Q and A with a Story Guru: Bill Gibeault: The Story is the Experience

No. 96! Not long before I’ll hit the milestone of 100 Q and As. When I came across Bill Gibeault, I was quite intrigued by his status as one of the first 10 people in the nation to be certified in the theories and models of The Experience Economy. This Q&A will run over the next several days.

Bio: Bill Gibeault is a founding partner of Story Mavericks, a corporate communications firm specializing in customer experience design and video storytelling, located in Saratoga Springs, NY. Beginning in 2004, he led a major company initiative to transform the 20-year content-development enterprise into an experience design and consulting firm. The expanded offerings include guiding organizations in staging captivating experiences for customers and employees.

In October 2006, Bill became one of the first 10 people in the nation to be certified in the theories and models of The Experience Economy, through formal training, from the internationally recognized leaders in the field, Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore. Their best selling book, The Experience Economy — Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage is recognized as groundbreaking work on the important role customer experiences are playing in helping businesses develop sustainable differentiation.

Bill has taken his 20 years of media-production and business-management expertise and combined the latest thinking about experience staging to design an industry-first methodology, for creating business communications. The models and frameworks of experiences, authenticity, and storytelling are critical elements to this new storytelling process. Since founding his video production company in 1987, he has written and produced a variety of stories including biographies, documentaries, corporate training and marketing, websites, special events and meetings.

Bill also has 15 years of corporate sales management experience with National Food Manufacturer Hunt Wesson Foods and ConAgra Inc. He brings a real-world perspective of the business environment having been responsible for training, recruiting, marketing, and sales.

Bill resides in Saratoga Springs, New York, a community he supports both personally and professionally with volunteer efforts. He has been a member of The Saratoga Springs Lions Club for over 13 years and one of its board members for 12 years and is president elect for 2013. He is also a graduate of Leadership Saratoga, a nine-month leadership program to develop community leaders.

He holds a Bachelors of Science degree in history and Master of Science degree in guidance and counseling from Central Connecticut State University.

Bill’s thinking, observations, and learning articles on experiences and storytelling can be found on his two-year-old Rock Your Customers blog.

Q&A with Bill Gibeault, Question 1:

Q: You are one of the first Experience Economy Certified professional in the country. To what extent would you agree that Experience = Story? Can you talk a bit about what this certification means ?

A: My role as a video producer/storyteller led me to a seven-year (and counting) journey on customer experiences. It began in 2004, when we (Story Mavericks) redefined the essence of our video storytelling work as, “Creating Experiences‚” that touch hearts and reach minds. An Internet search on experiences and business led me to a book called The Experience Economy. So began a really exciting journey attempting to connect the dots between the Storytelling discipline and customer experiences. So yes I do agree that Experience = Story.

The more I studied experiences and experience design, the more I realized the intrinsic connection to stories and the art of storytelling. If as Pine and Gilmore, authors of The Experience Economy (1999)‚ say “The Experience is the Marketing,” then “The Story is The Experience.” The world-famous guru of storytelling, filmmaker, producer, writer, teacher and author, Robert McKee (pictured), states‚ “Stories are metaphors for life.” Life is a journey of experience-ING.

Let’s examine a few key attributes of stories and experiences. You could easily substitute either in each sentence:

If you hear, read or see a good story you are engaged. A great story captivates you. So does a great experience. Its key attribute is it engages you in a personal way. (It becomes your story deep within you). The key nature of an experience is that it is memorable. Both experiences and stories have a structure, beginning, middle, and end, include the element of surprise, and engage the senses.

The Experience Economy Certification Program is an offering from Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore of Strategic Horizons. The course is based on content in their groundbreaking book. Pine and Gilmore are recognized as the two minds who identified and discovered, the progression from a service economy to The Experience Economy, one where experiences are a new form of economic value and business differentiation.

The certification experience credentialized me as an officially endorsed expert in Pine and Gilmore’s portfolio of Experience Economy frameworks, ideation tools and methods. Detailed instruction provided in-depth coverage of Experience Economy principles and models, training, and practice in creative experience facilitation techniques, and approaches for effectively sharing these ideas with others. The focus of the program was developing knowledge and skills necessary for creating compelling experiences. In short it gave me a great foundation, creating a powerful “Trainer Toolbox,” to help clients understand the whys‚ whats, hows of staging compelling customer experiences.