In a world where consumers’ attention is harder to secure than ever, it’s easy to see why brands are falling in love with experiential marketing.
Want to learn about how to make experiential marketing work for you? Download our free guide Events As a Marketing Tool: A Guide For Corporate Brands.
Immersive, live, and memorable, experiential campaigns can help you capture your audience’s attention and deliver your message without distractions. But the strategy lacks a standard definition, which can be confusing when you’re new to it.
So, what exactly does experiential marketing mean? How does it differ from traditional marketing, or from events more generally? And when is it a good idea to use an experiential strategy over other tactics?
Read on to the find out the true meaning behind experiential marketing.
Experiential marketing, defined
Experiential marketing, sometimes used interchangeably with “live marketing” or “event marketing,” is a marketing strategy that engages consumers using branded experiences. These experiences could include an event, a part of an event, or a pop-up activation not tied to any event.
While there’s no one right way to approach experiential marketing, at its core it’s all about immersing consumers in memorable live experiences. In fact, “experiential” and events go hand in hand, so it’s likely a very similar approach as you already use crafting your event experience.
Events most often overlap with experiential marketing campaigns in two ways. Events can be part of a larger experiential campaign, like the grand opening of a pop-up shop. Or, smaller, individual experiential activations can exist within your larger event, like on-site art installations or virtual reality pop-ups.
No matter which case you fall under, you need to be clear on the goals for each campaign. There are different ways you can measure the impact of an experiential campaign, including social expressions earned (which is why having a unique event hashtag is so important) and by surveying your attendees after an event.
Should you try experiential marketing?
So when should you incorporate an experiential marketing campaign into your event? It depends on your, goals, timeline, and resources.
Experiential marketing can help you humanise your or a sponsor’s brand, and create experiences that leave people with lasting, positive brand impressions. But although these experiences are real-life and in person, you need to marry them with social and content to amplify your efforts across channels.
It’s not enough to offer attendees a prize wheel or raffle drawing and call it a day. That type of activation is not truly experiential. You need to create touch points that engage attendees in an unexpected way, providing benefit to you, your event, and your sponsor (if they’re involved). That means you either need to have the budget to make a big impact on your own, or a big-name brand to back up your efforts.
Read More: The 2017 Guide to Event Sponsorships
Experiential marketing examples
To better define experiential marketing and understand when you should — and should not — use the strategy, here are four examples of experiential fails and successes:
Success #1: Gilmore Girls’ Luke’s Diners
To create buzz and excitement in the lead up to the long-awaited premiere of “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life,” the Netflix team created 200 pop up Luke’s Diners around the country to serve complimentary coffee to excited fans. It was wildly successful, with long lines at every location and tons of social engagement (the event’s branded Snapchat filter was viewed 880,000 times).
Fail #1: Jagermeister’s poison pool party
In a disastrous mistake that sent nine people to the hospital, one in a coma, liquid nitrogen was used at a Jagermeister pool party in Leon, Mexico to create atmospheric fog. What organisers didn’t know was that when liquid nitrogen reacts with chlorine, it displaces present oxygen, which meant attendees quickly found themselves unable to breathe.
Success #2: Scoot’s ‘Strip For A Trip’
Low-cost Singaporean airline Scoot set up in the middle of the busy Melbourne CBD to create a makeshift change room. Passerby were encourage to strip down and change into a Grecian toga for their chance to win a flight to Athens. The energy and excitement of the activation drew plenty of crowds, whilst also establishing Scoot as a fun, young airline brand.
Fail #2: Betfair’s Octopus traffic chaos
Gambling firm Betfair planned on using a giant octopus model to promote betting during the 2014 World Cup, but when the lorry transporting the model broke down in London’s busy Oxford Circus, causing a traffic jam, the company gained quite a bit of unexpected coverage. Luckily, Betfair was able to turn it around by apologising on social media.
Read More: How to Avoid a Social Media Backlash
The lesson? When incorporating experiential marketing into your event, be sure attendee safety and convenience are never at risk. Focus on appealing to the five senses to bring attendees’ dreams to life.
To learn more about how you can incorporate experiential marketing into your marketing strategy, download our free guide Events As a Marketing Tool: A Guide For Corporate Brands
