Ben Robinson: If climate facts don’t change us, what will? Are immersive experiences the answer?

Steve Usher (00:00) So Ben, welcome to the Experience Designers. Yeah, where are we right now actually? ⁓ Ben Robinson (00:03) for having me. I'm really happy to be here. Steve Usher (00:05) Yeah, where are we right now actually? ⁓ Ben Robinson (00:07) Well,we're in the basement of 21 Soho, so on Sutton Row, which remarkably is sort of slap bang in the centre of somewhere where I've spent almost 30 years of my professional life working with experiences. So I started in the mid 90s on Wardour Street in what was Hammer House and then moved up to the other side of Oxford Street and now back onto Toppenacourt Road. So sort of 30 years, I've always, this has been my stomping ground professionally speaking. ⁓ But I've never made it to this basement. Steve Usher (00:39) fantastic, a new milestone in your life. But also as well, one of the principles of this podcast is like meet you where you are. So we are physically meeting you where you are to make this happen. I know you've got a busy schedule, so thanks for making time for us today. So Ben, let's start. mean, just the work that you do today, how does this kind of like... How is this a representation ⁓ of you as a person and this culmination of your life? Where did it all start? Ben Robinson (01:12) Well, I guess ⁓ it seems slightly a cliche to say, but my life has definitely been shaped by experiences and sort of intentional sort of embodied or enacted experiences. grew up ⁓ skateboarding and sort of clubbing in Liverpool. So two experiences that shaped not just sort of what I did, but really sort of shaped who I was and who I sort of really still am and was very lucky to be able to parlay those into a job for. the agency that sort of, referenced this seminal agency in the nineties called KLP Entertainment, who sort of founded a lot of the first festivals here in the UK. So like Tea in the Park, V Festival, did some crazy things all around the world. And so was lucky to work, as I say, for over sort of three decades within sort of experiential or sort of experience based kind of marketing. ⁓ then most recently, I sort of then... decided to lean in a little bit and sort of try to understand what I knew instinctively worked and what sort of data was showing sort of was definitely delivering results in terms of commercial results for sort of clients, but to try and understand exactly how that sort of works. so two years ago, I decided to undertake a PhD. So whilst I've got a master's degree in of all things entrepreneurship. ⁓ I then sort of ⁓ started two years ago at the University of Sussex, a PhD in design and informatics under a lady called Professor Anne Light, who ran a project called Creatures, which looked into creative futures and sort of prefigurative anticipation and effective prefiguration. And so, yeah, so for the last kind of two years, I've been balancing these sort of two hats, if you like. One, running a commercial practice, which is sort of... culture-led creative and experiential marketing, and then also really deep diving into how this stuff works and sort of trying to understand some of, just the, and I sort of, it's not just science, there's the sort of, course, there's one strand, which is very much into sort of the neuroscience of it and neuroesthetics, but also really understanding and bringing together across multiple disciplines, sort of looking at sociology, anthropology, bringing a lot of that together to try and understand why I think experiences are the most valuable and the most effective form of communication. Steve Usher (03:36) Yeah, amazing. Lots to unpack. Let's go. Let's take it all the way back to skateboarding and clubbing. So I was also born in Liverpool, so some of the audience may or may not know about that. we have this interesting, we are of a certain age as well. Yes. But let's not focus on that for a moment. So we grew up in a certain, yeah, in a certain area, in a cultural time, particularly great, know, UK and Britain at that time, subculture. Yep. Ben Robinson (03:43) Yeah. And Liverpool. And Liverpool. Yeah. Steve Usher (04:04) anti-government. So there was a lot of, mean, was a wildly creative time. ⁓ And I think, you know, skateboarding and clubbing is very community led, both. ⁓ What do you, what are you kind of, what threads do you pull out of that now reflecting back on that? It may even be present today still, that you can say 100 % my grounding, my foundation was built in these moments in my formative years. Ben Robinson (04:30) It's interesting, so I think I've done quite a lot of reflecting on this, particularly on the of the skateboarding and the sort of counterculture side of things. And I used to say that what skateboarding gave me was yes, that sense of community that you talked about and it was a multi-generational community, of youngers and elders all coming together and it allowed me to see the world differently where other people saw a set of stairs or a handrail I would see an obstacle and a trick. And the DIY culture, the idea that you would build your own ramps, you would sort of co-opt spaces and reinterpret them. But actually when I really sort of sat back and thought about it, the thing that I think endures the most and really, I think has served me best and sort of shaped who I am and how I approach most things in life. It's this idea of flow and sort of putting a line together. So in skateboarding, yes, of course, you learn a trick and you'll sort of, you know, you'll see an obstacle and you maybe do this, but it's about bouncing from one problem to the other. It's stitching those things together. It's the dance from one thing to the next and that creation of a line. And actually it's the style that you have moving from one part to the other that I sort of really see, particularly when it comes to sort of designing for experiences of having informed the way I approach things. And in one of our earlier conversations, we were talking about dinners and sort of, you know, tasting menus and sort of the speed and the cadence of that, even when it comes to designing a menu or a meal, there's a flow, there's a cadence, there's a dance that goes from one moment, from one bite, from one stage of that. And I think that's the thing that I find the most joy in is being able to see and sort of think about those highs and those lows and how you can create something that is memorable enough to cause people to want to reflect on it afterwards and then generate meaning from it. But yeah, for me in skateboarding, definitely, as I said, at a base level, that notion of sort of DIY culture and resilience and all of those things, but really at a sort of at a macro level, at a meta level. that notion of flow and sort of picking and choosing a line and dancing from one thing to the next. That's what I love and I took from. ⁓ Well, clubbing. it's interesting in both things kind of got me my job in that I got the job with the agency because I was building the skateboard ramps at Tea in the Park for the festival that they were doing. And I sort of all of those and I was running club nights at university. with clubbing. Steve Usher (06:44) Yeah, amazing. What about clubbing? Ben Robinson (07:01) So I grew up cream in the sort of mid nineties and bizarrely a guy called Meany, who was the lead photographer at Rad and Skateboard Magazine also did the visuals at cream. So we're talking sort of oil wheels, 35 mil slides, 16 mil loops. And I used to help Meany in doing those visuals in cream. So understanding again, that cadence of a night from sort of the entry through to the warm up DJ through to the sort of peak hours, the visuals, all of those things, the different zoning of the clubs. So I think there, that just brought with it a sense of what an extended experience could be. So not just something