From Department Stores to Apartment Stores: Printemp Shows Up in Manhattan
The Experience Strategy Podcast
Release Date: 07/24/2025
Dave Norton's New Book Is Out — Human Context and the Paradigm Shift Every Company Needs to Make
The Experience Strategy Podcast
The Experience Strategy Podcast | It's a book launch episode. Human Context: How Intelligent Companies Build Customers — Dave Norton's new book — released yesterday on Amazon. Joe and Aransas have read the galley. This episode covers the why now, the four frameworks at the book's core, and how companies are meant to actually use it. What's in This Episode Why Dave felt compelled to write this now. It goes back to 2015 and Digital Context 2.0, his first book, in which he argued that context would be the organizing logic that brought channels, tools, and technologies together in service...
info_outline
Healthcare Is Coming Back — And It's Getting More Human
The Experience Strategy Podcast
The Experience Strategy Podcast | A nurse whose only job was to hold a patient's hand during a procedure. A debrief with the doctor scheduled before the procedure was even booked. A title accidentally revealed mid-conversation. This episode covers a lot of ground — starting with where healthcare experience strategy stands right now, and ending somewhere that a certain author probably wasn't expecting. What's in This Episode Healthcare is recovering — and the investment is back. After a brutal five-year stretch that left providers burned out and hospital systems in survival mode, Dave...
info_outline
Personalized Pricing Is Coming — Should You Be Worried?
The Experience Strategy Podcast
The Experience Strategy Podcast | A Wall Street Journal article from June 3, 2026 asked a question that stopped the hosts cold: What is personalized pricing, and why are lawmakers scrambling to ban it? The premise — that companies might start using behavioral data to charge you a price uniquely calibrated to what you'll pay — prompted an immediate, live Google search and a conversation that spanned economics, loyalty, Kmart's demise, Coca-Cola's famous blunder, and a grocery delivery mishap that somehow became a love story. What's in This Episode Dynamic pricing versus personalized...
info_outline
The $900 Billion Wellness Tourism Trade — and What Luxury Hotels Are Really Selling Now
The Experience Strategy Podcast
Featured article: "" — Forbes A Forbes feature highlighting 12 luxury hotels leading the wellness tourism shift — immersive White Lotus–style programming, longevity-driven design, destination spa experiences — opens the door to one of the most consequential conversations on the show this year. Wellness tourism is on track to hit nearly $900 billion by 2030. The architecture is gorgeous. The marketing is aspirational. But the strategic story underneath is bigger than any single hotel. Joe, Dave, and Aransas use the article as a launch point to talk about what luxury actually means now,...
info_outline
The Death of Personas — and What Actually Replaces Them
The Experience Strategy Podcast
The Experience Strategy Podcast Hosts: Aransas Savas, Dave Norton, Joe Pine Featured articles: "" — SwiftERM "." — Audrey Chee-Read, Principal Analyst, Forrester Every other post on LinkedIn is announcing the death of something. Most of it is alarmist storytelling dressed up as insight. But under the noise, two recent articles — one from SwiftERM, one from Forrester — are pointing at a real problem: personas and segmentation, built for an earlier era of marketing, have become a drag on personalization in the era of AI. Dave, Joe, and Aransas trace where personas actually came from,...
info_outline
Microshifting, Modes, and the Life Systems Companies Still Refuse to See
The Experience Strategy Podcast
Featured article: "." by Eve Upton-Clark, Fast Company, October 7, 2025 Owl Labs reports that 65% of workers are interested in microshifting — what the company calls structured flexibility built from short, nonlinear work blocks matched to energy, duties, and productivity. Joe, Dave, and Aransas take the article apart and put it back together in a more useful frame. The term itself gets challenged early. Joe argues most of what the article describes is closer to macroshifting (hour-long, hour-and-a-half-long focused blocks), not micro. Dave reframes the word entirely: a shift is not a...
