What is an experience, anyway?

Over the weekend, my alma mater made the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament for the first time in almost a decade.

It was one of those games that encapsulates the allure of March Madness. There was a dramatic buzzer-beating shot, some controversy during and after the game, and post-game soundbites I’ll never forget, including two in the clip below. It’s the type of stuff you could show to someone from another country to get them hooked on this parochial tradition of ours.

There weren’t any confused world travelers at my house on Sunday night. Instead, I watched the game with my two daughters, both of whom received special dispensation to stay up past their bedtimes in the hope that they’d witness and be able to remember something that doesn’t happen very often.

We got way more than we bargained for - the magnitude of a rare deep tournament run crowded out by the type of highlight that figures to get airplay well beyond this year. What we got was nothing short of a night my kids and I will never forget. “My dad was screaming yes,” wrote my oldest daughter in a school assignment she brought home the day after the game. “I was crying tears of happiness.”

I’m not going to drop the Merriam-Webster definition of the word experience here. I am, however, going to indulge in some casual etymology. When we talk about “experiences” in the industry, let’s face it, we most often mean screens, especially ones where transactions or some other kind of conversion occurs. It is our craft. It is what pays the bills.

So it’s understandable why - this is what we do after all, and people do need to book plane flights or request quotes for life insurance - but it’s also quite reductive. I do think the aperture for what constitutes an “experience” is opening; I am certainly quite fortunate to work somewhere that has a broader, more holistic definition of the word. But I think we should continue to broaden our gaze.

Screens and transactions - what we refer to as “experiences” in the industry - are, in most cases, not fundamental to memorable human experiences. They are background players to moments we share with the people we care about most. They are ancillary.

After my kids were asleep Sunday night - after I had watched every replay of the game-winning shot I could and heard the pundits on TBS and ESPN and everywhere else break down what had just happened - I did pick up my phone. I idly looked at plane flights to San Francisco, where Maryland will play its next game. (I can’t go!) I ordered a couple of shirts from BreakingT to commemorate the indelible moment I had just shared with my girls.

In other words, there were some of those “experiences” I spend a lot of my working day talking about. It’s just that they weren’t the experience I had just had. There was no place for a screen - or even a thought of one - as we jumped around my living room in celebration, other than, of course, the TV screen showing replays of that one shining moment.

The great soccer manager Sir Bobby Robson summed up the experience of becoming a fan as follows:

What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes. It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It’s a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.

This is what the humans we serve in this industry are actually seeking. It might be sports or travel or education or research or peace of mind that people are really after. Whatever it is, we’d do well to remember we’re just a part of the ensemble cast.