that was embodied, not just something that I felt myself, but I felt connected to that crowd, to that music and all of those things. And with both skateboarding and clubbing, it was a global and an international community. So in both things with skateboarding, we used to travel to Germany to go to the World Cup and all of these things in Munster, the Meisterschaft. with clubbing, you travel up and down the country and all of these kind of things and finding ⁓ those like-minded individuals. So I think, that sense of communitas definitely came through. Steve Usher (08:06) Amazing, great times. Ben Robinson (08:09) It was quite a time to be. And I think, you know, it's interesting when you, as you say, you grew up in Liverpool or sort of born in the same time, that sort of early nineties, mid nineties, I think a lot of those, a lot of cities in the UK had the energy that perhaps Berlin had in the early noughties because you had that still sense of space was available, rents were cheap, people were trying new things. There wasn't as much pressure. There was a much greater degree of self-sufficiency. University was still funded. All of these kind of things actually there's a greater sense of whilst again it was self-reliant there was a greater sense of opportunity perhaps. Steve Usher (08:46) Yeah. So some of those early queries, it feels like you constantly fell into stuff. became like the sounds of it and picking up. Ben Robinson (08:54) Definitely. I guess it was more like, as I said, from skateboarding then into the clubbing, then up to of university. And I ended up in Aberdeen largely because I could snowboard there. And so I could snowboard three days a week whilst also studying. And then I was running club nights and doing various bits and pieces, building the skate ramp and then taking photos at an Ericsson club night in... Was it in Sutton? ⁓ Anyway, was just a... A wonderful time where there was a relatively small community of individuals working sort of at this intersection of action sports, lifestyle, music, and sort of agencies, say, like KOP Entertainment, Slice, Kazoo, Exposure, that sort of, you know, we ended up, I think one of our first clients has said we had Ballantine, then Smirnoff, we did the... a partnership between Orange and Manumission. So for a whole summer we had to run Orange's telecom brand sponsorship of Manumission and sort of, know, ship people out to Ibiza every weekend and all of these kinds of things. So yeah, there were some huge opportunities, but I think what those early days taught me was just commercial value of experiences. So again, I've recently been reflecting on the fact that in most communications briefs, the order is sort of think, feel, do. So actually that's the way we're taught. We're sort of marketeers or sort of creatives to go, okay, what do we want the audience to think? What do we want them to feel? And ultimately what do we want them to do? However, throughout my career, it's been built on actually getting people to do stuff that makes them feel something that afterwards they'll think about. So almost it's the reverse of sort of this system that was set up hundreds of years ago in terms of codifying how communications work. And so, yeah, I think all the way through. my career, it's been informed by the power of experience. Steve Usher (10:48) Tell us a little bit about on the career, the of the business side, like what does your world look like on a day to day? Ben Robinson (10:53) Oh, so I am the founder of an agency called Prair Robinson and Partners. We sit sort of as part of Freud Communications. So it's a partnership between myself, Matthew Freud, and sort of we have a range of clients. So Diageo, big global drinks brand, will do everything for them from working on things like Day of the Dead with sort of Don Julio tequila to reopening sort of ghost distilleries like Brawler and kind of Portela and or re-imagining sort of products or sort of working with Stanley Tucci and sort of Tanker Regen and stuff like that. So there's lots of ways in which we'll try and use experience to bring to life what those brands kind of stand for. Or automotive brands, we work for Oracle Red Bull Racing, we've done the last two sort of big F1 launches with them, various other sort of brands and businesses. But all of it's predicated on this notion of helping brands and businesses prove their true value in the real world. So again, it's this notion of So creating tangible expressions of the blah, blah, blah that one might read in a newspaper or see on the TV. So how can we make that real? So one great example, there's a long standing client of ours, Deutsche Telekom T-Mobile. And they believe that sort of, know, technology is a force for good, that life is for sharing. And they sort of came to us and said, okay, what can we do to bring to life? this notion of the power of our kind of network. So we working with sort of partners at Saatchi and Saatchi came up with this concept of sort of gaming for good and see here a quest and we created the world's largest open source piece of medical research. So we'd sort of looked at key threats, if you like key sort of issues, medical challenges facing the world and dementia, huge issue affecting an inordinate number of people. And one of the key challenges, one of the key things with dementia is early diagnosis. And yet traditionally it's always been memory tests that I used to diagnose dementia and yet sort of failing memory, cognitive decline is sort of linked to many, many conditions, not just dementia. Spatial cognition, finding your way around is another key aspect of dementia, but there is no benchmark globally for spatial cognition. So people weren't able to say actually, If you are a 50 year old white male, this is the benchmark for spatial cognition. This is how you should be able to find your way around in the world. So working with various partners, we created a mobile game called Sea Hero Quest that was open source that had you sort of effectively navigating a little boat around as you were trying to find a sea monster, et cetera, et cetera, all the time generating data around spatial cognition. So created this new global benchmark. We ended up simultaneously. in the Lancer, in the Guardian, all of these, we won various kind of awards, including kind of like can lines, but this was about proving their true value in the real world. So being able to say, here's this thing that people can touch and feel, here's a thing that gives them agency that allows them to participate in a piece of open source medical research that is ultimately helping to generate a global standard in terms of spatial cognition. So again, that's an abstract example. of a tangible experience that's bringing to life this promise of gaming for good and technology for good. So hugely sort of varied work, but all predicated on that fundamental principle of proving your true value. Steve Usher (14:26) the real world. Nice. All associated with Deutsche Telekom. Yeah. I mean, behind it. Ben Robinson (14:32) They're behind it, but they're not in front of it. There's no sort of carry it. There's no sort of, know, it's very much sort of it was again, open source data that's now being used as a diagnostic tool, all of these kinds of things. It's phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. Steve Usher (14:45) So tell us your view on experiential marketing right now. Because it feels like it's just exploding. There's so much activations, there's so many pop-ups, there's so many, so many. There's a danger in that, of course. ⁓ But what's happening out there? ⁓ Ben Robinson (15:03) I think the reality is we're sort of almost seeing a little bit of a polarization in terms of communications and where budgets are being sort of spent because what you've got on one hand is obviously sort of AI rewriting sort of the rule book