Something fundamental has shifted in how consumers measure value. It's no longer about what you buy, it's about what you feel. Across industries from fragrance to hospitality, from fine dining to beauty retail, I derived that experience value equals emotional impact divided by time spent. Welcome to the Experience Economy 2.0, where brands across sectors are shifting from products and services to holistic sensory experiences that engage emotions, memories, and multiple senses simultaneously.

In my last post, I wrote about how how brands now design for how we spend time with them, not just what we buy. The attention/creator economy has turned time into a sense of its own: something you feel, allocate, and remember. So in this post, I’m introducing the Ode Experience, a way of planning around time as a sense. And I’ll use Japan, a trip I planned with two friends, to show how this plays out. The experiences that stay with us are the ones where time is intentionally shaped & the Ode Experience is simply time well spent.

What if the spaces we already use every day were redesigned for connection instead of efficiency? Imagine AMC theaters turning into culture rooms for watch parties, Trader Joe’s adding tasting lounges, gyms creating cooldown cafés, or museums offering sketch-friendly community hours. Picture Sephora running free beauty classes again, Spotify opening listening lounges, or Discord hosting IRL local servers for gaming and board games. None of these require building new infrastructure; just rethinking what’s already there.