229 – Michael Crooks of DVF – Psychology and Immersive Experiences

Live audience event at Spring Place on experiential marketing in fashion, psychology, and the need for an industry to evolve... Michael Crooks Senior Director of Global Relational Marketing for DVF (a global luxury fashion brand celebrated for its bold and creative approach to color and print, and admired for its sensual femininity) joins Pavan Bahl, Rob Sanchez, Marc Raco and guest host Rohan Deuskar (CEO of Stylitics) in front of a live audience at Spring Place in New York City. MouthMedia Network is powered by Sennheiser. In this episode: Crooks shares how the range of technology and innovation has to be integrated in the right environment in an organic way that makes sense, which is a lot harder than it sounds Customer analytics, behavioral clienteling (establishing long-term relationships with key customers based on data about their preferences, behaviors and purchase) in-store and online, and the training that brings that together Precognition—when the brain knows what you’re dong before you cognitively know How Crooks learned a lot of scientific method in education, and decided not to be a therapist, Activations celebrating International Women’s Day – original envisioned as panels around empowerment, and a pop up in san Francisco, partnering with Levis and Google, personalized experience “in charge” of VIP experience, using data of people in the area Getting locations to create their own regional events that are regionalized using the same template Putting together a training clienteling manual, modifying how to listen for root values, and how to ask for open questions, the right way to do data capture and use analytics Making events cohesive, making advancements on personalization and tech, four installations on site Partnering with Microsoft for a bespoke interface, to personalize a t-shirt, beanie or tote bag for #INCHARGE Samsung mixed-reality headsets, with a presentation of a fashion show like a see-now-buy now enhanced reality Custom video booth to tell what it felt like for a woman to say what it feels like to be “in charge”, and a custom photo booth to emulate the famous Diane von Furstenberg cube photo And audio of a panel playing out onto the street How stimulating different senses impacts you psychologically, creating immersion by a combo of a variety of sense stimulation Fashion is in such a state of change it is forcing action, evolution is necessary for any company to survive Avoiding problems, when tech doesn’t work it ruins the experience, worse than status quo Always organizing to core values as a brand, and then what elements will organically enhance the experience, reactive model might not work unless you think through the balance of all the elements How the company think sabout at employee and people coming in contact with consumers Overcoming language barriers, and how data capture helps communications Off the Grid Questions cover super villain powers, “mindcasting” other people, what’s Crooks and what’s performative, MMA, and music