when it comes to sort of communications and traditional communications, programmatic advertising, all of these kinds of things. ⁓ And so... Conversely, think, you know, someone said to me the other week, it feels like someone's put 50p in the experiential meter in that people have suddenly woken up and go, actually, in this world where there is so much content out there, there is so much sort of choice, people want stuff, people want sort of physical opportunities to lean into touch, to experience that sort of value. And at the same time, brands and businesses are realizing that in this world of sort of influencer and sort of content creator led. communications, they need something to create content about. And therefore, if you want to harness the power of those, actually, this can be experienced by a few, seen by many. And that's a more efficient and effective way of actually bringing to life. so still allowing customization, still allowing each individual creator to make, deliver their own take on that experience, but the fundamental sort of core value. that is being sort of espoused, that is being delivered, you're in control of. So it definitely feels like there has been a renaissance in experiential marketing. And that, as you say, does come with it with some risks, just in terms of people sort of piling in and sort of, you know, all of these kinds of things and not necessarily thinking through that duty of care and how these things actually work. And that's where for me, this sort of this... dual hat, this sort of, know, I'm a 50 year old white man. I might not be able to tell you what's cool, but I can tell you how it works. And so that's the thing that for me is really interesting to be able to go, look, there are people who have their finger far more on the pulse than I do in terms of exactly what's going to drive the greatest level of engagement. What I can do from decades of experience and from my academic research is start to break down actually those different phases of how experiences really trigger emotional responses, how they create memories, how those memories are then transformed into things that are meaningful and ultimately can be transformative. And I think too many people think in the moment, they just think in the moment of that one post or that one picture or that one sort of evenings experience rather than the arc of experience. And that for me is where the sweet spot lies and that's what a lot of my research and the work that I'm doing currently focuses on is almost the before and after. That's the really important stuff. Steve Usher (18:06) A question in relation to, let's say we're just talking to an average consumer out there who probably sees some kind of brand activation, probably has zero idea of what's gone behind it, the intention behind it. And I think this is kind of like, is there something you could maybe guide us on about what to look for as a consumer, mainly on the basis of, you shared that wonderful example with Deutsche Telekom, what's your worth? That's about solving a problem, raising awareness. That's about actually contribution to the planet, the humanity. Whereas, you know, there are some examples which are less about that broader connection into community or bringing value in different ways. It's more about ROI, but online. Ben Robinson (18:55) Some can just be about joy. think that the thing I would say to anyone thinking about this or listening to this would just be, be aware of the value of your attention and understand that you have the right to expect something in return. ⁓ There's a French guy called Yves Citton. There's a book that I can really, really recommend called The Ecology of Attention and his sort of this sort of notion, which I subscribe to, is that in the modern society, the most valuable commodity is attention. Because ultimately, governments print more money, companies raise more capital, consumers borrow more money. You can always get, you can buy more stuff, but what you don't have is more time. And therefore our attention is the most valuable thing in the world. And that's why a lot of platform media have co-opted a lot of the mechanics of finance. They've sort of, you know, they've broken it down into smaller and smaller bits and this sort of programmatic, all of these kinds of things. And I think as a consumer, as a member of the public, where you point your attention matters. And now it doesn't always have to be for a higher purpose. The world needs more joy. you need to smile. Maybe you do need a free coffee or a free breakfast bar, but do not feel ashamed to demand something in return for your attention. And I think that's for me, I don't have any sort of, know, I understand and appreciate the system within which we work in terms of what is required, what companies need, the quid pro quo, all of these kinds of things. But I think it has to be a meaningful exchange. And I think that notion of value and maybe the value that you bring is making someone smile. It's offering them refreshment. It doesn't have to be creating a new global standard for spatial cognition. That's what DT decided to do. But ultimately somebody else might just be, that's a really tasty beer. That's one of the other things that we always used to sort of, we went through a wave, I think, just as now someone's put 50p in the experiential meter. You know, I think it would be fair to say that maybe five years ago, possibly 10 years ago, someone put 50 P in the purpose meter and everyone like, what's your brand purpose? You know, that idea of CSR and actually high value and all of these things, obviously with these, they've seen things yo-yo back and forth. But I think not everything has to be for that kind of higher purpose. Not everything has to be attached to an SDG. There is a place for joy. There is a place for commerce, there is a place for all of those kind of things. But again, in the context of a bigger picture. ⁓ Steve Usher (21:54) Yeah, brilliant. ⁓ Attention. Yeah, time, attention, Exactly. ⁓ Ben Robinson (22:01) Yeah. And it's finite, right? Because ultimately we have a certain amount of time on this world. We have a certain amount of time that we work, certain amount of time that's ours and where we point and what we do that with that attention matters. And I think the other thing that is really interesting, this is where the academic will come out. If you geek out slightly about the entomology of the world's attention, that is At Andor to tend to, what is it that we are attending to? So what do we care about? It's not just what am I looking at? What am I thinking about? But what do I care about? That's ultimately the root of the word sort of attention. So again, what do we care about? And so yeah, that's what I would sort of encourage people to think about instead of at this moment where you are, meeting them where they are and what they need in their lives. What do they want to care about? Steve Usher (22:51) What do you think in terms of like experiential, we've put the 50p in the meter, we're in this interesting phase. How far can we go with this? What's the potential of it impacting joy, humanity? Where could we really take this and what's the bandwidth or you think the road, potential roads are? Ben Robinson (23:13) I think the bandwidth is huge. mean, you had Matt Durden on a couple of weeks ago, or have you, and sort of, know, Joe Pine's new book talking about the transformation economy rather than the experience economy. I think as we start to look at a longer arc, rather than just denying it, designing for the moment and that sort of memory, as we start to look at what happens after an experience and think about how meaning is made and how sort of ultimately we get to sort of transformation. I think the... opportunity within sort of experiential marketing is to be much more focused, much more effective, and to