Do you remember the last time you went to the concert of your favorite artist? The last time you ate at the best restaurant in town? The last great trip you took? Of those experiences and others that have been the ones you remember the most, what do you remember best? , the smallest details of those places? or how did you live those experiences and the anecdotes that became memorable stories? , and at that time were you alone or with someone else? You probably had a shared experience.
But why is that the case? , because it's harder to remember the song with which our favorite artist opened the concert, but we do remember the great journey it was to reach that auditorium after the bus broke down in which we were traveling with our friends.
It turns out that having an ordinary shared experience is better than having an extraordinary experience on our own. What does that mean? From a psychosocial perspective, as social beings, sharing an experience with someone else exponentially amplifies the experience itself (whether positive or negative).
In a study conducted by Gus Cooney from the Harvard Decision Science laboratory, they put one person to watch a video of a great street wizard, while they placed three other people to watch a video of a low-budget cartoon. At the end of the videos, the four subjects were placed in the same room and were asked to talk about themselves; at the end of this session, they were given a survey to fill out with two simple questions: How are you feeling now? and How did you feel during the interaction with the rest of the people in the group? (on a scale of 100). Surprisingly, the people who watched the video of the extraordinary magician felt more excluded from the group, by up to 30 points.
This is because social conversations and interactions are usually about ordinary topics, which caused that person with the extraordinary experience to feel excluded from the group. usually It is believed that having an extraordinary experience makes us feel better, but it is not taken into account that this feeling fades quickly, which causes us to feel, to a certain extent, worse because we don't share a common experience with our social circle, explains Cooney.
When we experience something, our brain creates neural patterns distinctive to that experience, which are implanted in our memory. If we share this experience with other people, their brains will create the same patterns, giving rise to a collective memory. and increases the social bond within the group. Another effect that has recently been discovered is that living an experience with another person increases the secretion of dopamine and adrenaline (hormones related to happiness) turning this experience into an emotional memory of greater value and transcendence.
In a study conducted by the team of Dr. Erica Boothby from Yale University, it was observed that having a shared experience makes it evaluated as more intense, compared to when you have the same experience on your own. In the experiment, volunteers were asked to try a variety of delicious chocolates; on one occasion they would try the chocolates with someone else, while on another occasion they would do it completely on their own. When they had to evaluate the taste of the chocolates, the participants reported that they liked chocolate 70% more when they ate it with someone. They said that the chocolate tasted better compared to the one they ate alone, despite the fact that it was exactly the same chocolate. The same case resulted when experimenting with negative experiences. What this study shows us is that we are not so aware of the influence that other people exert on us and how a joint experience is worth more than an individual one.
What does all this mean for a brand? In his book WTF: What's the future of business, Brian Solis explains that The future of brands is no longer just about creating unique experiences, but about creating experiences that are shared: it doesn't matter how extraordinary this one is, if in the end it cannot be part of the others. Another major influencing factor he exposes is the effect of social networks: we share images or videos in order for others to be part of our experiences and to live the same as us.
And what can be done? Solis states that the first big step is understand which companies are shaping the future and how they are doing so. Brands such as Uber, Airbnb, Blabla Car or Facebook which are based on a model of collaborative economy and making their brands something shared.
Brands must focus on creating experiences that transcend and for that it is important that they seek not only to connect with their consumers, but also to ensure that their experiences are shared with everyone around them.
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