and how can brands use it within an effective marketing mix?
Type into Google ‘how many ads do we see a day?’ and you’ll get mixed answers. 500, 1000, 5000… But whatever the true average is, one thing's for certain: we’re exposed to a huge number of ads every single day. Alongisde this, attention spans are getting shorter – in fact a global study by Yahoo and OMD Worldwide found that Gen Z lose active attention for digital ads after 1.3 seconds. As marketers, we’re faced with the constant challenge of cutting through the ad clutter and holding the limited attention of consumers. We need another way of connecting with customers and importantly, a way of being remembered.
Cue experiential marketing. Sometimes referred to as engagement marketing or event marketing, this channel invites consumers into the ‘brand world’ by delivering immersive and interactive brand experiences. These experiences can exist both physically and virtually. More than just a buzzword, experiential marketing is a powerful way of cutting through the digital noise and leaving a lasting impression of your brand.
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What kinds of things can we build into brand experiences?
· Product sampling and sales activations
· Interactivity, education, and gamification
· Complete brand environments and multi-sensory experiences
· Digital and hybrid integrations
· Travelling or multi-use campaigns
· Brand collaborations and co-branded experiences
How does experiential marketing benefit brands?
It’s about connection. By directly involving customers in an engaging experience, we can make consumers feel something – whether it be joy, admiration, or nostalgia. And by making them feel something, we can create memorable moments. That could mean stronger brand awareness, salience, consideration, or loyalty.
Brand experiences don’t solely benefit those who interact with them. Busy passers-by might take notice of your pop-up or IRL activation, but not stop and engage. That’s still a win for brand awareness (assuming that your brand is clear and visible). There may be peripheral benefits to brand awareness digitally, too. If your campaign is connected with digital channels or creating a buzz of user-generated content, it can reach an even greater audience than those who saw your activation in-person.
When working recently with The Shoebox Experiences, we designed a pop-up activation with these different layers in mind. The experience itself was a mini-discovery of The Shoebox’s tours and experiences, set inside a giant shoebox which we dropped into a central location in Norwich. The outside was coated in distinctive brand assets, benefitting brand awareness for passers-by as well as those who stepped into the shoebox. And with a wealth of user-generated content and brand-generated content across digital channels, reach was extended even further.
How to plan a successful experiential marketing campaign
1. Set Clear Objectives
Establish clear objectives for your experiential marketing campaign. Whether you’re launching a new product or building loyalty amongst existing consumers, create SMART objectives from the beginning. These objectives will inform every aspect of the campaign, help you stay on track to achieving your overall goals, and allow you to measure success effectively.
2. Root your idea in your brand, product, or service.
Your experiential campaign should make sense for your brand, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be boring. In fact, far from it. Using your aims for the campaign as a basis can be a great springboard for creative ideas, as well as ensuring that you’re on track for achieving your objectives.
Stuck for creative ideas? Talk to our team about your brand and goals, and we’ll help you uncover the strongest creative concept for your experiential marketing.
3. Intrigue or captivate your target consumer
For consumers to actively choose to engage with your brand activation, they need to be intrigued or enticed by it. Their interest might be driven by a benefit, such a discounted product/service, or it might be to do with entertainment, aesthetic appeal, or a sense of mystery. Understanding what might drive people to engage is crucial for getting the most out of your brand experience.
4. Sensory experiences are memorable ones
Creating sensory experiences is an effective way to make your brand more memorable, and event marketing gives you the opportunity to use any of the five senses. For example, this experiential retail space for Natures Menu combines AV features, tactile elements, infographics, hands (or paws)-on interactions, gamification and more.
‘But what if my brand is boring?’
Brand experiences should not be restricted to B2C or the big players. Instead, we believe there is always an interesting angle regardless of the product, service, or category. We help clients consider things from an outside perspective, building on creative projects conducted over decades.
We’ll also fold in complementary specialisms, regularly looking outside our own industry for inspiration and input from artistry, architecture, food, drink, performance, technology and beyond, allowing us to build the richest experience of brands in every sense.
According to Hubspot, 77% of brands now use experiential marketing in some capacity, which just goes to show the power of the experiential for brands of all sizes and sectors.
5. Experiences don’t exist in a vacuum
Any good marketing campaign should be multi-channel, and experiential marketing is no different. You can connect your event up with social media, email marketing, and other channels to create awareness of the event. During and after the event, you can continue to shout about it as well as encouraging user-generated content with quirky interactions, photo opportunities, challenges and more. Once the event is over, the hard work continues; post-event marketing is equally important to the success of your campaign.
Not only will user-generated content extend the reach of your campaign, it can also add trust and connect you more closely with target audiences too.
6. Measure the effectiveness of your campaign
In your planning, you should also be thinking about what success looks like for your experiential campaign, and how you’ll measure it. Brand activations don’t come with the complex dashboards of data that digital channels do, so you won’t have the granular data that you might be used to. It’s also worth remembering that most of the time, experiential marketing serves long-term benefits, so don’t expect to see the full extent of your results immediately after the event. If you haven’t already, taking time for some detailed benchmarking is always a good place to start.
The nature of event marketing is such that ROI isn’t always the most helpful metric. We encourage clients to use ‘ROO’ or ‘Return on Objectives’, which considers the broader and longer-term benefits of experiential marketing (as well as the short-term).
If you’re in doubt about measuring the effectiveness of your experiential campaign, we can help. Talk to us about your project and objectives, and we’ll advise on effective ways of measuring success for your campaign.
Working with an experiential agency for more extraordinary events
Experiential marketing can unlock huge opportunities for brands of all shapes and sizes. But, with more and more activations popping up both live and digitally, brand activations are becoming increasingly native to our cityscape. (Just walk around central London, and you’ll find a pop-up around every corner). That means that as marketers, we need to be consistently pushing the envelope for more creative and captivating brand experiences. That’s where an experiential agency will help – bringing direct expertise and working with your team to achieve extraordinary outcomes for your brand.
As a full service experiential marketing partner, we not only work with you to plan and design a creative space, we bring it to life too. A blended team of marketers, creatives, fabricators and production specialists, we’re not your typical experiential agency. Taking ideas into real-world experiences is where we excel.
Planning a brand activation or considering adding experiential marketing into your plans for 2025? Get in touch and talk to us today.
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