genuinely help support and drive change. And I do think there is a need, you know, and this is one of the reasons why I sort of lent into or decided to undertake the sort of PhD is that sort of looking around and I'm a sort of father of two teenage children, I sort of realised that, you know, and the clock is running down. There are sort of urgent issues that do need kind of addressed, whether that's in terms of climate, ecological collapse, all of these kinds of things. And traditional means of communication aren't working. We all have the same information. We are all exposed to the same extreme weather events, but nothing's changing. And so there's this interesting notion and there's a lady called Danella Meadows who wrote the original sort of limits to growth report by the Club of Rome in 1972, which kind of went, there's only the planets only so big, there's only so much stuff we've got. And she has this theory of systems change that basically kind of goes, right, there's this sort of paradigm down here, this kind of behavior. If we want to change a system, almost everybody has to change their behavior for that sort of system to change. sort of in between, you've maybe got legislation, can sort of enforce, I can just sort of make people do it. But up here, in terms of that sort of pressure point on the lever, actually, that's being that's ontological change. So if I can change mindset, I don't have to change everybody's mindset, there's a smaller subset of people who I have to convince to think differently. So I think that's the power for me of experiences. It's ⁓ experiential ability not just to shift behaviour, but to shift being to shift ontology. And what this then comes down to, and let's get further going down an academic road, is this notion of full recognition. Has anyone chatted to you about that? So full recognition, it comes back to that clubbing story and this notion of sort of an extended environment and an embodied experience. So it used to be, and you maybe remember this, you're of an age like me, sort of in science fiction films, there was this notion of like, the brain could be in a jar and that person could be alive because I could take your brain out. And it was, Consciousness was embedded. It was just in our brain. That was it. So that's where our consciousness existed. And then sort of in the mid sort of 2000s, basically, that there's the notion of sort of full recognition came out where people were, gut feel. That's the thing, right? Our consciousness doesn't just live in our brain. Actually, who we are, experiences are sort of, you know, the way we think, the way we feel. That's also embodied, actually, sort of what we're. doing sort of changes, of how we feel changes what we think. And then you kind of go, it's also enacted what we're doing. If I'm sitting on a sofa versus running, that changes my consciousness, that changes my state of being. So actually our actions change our consciousness. And then you kind of go, also consciousness is extended. The environment I'm in changes my state of mind, changes my state of being. So, know, religion is new about this. So I walk into a church. That's why I go through a tiny small door. I'm forced to bend my head to bow before God. So enacted consciousness, I'm forced to make myself small before the glory of God. I then come into the church. Suddenly the cathedral space opens up, extended consciousness. There's beautiful light. There's all of these things. suddenly in the glory. So that's a shift in consciousness. And I think that's what experience design has the opportunity to do is not just change behavior by getting people to do. things, but actually getting people to feel and be different. And when you think about the messages and what we sort of all instinctively know we have to do in order to sort of further humanity on this planet, we need to think in a more pluralistic fashion. We need to think about the more than human. We need to think about different species. We need to think about the earth. We need to take a more careful approach to the way we tread on this planet. And that's difficult. Whereas actually in an experience, I can design a way that can help you. Imagine, you you mentioned you're going to see Barney at Marshmallow. That's what those guys do. They bring to life. That is embodied and enacted. They're bringing to life. Okay, wow, that tree's alive. Actually, that bird song, that's different. That's a different way to relate to something that's more than human. That's not me pretending to be a tree. That's me going. That tree's alive, it's breathing. I can see the flow of CO2, of all of these kinds of things. Whoa, that's a living, breathing thing. Straight away, there's a different connection there. That shifted my mindset. That's ultimately more powerful than trying to change behavior. So I think for me, going back to your question about bandwidth and where you can take this, I think from a transition, from an adaptation point of view, there is a huge amount of power in immersive experience in sort of embodied and active and extended experiences in order to communicate systems change and pluralistic sort of post-growth futures. I think brands and businesses can be much more focused and effective and generally, as I say, deliver more than just here's a ad, here's this, they can...build value and build relationship. Steve Usher (29:26) Yeah, and bring way more awareness to some of the challenges that we have. I think also, on a simplistic level, could also just like climate crisis, let's get experiential. Ben Robinson (29:37) 100%. And look,this is where sort of, you know, at the very start of my PhD, I was lucky enough, one of our clients, one of the big four professional services firms ⁓ retained us to help build and install their stand at COP28. And within that, there was an amazing four futures based immersive experience that looked at four different versions of the future. ⁓ one on constrain, one on sort of business as usual, one on collapse and one on transform. And sort of really brave of this client to kind of go, look, if we don't do something, here's our possible outcome ⁓ and put hundreds of people through this. And we had some people coming out in tears. We had some people coming out just like, my God, what do we do? And sort of then to actually sort of... Steve Usher (30:15) Here's how possible. Ben Robinson (30:31) elevate and suddenly to reframe those conversations. But also the really, really important thing there was to sort of frame those conversations in the context of agency, say these are possible eventualities. We're not saying we're going to end up at one of these, but what we do today will affect where we end up tomorrow, Steve Usher (30:52) Yeah. Ben Robinson (30:53) Everybody knows we've all watched Back to the Future and Doctor Who. Everyone knows you don't meet your mum because you might never get bored or, you know, all of those bits that we saw with Michael J. Fox and Marty McFly. But no one thinks about that moving forward. We all think, ⁓ what difference is this going to make? Actually, if I do this, if I recycle, if I don't, how's that? Who knows? Yeah. Actually, extrapolation. There's a huge amount of agency that we have, and I think that's where experiential and more immersive iterations of those sort of communications have a huge potential. And there's another thing, and we spoke briefly about this when we had a conversation previously, this notion. So alongside forecognition, which is a great thing that I sort of subscribe to, there's this notion of aesthetic versus extractive attention. And again, it comes down to the challenge and the point that our attention is our most valuable commodity. So because we're beset by so much signal and noise, because we live in a world where everybody's shouting at us, asking us to do things, buy things, use things, things, all