Shep Hyken | January 26, 2023

By Shep Hyken

Here’s an interesting concept. I’ll describe it in the form of a question: Do you create an experience that is so good your customers want to remember it with a photograph? 

I started thinking about this as I walked through Times Square in New York City and couldn’t help but notice how many people were taking pictures of themselves with the bright lights, huge signs, and thousands of other people in the background. People wanted to remember the moment, and thanks to the cameras that virtually everyone has today, also known as mobile phones, they can save and cherish moments and share them with others forever.  

So, here is the goal. Create an experience that customers want to remember and share. Make it so compelling that they want to take a picture of it. I call this creating the Selfie Experience. 

The Selfie Experience is easy to create when you are in an events business, such as a Broadway show or sporting event. But it’s not about an event. It’s about creating an experience that is so good the customer wants a memento, in this case, a photograph. A few examples could include the following: 

  • The car dealership that gets its customers so excited they want to remember the experience of driving the car out of the dealership with a photograph. Or, it might be sitting in their new car for the first time.   
  • The restaurant that creates an amazing meal that looks and tastes so delicious that the guest wants to take a picture of the entrée. Now that I’ve mentioned this, you’ll start noticing people taking pictures of their food.  
  • The unboxing of a product that the customer records to share with friends and colleagues.  

And we love it when the customer takes the concept of the Selfie Experience to the next level by taking a photo or video and broadcasting it on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and others. Going social with the photograph proves to the world the experience was worth remembering. And why do they do it? 

  1. They like the experience
  2. They are proud of the experience
  3. They want to show off the experience 

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to “bottle up” an experience and reuse it again and again? Well, you can’t really bottle it, but you can make sure it is packaged and saved by the customer in the form of a photograph that resides, potentially forever, on one of the customer’s most personal assets – their mobile phone.