storytelling have always been central to our experiences. Tune into today’s episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast to find out ways to use these timeless techniques to entice, engage and immerse your customer in your brand’s offerings.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: What the Heck is Experience Strategy Anyway?
From Starbucks to Netflix, companies today are competing to disrupt the market and deliver the best possible customer experience. But what does it take to differentiate your brand and drive results for your customers and your bottom line? Tune into today’s episode as we explain just what Experience Strategy means, and why it matters.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Ecosystems of Wellbeing
2020 reminded us that Wellness touches every part of our lives. As a result, companies are quickly discovering that workplace wellness is much more than in-house gyms, mindfulness apps, and healthy food in cafeterias. In this episode, we welcome Mia Kyricos, a globally respected thought-leader in the business of wellness, to explore the rapidly evolving landscape of Wellness and a uniquely integrated approach for helping organizations across all industries create purpose-driven wellness strategies designed to make companies, brands, services and colleagues inherently well.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Experience First: Hotelifying Apartment Living
How do you take a simple moment and turn it into something that is memorable every single day? Many of us have had wonderful experiences at hotels, but residential living has been slow to embrace the lessons of hospitality. In today’s episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast, we’re talking to Trevor Hightower, the founder of Craftwork, about creating meaningful moments for apartment residents and powerful ways to disrupt the residential real estate industry.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Time Well Spent
In today’s episode, we focus on a foundational strategic principle Experience Strategists call “time well spent.” Consumers have a choice about where to spend their time and money and those decisions are usually driven by how much value they get from an experience. Tune in to hear fresh ways for understanding the value of people’s time spent with your business, and how to design your service and products to create experiences that customers want to buy.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Employee Engagement in a Post-Covid World
Covid-19 fundamentally shifted the way most people work. For many companies it’s meant newly distributed workforces, and prompted a need to find innovative ways to create meaningful employee experiences. In this episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast, we are joined by Valarie Udeh, from one of the world’s largest aerospace and defense companies, BAE Systems, to explore powerful strategies for engaging a remote workforce, managing diverse employees, and cultivating company culture, no matter where your employees do their work.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Unlocking Customer Loyalty
Getting a customer is one thing, but keeping them is the hard part. In this episode, Aransas and Dave speak with Heidi Bowman, a 30 year veteran in Marketing and Business Development and the VP of Marketing & Business Development at Silex Financial Group, a residential and commercial mortgage broker, about ways to keep customers connected to companies through experience strategies.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Themes, Adventures, and Shopper Identities at Trader Joe's
The experience of food shopping is fundamentally about reliability and consistency, but standout brands like Trader Joe’s use powerful Experience Strategies to differentiate their brands, add meaning and value for consumers, and build loyal fan bases. In this episode of the Experience Strategy Podcast, NYC-based blogger Halle Sarfin chats with Aransas and Dave about her love for grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s and what keeps her coming back.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Unpacking The Experience Pioneers Episode
Your hosts, Aransas and Dave, recently had the opportunity to speak with the true pioneers of Experience Strategy, Lou Carbone, Joe Pine, and Bernd Schmitt for a previous episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast. These pioneers shared so much valuable information that Aransas and Dave decided to sit down together and thoroughly unpack the ‘aha moments’ from that episode. Tune in to hear a breakdown of the key lessons these Pioneers shared.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Meaningful Experiences at Milk Bar Brooklyn
Welcome to this episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast! Aransas and Dave are joined today by Kylie Sachs, the owner of two thriving Milk Bar Cafes in Brooklyn, New York. Kylie’s café venture started in 2016 as a significant career and lifestyle change. Prior to making the switch to café/restaurant life, Kylie spent more than 20 years in management and finance at growing companies. Tune in to this episode as Aransas and Dave talk with Kylie about her “Team First” approach to running a business and how she achieves positive customer experiences. You don’t want to miss this insightful episode!
The Experience Strategy Podcast: The Power of Omni-Channel Experience Strategies
Welcome to this episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast! Aransas and Dave are joined today by tech executive Liz Grausam, who shares her personal experience consolidating her finances. Managing personal finances has become an epic chore for many consumers. Big banks, burdened by outdated technology, aren’t making it easier for consumers to choose them in an increasingly competitive market. In this episode we look at the cost of tech debt on the customer experience, and ways businesses can use omni-channel experience strategies to create lasting loyalty.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Experience Pioneers
In this episode, Aransas and Dave are joined by the experience strategy pioneers, Lou Carbone, Joe Pine, and Bernd Schmitt to take us back to the birth of Experience Strategy, Design and Marketing. In this episode we dig into the cultural and business forces that drove the experience revolution, explore how experience strategy has transformed business development, product design, and marketing, and discover what these pioneers predict is on the horizon.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: A Spotlight on Spotify
Welcome to the Experience Strategy Podcast! Today we are shining a spotlight on Spotify. Spotify has completely transformed how we listen to music forever. Launched in 2008, Spotify has grown to have over 356 millions users and includes a free or premium membership to access exclusive features of music listening, offline access, and ad free listening experiences. Spotify has found a way to connect with consumers on a deep level of emotional response by noticing our likes and dislikes in music and even offering new suggestions for you to discover. Your hosts Aransas and Dave welcome guest Margaret Callcott to talk about her own personal experience using Spotify for herself and her family. Margaret holds a PhD in advertising and consumer behavior from The University of Texas and has a long career in TV and digital content development. Tune into this episode as we speak with Margaret about her user insights and understanding how Spotify creates meaningful experiences with consumers.
The Experience Strategy Podcast: Getting to know Dave and Aransas
Welcome to the Experience Strategy Podcast, the only podcast focused on the challenges of creating and executing an experience strategy.
In this debut episode, your hosts, Aransas Savas and Dave Norton welcome you to their new podcast. Aransas is a coach and Experience Designer who has worked with leading consumer brands for the last 20 years. Dave is an Experience Strategist and the founder of the Insights Consultancy, Stone Mantle and author. Listen in to learn a little more about Dave and Aransas and the ways this show is going to tap into smart consumers, small business owners and big business experts to understand what makes an impactful experience strategy.
Are people going to local shops more since COVID?
Are people finding going to local shops and restaurants more meaningful since COVID?