of these things, we tend to use what's called extractive attention. So ⁓ fight or flight, interesting, not interesting, push it away, ignore it. And because of that, most challenging information, information about climate, all of these kinds of things, we push away. What happens is what's called the global bystander effect. like, ⁓ doesn't really get it over there and the next generation are not really for me. It's threatening. So naturally, subconsciously, we'll shy away from it. We don't deal with it. And yet with aesthetic attention, think about sort of, you know, if you go to an art gallery, you might see a piece of art that you really don't understand, that maybe makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. but you don't immediately just walk away. You're sort of normed. are societally normed to look again, to kind of go, ⁓ it's art. I'm not supposed to get it straight away. This is supposed to be a bit of work. So I think that's the other thing that's really interesting when it comes to challenging topics like climate, like ecological collapse, like sort of post-growth systems and all of these kinds of things. Actually presenting those with an aesthetic value that presents them in a way that is non-threatening. that does cause people to take a second look, to sit with it. So Donnette Haraway, this notion of staying with the trouble, like no one's got the answers. We just need to sit with it a little and be in it. And I think that notion of holding the space for people to sit with difficult topics or challenging topics is really, really important and sort of a key part of, think, the role that experiences can kind of play. And ultimately, look, my sort of... PhD originally, because I sort of come from that world of marketing, had lots of alliteration in it and talked about sort of an exploration of the principles of luminosity, liturgy and liminality in immersive experience design. So this notion of light and dark, of ritual and sort of the notion of betwixt and between and sort of liminality. And then as I said, I was sort of exposed to this piece of work that this client did and saw the power of immersive experience in terms of genuinely driving ontological change in relation to sort of ecology and sort of climate. And so now what I sort of really focus on and the way I sort of sum it up is this notion of sort of how can we hijack the hedonic? So there is, if there's 50 pp in the experience meter, there's 50 million in the immersive experience meter. know, there's a, think about the cost of the spare. There's a lot of people funding immersive experience, all driven. by hedonic pursuits all driven on that, my God, you know, all of it. So actually how can we co-opt that investment? How can we hijack the hedonic and actually use that magic? And it is magic. This is changing, not just behaviour, but being this changing beliefs. Like Alan Moore, the comic book writer, he talks about, he's like, magic exists. Spells and grimoires, that's spelling and grammar. It's just words in a certain order. And when you know how to do magic, you can make people do anything. And that for me is the magic of experiential that you kind of go, okay, this, yes, of course, it's a great economic edge. And yes, of course, it's sort of, you know, where sort of the restaurant business is collapsing in London, the immersive experience economy is helping suck up some of that and really supporting loads of people and loads of livelihoods. But actually it can genuinely be a force for good. And that's what I find really interesting. And that's why back to that reference to Durden and kind of Pine, this notion of not only what makes an experience memorable, but what makes it meaningful and transformative, for me is almost the ultimate design challenge. Yeah. Because it's this thing, right, is sort of loads of people, as I said, think about the experience in and of the moment. And maybe they think about onboarding and offboarding. Maybe they think about, OK, I've got to get people into character, I've to people into mode and all of those kind of things. And they'll deliver a hugely emotive experience. But actually, what's the support? what is it that you can do that they can take with them that provides that scaffolding, that support for the reflection needed to kind of go, well, why did that make me feel that way? What's the meaning I can extract from that memory? And then also how can I embed that to drive genuine transformation? And again, I was reflecting on this and thinking about it it comes down to sort of, you know, most people go, it's the story. What's the thing? But then what's the talisman or the totem? What's the giveaway? What's the thing that you can provide. you had thinking about punch drunk, for example. Those are hugely memorable, valuable experiences, but they're not transformative. I don't think they're meaningful. I don't think they pretend to be, and I don't think they claim to be. that's great. They're great entertainment. But it's very hard to describe what being in punch drunk is like to someone who's never been to punch drunk. It's very hard to kind of go, that meant that, and that's changed who I am. By contrast, there's ⁓ a company called The Voice Project ⁓ run by guy called Jonathan Baker and Char Hughes. And they are a choral performance company. at Brighton Festival around six years ago, they did a production called In the Arms of Sleep, which was an overnight choral performance. So 50 people, full place, you went and you were sort of greeted and there was a hundred performers. So a hundred. volunteer choristers and you walk through this wood, they're all holding candles, singing this thing, you're through this dark wood, candles, people. Then you'll guide it into a stable block, you'll guide it to your bed. One of these choral performers comes, sits on your bed, reads you a bedtime story, gives you the bedtime story and everyone's bedtime story is different, so you've got this babble of voices rising and rising and rising, but you've got the story. Then you're woken in the middle of the night, you're taken off to sort of this church in the middle of the woods and then there's another performance and you come back. Then you're woken to this dawn chorus of the hundred choristers around and then a single soloist in the middle of the room singing this beautiful refrain in Latin, Ille Luceum Extendima, which means let the light extend. And like your mind is blown, you've had two sleeps, REM sleep, deep sleep, all of this. And then they wake you up, they give you breakfast and then they guided you. into a walled garden and they taught you to sing that song. So suddenly rather than it just being a sort of, ⁓ I've watched, I've sort of been part of the audience and yes, maybe I've participated in everything. Suddenly I'm taught this ritual, I'm taught this liturgy, these words. So that for me is that, I got that, I went home and two days later I got those words tattooed on my chest. Let the light extend. But suddenly because... Steve Usher (39:01) That became super meaningful. Ben Robinson (39:03) Super meaningful. brought that into me. It's like, my God, the purity of that experience, that notion, but also that was an enacted memory that allowed me to reflect on it and to repeat those words, that mantra. What did that mean? Thinking about what that meant to me, what my purpose was in terms of letting the light extend my purpose, my meaning in life, all of these kinds of things. But suddenly that's like, whoa. in just that simple phrase, they provided the scaffolding to turn that memory into something that was genuinely meaningful and ultimately transformative. So again, subtle differences in terms of, you know, from a mass thing to this, but there are ways and means to design for those post-experience stages of meaning-making reflection. And again, it comes down