All relationships have one thing in common. It doesn’t matter if the relationship is an online relationship or an off-line, a person to person relationship or a consumer to brand relationship. All relationships start with one single interaction. A single step, one connection and it builds from there. It often starts as a simple “Hi my name is __”.

This simple fact is one that most of us learned in kindergarten but somehow we’ve forgotten how simple it really is. Little things really do matter, and this applies not only to making new friends but also to brands and online conversion rates. Often times we as marketers are so focused on the big picture, the overall conversion that we don’t look at the micro transactions.

Every conversion is composed of a series of smaller micro conversions or small single steps towards a bigger conversion goal. In order to optimize your overall website you need to take a few steps back before you can take a giant leap forward.

Recently I went on a trip to Memphis Tennessee, the largest city in the state of TN right on the muddy waters of the Mississippi river home of Elvis and The Peabody Hotel, a masterpiece of elegance combined with historical richness. At the time I was at the hotel there were 5 special guests staying there with a rooftop palace all to themselves. I didn’t have the pleasure of staying at The Peabody but I did get to visit the roof top palace of those 5 special guests, oh did I forget to mention those 5 special guests were Ducks?

Not just any ducks mind you they are The Peabody Ducks. These ducks draw a crowd of amazed and delighted guests twice a day in a time-honored tradition dating back to the 1930s. What makes these Ducks special is that they march to the tune of John Philip Sousa’s “King Cotton March” from the elevators to a fountain in the grand lobby down a red carpet which was rolled out by the duckmaster himself who also provided a small set of steps for the ducks to waddle up and jump in the fountain for a swim. The scene that was created for the crowd of spectators was akin to a paparazzi event with velvet ropes to keep the crowd at bay, that is the crowd that was by the elevators, not to mention the in the lobby itself surrounding the fountain and even the crowd looking down from above, in the balcony.

These feathered friends as well as the experience itself all played a part in making the brand come alive as the duckmaster performed what was essentially a show both visually and verbally he explained that in1932 the Peabody general manager, a passionate sportsman returned empty-handed from a weekend hunting trip. The general manager and a hunting buddy had a bit too much Tennessee sippin’ whiskey, and decided to play a prank and put their duck decoys in the fountain of the hotel’s Grand Lobby. The reaction from the guests and the owner was one of delight and from that this ritual was born.

It is the duckmasters responsibility to train and care for the ducks. Each duck team lives in the hotel for only three months before being retired from their Peabody duties and returned to a farm to live out the remainder of their days as wild ducks. How’s that for a likeable brand, animal lovers feel good about the kind heartedness of the hotel and if management treats their ducks with such respect and care imagine how it treats human guest and employees. That’s the kind of brand extension that pays big dividends. By designing an experience around this tradition the hotels brand accomplishes a few key things that make it stand out among a sea of other ordinary hotels.

Here are 5 ways design can be used to create an experience?

1. Create Rituals

The Peabody has created a unique ritual of the marching ducks that it shares with its guests. By surrounding that ritual with the drama of theater and props like the red carpet, the fountain, velvet ropes and the small set of duck steps it becomes larger than life and draws more importance. There’s a lesson here that all brands can learn from, don’t take things for granted, there are rituals surrounding your brand right now, which ones can you turn into a theater to create an experience for your customers?

2. Storytelling

Your story should be authentic much like the Peabody story that was born out of a silly prank but it’s true and intuitively we collectively tap into that truth. In a world of cluttered advertising messages people are starved for authenticity.

3. Merchandising

By tying in the Ducks with the brand image the next logical step is to monazite that experience and extend it into other channels like memorabilia. Several duck related items lined the shelves of the Peabody gift shop. From a brand experience perspective once the crowd was satisfied with a good story why should their experience end? Merchandising offers an opportunity for everyone to take home a bit of that experience so they can remember it and tell the story to others with a prop of their own.

4. Word of Mouth

People love to hear and tell stories, they create emotional reactions which help spread the story. A customer is not going to tell his or her friends and family about a product without a story wrapped around it. But to have that word of mouth really take off it has to be good. What can you frame around your brand story so that people will spread it with word of mouth marketing?

5. Experience

All communication like a good joke comes back to how you tell it. Although born out of haphazardness the Peabody story was indeed designed for an experience. Every element from the props to the cast of characters was designed around an experience to delight and create emotion.

To learn more about Experience Design read The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage

The power of influence is shifting to every consumer with a voice, which is everyone. In this new economy your brand is naked for all to see, comment on, and share with the world. There’s no avoiding it, this is simply the world we are living in today, this really isn’t anything new, this phenomenon has been around since the beginning of marketing, back then it was called word of mouth. The difference now is that with the Internet, the consumer’s voice has just been given a megaphone that can be heard across the world.

The megaphone like devices have taken form in blogs, podcasts, facebook, social network sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, and consumer-written product reviews pioneered by Amazon. The power of advertising and marketing is truly in the hands of the consumers.

The truth is that companies have never really controlled their brand; their customers control it with blogs, YouTube and podcasting just to name a few ways. For proof of this we don’t have to look any further than Dells exploding battery, which was accelerated by the blogosphere and YouTube videos.

As scary as this may be for some, a unique opportunity exists to create an authentic connection between brands and consumers. One-size fits all mass media no longer exists in today’s marketplace, you don’t need to be big, today you can be small and be big within a niche market. The size of the market segment is much smaller but the value is much greater. Media buyers have always based campaigns on the size of the segment, how many eyeballs see an ad, and online media has been guilty of this as well. There is been a marketing allure to 435,000 views but what does that really mean to marketers?

• Do different segments have different motivations?
• Is there a different financial value for different segments?
• Do different segments use different media?

In a world where consumers own the broadcast towers, you tube, podcasting, blogs, the collective consumer voice becomes even more powerful. Within all of this lies an opportunity to hand over control to your customers in the new social media consumer content driven space. Because your best customers are the greatest marketing mouthpieces you can ever have.

The challenge for marketers is how to create brand enthusiasts in a genuine way, how to listen to them, and cultivate a relationship with them. How do you go about designing that relationship?