Experiential Marketing
“Experiential marketing” could easily be dismissed as an overly fancy marketing term that applies only to events and trade shows. But in reality, it’s much more than setting up a booth and making sure you have cool swag to hand out that entices folks to stop and hear your sales pitch.
Beyond the spoken word
Just now being more frequently used as a new marketing approach, it's the evolution and extension of consumer brand experiences beyond traditional advertising. According to Wikipedia, it attempts “to connect consumers with brands in personally relevant and memorable ways –experiencing and participating in a brand moment, rather than the usual disruptive, passive advertising messages we are surrounded by today.”
Let’s face it – most of us, if we admit it or not, try to avoid or block out irrelevant marketing messages whenever possible and by any means available. Thanks to Norton, Google and Microsoft, I can’t remember the last time a pop up interrupted my online experience like a telemarketing call at dinner time. I also know lots of folks (not me of course) who happily subscribe to personal video recorders that let them zip through commercial breaks.
Now, contrast this ‘blocking’ attitude with experiential marketing – where consumers happily allow brands into their world. You don’t have to look farther than leading social networking sites MySpace and Facebook to see fan pages devoted to Starbucks (73,000 fans and counting), Absolut Vodka (26,527) and even older established brands like the Marmite Food Company (68,397) and In-and-Out Burger (6,402). How can this be?
You're on the list.
In our technology obsessed world where the internet, Xbox and text messaging replace common, face to face interactions, experiential marketing gives control to the consumer, who controls (with the help of technology) who’s allowed into their universe. It’s not unlike being stuck outside a nightclub waiting to get in. You’re either on the list and, with a backward glance to the unfortunates, whisked inside. Or you wait by the front door with everyone else, hoping to get tap on the shoulder while the party is still going on.
Some great work is being done.
And experiential marketing isn’t limited to online. MAX LENDERMAN is a Chicago-based creative director of GMR Marketing, and the former president and creative director of Gearwerx Experiential Marketing in Montreal. In his new book, Experience the Message: How Experiential Marketing is Changing the Brand World he offers compelling case studies on how experiential marketing helped to launch new brands and save older ones while delivering meaningful share, revenue and profit increases:
Absolut launched a new spirits brand Cut, by leasing two bars in Sydney and Melbourne. They put on DJ sets, band concerts and photo exhibitions in these spaces. Visitors to the Absolut Cut bars got a free bottle and consumers were given a chance to contribute their photos to the exhibits, generating what Absolut hoped would be a viral element to the campaign. Instead of using mass marketing to blanket the millions in order to reach the few, Absolut chose to target the few to eventually reach the masses.
Not only can experiential marketing tactics launch a brand without mass-media support, it can rejuvenate it as well. Take Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, a brand with a 20-year span of sales declines and loss of market share. With its small marketing budget, brand managers at Pabst decided to take an experiential approach and began sponsoring sub cultural events to reach the influentials such as scooter rallies, dodge ball tournaments, and fashion shows for peanuts. After losing 90% of its volume between 1978 and 2001, Pabst was in the positive numbers in 2004 with a 15% volume lift.
Experiential marketing is an incredibly interesting field opening up to marketers. With technology as a core component, we’re learning new ways to target, appeal to and retain customers. And in order for it to work effectively, we have to acknowledge that the decision making power is firmly in the consumer’s hands – and their willingness to experience our brand. It’s really no farther away than a mouse click, smartphone or remote control.