to this notion of narrative, know, narrative identity. The stories we tell people about ourselves, that's part of the story I tell about them. Steve Usher (40:04) Yeah. Super interesting that example, because punch drunkers, I would describe punch drunkers depth. Yeah. Right. Experientially, like they are the masters of this depth of what you just shared there, just because obviously the staging is so much more complex. But what you just shared with the other example is it actually didn't sound particularly complex. It's not complex. Very, very light, but very extremely intentional. then of course, into the...the agencies then given to the audience to kind of take what they want from that, then someone sitting next to you probably might not have had that level of meaningful. And that's the thing about experiential. Ben Robinson (40:43) But I do also think that there are parallels one can draw. So the world that punch drunk create because of the way, and again, sort of you talked about it, is like it's very complex, heavily produced worlds that commercially make sense when you run them for a long time. So you can do that. I can build a world that has that depth and therefore it is that real juxtaposition. It's the upside down. It's that sort of version of the world. with The Voice Project, it's whilst the setting, the staging may not be radically different from the everyday. When was the last time you heard a hundred people singing? Never. For most people, that's enough to go, my God, that is so other, that's so transportative, that humanity, that sort of piece. you know, Tom Middleton, who you had on your show a while ago. talking about that restorative nature of sound, the care of somebody coming and reading you a story, handing you that piece, all of those things, think these things don't have to cost a lot of money. I think what they do require is care and consideration. And I think that's where, again, this notion of thinking about sort of clearing, holding and closing space and actually the before and after is just as important as sort of the actual experience itself. And that arc, the care, and sort of the humanity and sort of the intent, I think is really, really important. Steve Usher (42:16) Intention is probably the most single use word on this podcast. Let's talk about your, the academia side and the research that you've been doing. Tell us more about it. Where did it start? Ben Robinson (42:31) Well, it started with me, as I say, wanting to understand how this stuff worked. And I originally, my intention originally was around cognitive neuroscience, ⁓ looking at some of the sorts of work that KINDER Studios and those guys are doing around neuroaesthetics and things. And was really interested by that. And at Sussex, there's a guy called Anil Seth, who's wrote a lovely book around consciousness. And it's sort of, there's a big department that looks at that. And I originally applied. to do a PhD because I was like, I'd love to understand like the emotive spikes, which bit of the brain and all of those kinds of things and really sort of geeking out on it. And then when I went in and I sort of met with Anne, my kind of supervisor, and like she sort of was very quick to sort of point out that sort of with that specific field, actually the level of focus would be so tight that whilst it may be really valuable and informative. actually, it would be very, very specific to one sort of experience where actually what I bring is 30 years of depth of lots of different experiences. And so where my research sits is within design and informatics. So actually the science of how people absorb information sits within the School of Engineering. And really, it started with trying to understand, what is it that makes an experience immersive? Games design, you talk about transportation. and absorption and then Josephine Mashaw who wrote a lot of books on punch drunk. She said, when you get those two things together, which you do in a mass performance, you get total absorption. That's the halo and that's what punch drunk do brilliantly is I'm transported to another world and I lose myself in that world for however many hours, total immersion. ⁓ And I was like, okay, that's sort of interesting. And then there's a guy ⁓ actually Matt. Steve Usher (44:15) So yeah. Ben Robinson (44:23) Durden, he's written a paper with a guy, Marcel Bastian, at Breeder University of Applied Technology. And there there's a games design lecturer called Mata Haggis Burridge, who wrote this amazing great name model around the key drivers of immersion. So what they did, he with some of the other faculty members went out and spoke to lots of different experienced designers and said, actually, what are those key drivers? What is it that makes an experience immersion? What are the factors from a spatial perspective, from a sort of systems perspective, from a narrative perspective and from a social perspective. So they were modeling what that sort of looked like. And the challenge I had when I was looking at that model and thinking about how it related to some of the physical experiences that I sort of focus on. Things like systems immersion, obviously in games design, there's a lot more agency, sort of a lot of experiences like that. The one I just described, the sort of sleep, the in the arms of sleep. There's no... I'm not doing anything. It's a passive experience. It's still participatory. The meaning I make is mine, but I'm choosing left or right. I'm not given an action to undertake. So there were some things that I thought needed changing there. So what I then did was sort of look outside of that, look into the world of sort of experiential futures and the sort of stuff where this sort of full futures model came from and sort of look at other drivers, as we say, of, what it was that sort of does that. And then... Finally, the other sort of loop that came in was this notion of sort of liminality. So as I I started and I thought about neuroscience and then I actually wanted to look more broadly, more transdisciplinary when it came to sort of designing for experience. And within the world of anthropology and sociology, there's this notion of liminality, which is sort of this idea of sort of, okay, how do transitions happen? And that sort of notion, that idea, that framework was developed by a guy called Arlo van Gneep. a Belgian guy ⁓ in the sort of late 1800s. And he looked sort of across various societies, various moments of sort of transformation and transition and identified these sort of patterns. And he talked about sort of the tripartite structure, the three-phase structure of the preliminale, the sort of the separation, the liminal, the immersion, if you like, and then the postliminal, the integration, if you like. And it really does relate, if you think about sort of... trauma therapy and the idea of clearing, holding and kind of closing space. This notion of letting go of where one was, immersing oneself into new knowledge and new way of being, potentially guided through that and then bringing some of that knowledge back and then sort of assimilating and integrating that. So again, the post phase. And so for me, what was really interesting was to look at that sort of liminal framework and sort of start applying some of those. anthropological, some of those enduring truths in terms of the way in which society has scaffolded or supported key moments of transformation or kind of transition and thinking about experience design, as I said, not just in terms of a single moment in time, that sort of immersive experience, but actually what comes before and what comes after. And so I think where my research is really predicated. is bringing together sort of multiple disciplines, multiple fields. So some stuff that comes, as I say, from anthropology, from sociology and sort of looks at those sort of liminal rights