Have a holly,
jolly Christmas, it’s the best time of the year! Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas everyone! Do you know what I asked Santa for this year? I asked him to send me some new ideas to
increase the 40% of our happiness we can control!
The other day my
wife told me about a family celebration called “Dinovember”. Each night in November, after their children
go to bed, the mom and dad arrange their children’s plastic dinosaur toys to
make them believe they come alive at night. Why would they go to all this trouble? To encourage their children to
turn off the TV, put down their Ipads and use their imagination! What an amazing way to make memories with
your children! I bet their kids will
remember this for the rest of their lives and probably do it with their kids one
day. And the purpose of all this was to
help their kids have fun without the use of technology.
Below you see the dinosaurs having
an egg fight on the left and a tea party on the right.
This week we want
to talk about THEME-ing. “Well what is
THEME-ing?” you might ask, and "Why did you write it all in CAPS?" Well let me tell you! About 15 years ago, two economists named Joseph
Pine and James Gilmore wrote a book entitled, The Experience Economy (1999).
In this book the authors explain how any economic offering can be
transformed into a memorable, happiness-generating experience.
They explain this concept using
coffee as an example.
A coffee bean
farmer can sell his product for about 75 cents per pound. This amounts to about 1-2 cents per cup of
coffee. A manufacturing company can buy
these beans; process and package them, and then sell the coffee grounds for
roughly 5-25 cents per cup of coffee. A
normal diner can brew the coffee grounds into a cup of coffee and sell it for
50 cents to one dollar per cup. Now if
you serve this same cup of coffee in a café such as Starbucks, where there is a
heightened ambience, a customer will happily shell out anywhere from $2 to
$5. Holy cow! How did we get from one cent to five
dollars????? Well Pine and Gilmore (1999)
explain consumers will pay a premium for memorable and happiness generating experiences. Providing a coffee drinking experience is what sets Starbucks apart
from its competition and makes it special and memorable, bringing customers
back again and again.
So you’re probably
thinking right now “What on earth does this have to do with my family’s
happiness?” Well let’s come back to this
idea of THEME-ing. Pine and Gilmore
explain in their book one of the ways a company can turn their product or
service into an experience is to THEME it.
THEME is an acronym for the 5 principles they suggest help create a
memorable experience:
Theme the Experience
Harmonize Impressions with Positive Cues
Eliminate Negative Cues
Mix in Memorabilia
Engage the Five Senses
As a parent, you
can THEME your children’s experiences to enhance learning and create lasting
memories just as the Dinovember parents have done. The first step is deciding on a theme for the experience you want to create.
Next you want to reinforce your theme by providing lasting impressions
to be taken away from the experience.
Third, you want to get rid of anything negative during the experience. Fourth, you want to provide
memorabilia as a way to help spark memories of the experience. Last but not least you want to stimulate the
senses to heighten the experience. This
may seem like a lot to think about, but remember you can use
all, some, or just one of these tools, and as always, simple is best.
For instance, my
wife and I have tried to limit the amount of TV our kids watch and encourage
them to read. Honestly this is not hard, because both our kids love books. I’m sure it is not shocking to any parent, but our kids LOVE Christmas time and presents. We decided to
wrap up and give our children a new book every 3 days during the month of
December leading up to Christmas. We
give the book to our children in the living room next to all the lit Christmas
lights and tree. We make sure the
TV is not on when we give them the books.
We build up the suspense by telling them we have a surprise for
them. Then we sit and read the book with
them for as long as they want, or at least until bath time…
So how did we
incorporate the THEME-ing principles? We decided what we wanted to encouraging our kids to read
more. And we used a Christmastime
gift-giving theme to do this. We harmonized
the impressions by using Christmas wrapping paper and sitting in the living
room near the Christmas lights and Christmas tree. We eliminated negative cues by turning off
the television, since this is the behavior we wanted to discourage. We mixed in memorabilia, in this case the book itself. And last but not
least we stimulated the 5 senses. We
used the Christmas lights and wrapping paper to stimulate the visual
senses. Opening the wrapping paper
stimulated their sense of touch. Our
children’s excitement and anticipation were heightened through simple use of
these 5 principles. So something as
simple as giving your child a book can become an experience. As you can see they love reading time!
I challenge you all to
think of ways you can THEME your children’s experiences as well. You can really provide them with lasting
lessons and memories by enhancing the what you already do. Remember it does not need to be
extravagant. Oftentimes simple is best
but can make a big impression.
To learn more about how you can use
THEMEing in your life you can check out The
Experience Economy by Pine and Gilmore
for yourself!
As always we would love to hear
what you have to say! Please share any
thoughts, insights or experiences you have with THEMEing!
