Dental Spa KU64, Berlin.

“Have you had a good day?” – the bottom line is that your answer to this question rests entirely on your emotional and physical experiences since waking up this morning. Whether it be your work setting, a trip to the dentist, the production you saw last night, even your train ride home. The state of being awake is your body’s involuntary experience with the world. It moves through spaces, inside and out, in parallel with your emotional reality. Physically and emotionally you are intrinsically bound.

Sears Sky deck, Chicago

Trendwatching.com talks about experiences and storytelling in relation to status, and our quest for status as consumers. The ever growing trend towards individuality whereby we seek experiences (in many forms) that others haven’t, is the means by which we achieve status. However, achieving status through difference is extremely hard to find. Just when you think your new wardrobe purchase will set you apart, someone turns up wearing the same; just when you think you’re on top of the latest news, someone will disappoint you by giving you a more updated version, and just when you think you’re blogging about something new, you get a damn email alert beating you to it.

How is this relevant to emotional spaces? Two of the most talked about ‘platforms’ in marketing today are social networking where emotional connections are made with ourselves and others, and experiential marketing where we experience a brand physically, leading to an emotional response. For marketing to arrive at this junction where the relationship between our emotional and physical worlds are recognized is one of the most significant developments in the commerical world. The images shown intend to illustrate how our physical experiences are inseparable to our emotional lives, and therefore how brand perceptions can be formed based on these.

We have a mutually beneficial relationship with brands so let’s all look forward to having more meaningful brand interaction with them to feed our emotional and physical well-being. Brand owners and marketeers, step up that creative gear, please!