and sort of that sort of notion there with the work of Van Gunn, Eamon Turner and various other people, looks at work from sort of futures and anticipation and people like Stuart Candy and sort of experiential futures and various elements there. And then also sort of in design as well and experience design. obviously, again, we've talked about Durden and Pine and Bastien and various people like that, but bringing these worlds together and trying to sort of go, okay, what's the science that we know from sort of cognitive neuroscience from forecognition? What are the enduring truths in terms of the way in which human beings deal with change from sort of anthropology and stuff like that? And then actually what are the... urgent challenges and issues that we're facing in terms of whether that's ecological economics, post-growth theory, all of these kind of things. And how can you bring those together in a way that can allow us to create perhaps a framework? And that's what I'm ultimately looking at is designing this sort of framework that can support people trying to promote, again, lot of alliteration here, but positive pluralistic. post-growth futures. So this idea of kind of going, actually, it's not binary, dystopia or utopia. Actually, there are multiple futures. But ideally, and I think what we all realise is that those futures for the good of all should probably be pluralistic and post-growth. They should not be predicated on endless consumption and growth at all costs. So they should be post-growth and they should be pluralistic. They should speak to the needs of all living things. And therefore, that's what I'm really, really interested in is both how can we support people in letting go of known or learned or inherited what some people call maladapted behaviors. So things that we do that are bad for ourselves and bad for the planet. So separation, how can we let go of that world that we're immersed in every day of overconsumption and stuff? How can I then sort of having sort of cleared space, how can I hold people in space where they can experience different ways of being, how they can experience sort of pluralistic futures, so futures where all things thrive. And then how can I close that space in a safe way and support them with story, with props, with totems, with talismans, with objects or artefacts that will help them take those memories and make meaning and ultimately transform. their ontology, their way of being. And I think what's really interesting is we talked earlier about this notion of aesthetic versus extractive attention. And most climate communications, most ecological communications, yes, sometimes they'll pull some emotive levers, but they use traditional modes of communication. ⁓ And therefore we deal with them with extractive attention. We push them away. You have what John Mills talks about as ⁓ the global bystander effect. And ultimately, though, what I'm really interested in doing is saying, OK, how could we help those people doing this urgent work, not change the story, but change the way they're telling the story. So give them a better toolkit. So, yes, of course, I'm working with experienced designers and I'm interviewing loads of people and I'm pulling on all of this stuff. But ultimately, the framework, the research that I'm doing is to try and almost democratise that toolbox and actually make those principles, help people understand that it's not just about the moment, it's not just about the experience, it is about the reflection. It's about sort of, you know, the work that Bastian and Dirden are doing now on that sort of, or Pine, the Delta model, all of these things, actually that transformative piece. And that for me is sort of, you know, when I think about sort of a father of sort of two kind of teenage children, that's what In terms of me accounting for what I've done as a response to where we are, that feels like the best use of my time and sort of my abilities is to try and sort of open people's eyes or try and help people think differently about the way in which we help people sort of sit with these challenging topics. Yeah, exactly. Steve Usher (52:04) rather than just push them. So what I've heard there, just to play that back as well, and I think maybe just to kind of bring a number of the things that we discussed today, is that we've got this kind of, think experientially, we've gone through this really interesting phase of growth. And so our application has tended to be, or lot of the application has been in our cross-entertainment. It's been obviously been in brand marketing. ⁓ But what you're saying is through the research, through the PhD, whether you're doing, you're extrapolating all of these different sources of amazing work that's already happened in order to then go, okay, now where can we apply this in a topic or an area that actually traditionally has struggled to communicate effectively? ⁓ Or at least people will be able to absorb it correctly, but to be able to bring the power of experiential into these really important topics. Ben Robinson (52:58) And I think that's it. think and you've seen it as again, we talked about Joe Pine, this notion of if we've moved from the experience economy to the transformation economy, what do we all want to transform into? Yeah, right. Because that's the point. And so there's a there's a really guy, he's passed away now, but a guy called Ulrich Beck, who said, it's not about the bad effect of goods, i.e. the problem of consuming lots of goods. It's about the good effect of bads. So actually he talked about the time that we're in now is this time of metamorphosis and you have to let go of some things to become something else. If you think about sort of, you know, COVID, terrible, terrible situation, but actually out of that crisis, completely changed work-life balance. That was the good effect of bads. So actually how can we take this inflection point? How? can we think about sort of, know, transformation? If that's ultimately what we're now realizing as experienced designers, we have the power to do, to help guide and steward and support and scaffold intentional transformation, what are we transforming into? And that for me is the nub of it. Steve Usher (54:18) So just kind of referencing Matt's episode actually, it's something we discussed was as experienced designers in the kind of the experience, memorable, memorable, memorable experiential step, we're creating the container for an experience to take place inside of people and ⁓ burn, effectively burn memories into the mindset. And then of course, like to turn it into something that's more meaningful is that reflective piece to be able to take that experience and bring it into oneself. Yeah. which you shared a brilliant story, obviously tattooing, which comedy, and we discussed this, this is quite interesting. The, the, a designer though, when you create the container, you step back anyway, cause you don't actually know how people are going to respond. that's the beauty of human and the beauty of the work, but also transformation is about obviously edification, it's guiding. And therefore your role, I maybe as experienced designers, we don't have a role in that potentially, or we actually factor that in that actually we become the guide rather than the holder. Ben Robinson (55:29) Whether it's a guy, I vacillate between the two things. think whether or not there's a proactive role, but what we do definitely have is a duty of care. And I think that's a key point of difference is that, you know, and it's this difference between being sort of a designer, a host or a guardian, you know, what's your role within that sort of experience and then what's your role post that kind of experience. The other thing though, just and not to...avoid answering the question. But the other thing that that sparked me to kind of that would be interesting to bring into the conversation is this notion of social sculpture. And actually that the work is not the experience that you're is not the immediate audience's experience of the work, but the work is how the audience put the work into the world. So John, one of your other guests talked about her favourite bit. was hearing people tell stories about the experience. And so again, ⁓ social sculpture, guy called Joseph Beuys, who's an artist, a conceptual German artist, he sort of talked about social sculpture and actually that society was his canvas. And actually, therefore the work was not around the art that he produced, but it was the reaction that his art created and the ripples of that piece. And then there's another guy called Gernot Bohm, another German guy. And he talks about the ecstasies of things. So again, he's sort of, he wrote a lot about the Swiss architect, Peter Zumter and sort of saying that actually there is, again, some mad juju, but sort of the energy that doesn't exist when an audience member or a person is not in a building, but only exists between the materials and the person. there's some resonance there basically, but yeah, this notion of the work that we do is not in the. physical experience, it's not in the design of the set, the writing of the script or any of those kinds of things, but ultimately the work is how that then lives on in the world and that social sculpture piece. And I think again, it comes down to this notion of, you know, the Greeks talks about Kronos versus Kairos. So not kind of calendar time, but valuable time, time that has a transformative effect and all of these kinds of things. So actually what are those moments that we're designing for? ⁓ And yeah, that for me is... hugely exciting. And that's the stuff that, you know, 30 years in, you're just getting started, I'm just starting to understand how this works and actually where the biggest opportunity is. Steve Usher (58:02) I do feel like we're in this period right now, like this level of maturity by exploration in this field. I mean, I've heard two examples this year, ⁓ Jocker Callahan, course, Arctangent Festival partnering with Paul Zach with his tool to measure the real time, like brain experience of the festival. think Kindle doing similar thing with Boomtown Festival. ⁓ So I'm loving it because we're getting beyond the... the superficial we're getting into, how is our brain really reacting? And I'm really excited to see what kind of data we're going to extract from that. Because I think it will really help inform the journey and these kind of key elements in that journey within. Ben Robinson (58:46) Definitely. And I think some of the other things that's really interesting is in a lot of the literature and a lot of the people you've interviewed, we'll have talked about this notion of affect and actually sort of part of what we are creating when we design experiences is things, feelings, ideas that we can't put into words that we don't understand. So affect is almost what comes before emotion, before a thought is that it's sometimes positive or negative. It's like, can't, I felt something, can't quite... put it into words. And so yes, of course, that the neuroscience is really, really important to understand almost sort of second by second what's kind of happening, but also just that, just the impact is also sort of critical. And I think that's where for me, there's this dance between the, not through the mystical, but almost the magic of what we do. And I think it is very easy. to go down lots of rabbit holes in terms of measuring everything and EEGs and sort of, you know, galvanic skin responses and all of these and lose the magic and wonder and awe of a, my God, that connected, that felt. And that is always my slight watch out and nervousness is taking the magic away from what we do because this is a leap of faith. This is. not measurable. Some of this is stepping into the unknown. That's the very nature of LEMON. It's crossing a threshold. It's anti-structure and structure. So it's letting go of what we know, moving to the upside down, trying some different shit that we don't know if it's going to work and bringing the stuff that works back. And that does require belief. And again, back in terms of this trust and where we are in the world, there's this, we talked earlier about sort of lessons that I've taken from skateboarding and sort of clubbing. And I've worked in three or four different agencies and sort of, always taken a different thing from each of those. And one of them, TBWA, a big above the line agency. And there was a guy, Matt Shepard Smith, who was the MD at the time. And he said one thing that has always kind of stuck with me and it's sort of how I run my agency in PRP now. And sort of, it's what always has held true. He's like, when clients step through the door, it should feel like they're walking into double art, not double maths. It should feel like they're gonna don't quite know what they're gonna do. Might be a little bit messy. They might colour slightly outside of the lines, but whatever they do, they're gonna take it home. They're gonna be really proud of it. They're gonna show it to their mum and she's gonna put it on the fridge. And that's what I think as experienced designers, you know, is so important in terms of we take... you sort of, know, commercially or sort of, you know, spatially or any of these things, you're pushing the limits and therefore to have that sense of wonder, to have that sense of excitement, to have that sense of mission and sort of, you know, shared journey, I think with a client, with your colleagues, with producers, with partners is critical. And I think that sometimes when we devolve and sort of defer to the scientific and just so you, there's a, there's a danger. Yes. Of losing the wonder and the joy. And, you know, it's why we talk about that, you know, the rubric is Marvel and remarkable. It's not just like works and effective. It's just like that's it's remarkable. Yes. It's Marvel. It's stuff that invokes passion and agency and has people leaning forward rather than sort of sitting back. And I think that, again, just comes down to humanity and just understanding how people work. Steve Usher (1:02:26) people take, yeah. We're all just as crazy as each other. So Ben, thanks so much for sharing your perspective today. ⁓ really appreciate you. I really appreciate the work that you've done and you are doing, especially with your research. I'm really keen to see some of the outcomes and some of the insights, no doubt, you're gonna generate from this work as you continue this journey. ⁓ I just wanted to ask, just to close off, any kind of like...imparting reflections on maybe what we discussed today or to round off the conversation that might just bring some additional value to the audience. Ben Robinson (1:03:03) I think it's just, I think it comes back to, me, that ecology of attention is just understanding and remembering whether it's as designers or as audience members, the value of attention and actually sort of, you know, how important that is and what a difference that can make in terms of where we ask people to pay attention, what we ask people to care about and what we give them in return. So I think that comes with sort of, as we say, a certain degree of responsibility in what we can do with these magic spells and grimoires that we've learnt and what we can sort of expect and the difference and the change that we can sort of help bring about. Steve Usher (1:03:46) That's amazing. It's a big responsibility and also a huge opportunity. What an amazing opportunity. So I'm looking forward, I will continue to follow your journey. No doubt this will be the first of many conversations in the future, but thanks so much for joining. Thank you. Ben Robinson (1:03:53) plans. Yeah, absolutely. You're welcome. Thank you very much.