info_outline
‘Subway Takes’ and the Future of YouTube TV
The Experience Strategy Podcast
Kareem Rahma built Subway Takes into a hit with 2 million Instagram followers, a metro card as a microphone, and a format that runs in seconds. Now he’s walking away from a CNN deal to put his next show Keep the Meter Running on YouTube — because YouTube, in his words, is where the next Bourdain and the next Lena Dunham will come from. In this episode, Joe, Dave, and Aransas dig into what Rahma’s bet actually means for experience strategy. The conversation moves from short-form content design, to the death of “Gen Z YouTube” as a useful category, to why every brand needs to rethink...
info_outline
Why Spas and Gyms Are Beating Stores — and What It Signals About the Transformation Economy
The Experience Strategy Podcast
For the first time on record, experience-based tenants — spas, gyms, wellness studios, entertainment venues — are outpacing traditional goods retailers in leasing shopping center space, with wellness and fitness leading the charge. Joe Pine, Dave Norton, and Aransas Savas unpack what this shift actually means: it is not just a retail story, it is confirmation that the transformation economy Joe predicted more than two decades ago has arrived. The conversation traces the arc from malls to experiential anchors, examines why some brands (Red Bull) rode the wave and others (Nike) missed it,...
info_outline
AI Twins and the Future of Research
The Experience Strategy Podcast
AI Twins and the Future of Research Episode Overview Two Wall Street Journal articles are making waves in the market research world — one asking whether AI can replace human research participants, and another profiling a teenage-founded startup called Aura that's already attracted McDonald's and EY. Dave, Joe, and Aransas bring their combined decades of consumer research experience to the question everyone in insights is quietly asking: is this the end of primary research, or the beginning of something more powerful? What We Cover The two WSJ articles at the center of this...
info_outline
Something Big Is Happening — And Experience Strategists Need a Point of View on AI
The Experience Strategy Podcast
The Experience Strategy Podcast | , 83 million reads. Written by respected AI voice Matt Schumer, it opens with a gut-punch analogy: think back to February 2020. Most of us weren't paying attention to a virus spreading overseas. Then in three weeks, everything changed. Schumer's argument is that we are in a similar "this seems overblown" phase right now — except what's coming is bigger than COVID. Dave, Joe, and Aransas dig into the article, push back where it's overblown, and land on what experience strategists actually need to do about it. What's in This Episode The article's core...
info_outlineThis episode builds on Dave Norton's article on Substack about Kate King's report in the Wall Street Journal: Can the French Reinvent America's Broken Department Store Model.
Aransas Savas, Joe Pine, and Dave Norton discuss the evolving landscape of retail, particularly focusing on the experiential model as exemplified by the French department store Printemps. They explore the differences between traditional American department stores and European models, emphasizing the importance of creating engaging experiences that encourage customers to linger. The conversation also touches on metrics for measuring success in experiential retail and highlights case studies like La Varia Leo bookstore, while critiquing Macy's for missing opportunities to connect with consumers.
Takeaways
- The American department store model is in decline.
- Experiential retail focuses on creating reasons for customers to stay.
- Time spent in a retail space correlates with increased sales.
- European department stores are thriving by offering immersive experiences.
- Retailers need to shift from product staging to experience staging.
- Metrics for success should include time well spent and revenue increases.
- Charging for experiences can turn marketing into a profit center.
- La Varia Leo bookstore successfully monetized its experience.
- Macy's has not adapted to the experiential retail trend.
- Retailers must innovate to compete with online shopping.
Sound bites
"It's about time well spent."
"You want to hang out there."
"Macy's has done none of this."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Experience Economy
02:46 The European Retail Experience
11:30 Transformative Retail Experiences
19:58 Metrics for Success in Retail
23:35 The Future of Retail Experiences
Read more
https://theexperiencestrategist.substack.com/p/america-looks-to-europe-to-reinvigorate
Register for a free pilot program with Feedback Now
https://marketing-info.feedbacknow.com/free-pilot
Learn more about Stone Mantel
Sign up for the Experience Strategist Substack here: