Deep Dive

Inside the Industry’s Identity Check

Every industry argues about what to call itself. What makes the experiential industry's version of this argument interesting is that the debate isn't really about vocabulary. It's about values — what we believe we're making, who we believe we're making it for, and whether the work we do is the product itself, the means to the thing itself, or something in between. Earlier this year, we brought the question to two audiences: the XP Council, in one of our monthly Zoom salons, and our broader LinkedIn community, through a public poll. We asked experiential practitioners across the field to weigh in on 12 questions around what to call the industry, what to call the people who show up, which words to retire, which to reclaim, and where the sharpest friction lives between how we talk about our work and how we prove its value. What follows is a snapshot of where the industry actually stands, contradictions included. "EXPERIENTIAL" WON "Experiential" was the clear winner, with roughly two-thirds of respondents naming it as their preferred term for the industry. But almost no one chose it without a caveat. "The decision has already been made," wrote one respondent. "It's the broadest catch-all,"...