It’s easy to think of experiential marketing as a strategy for creating one-off campaigns. A brand wants to make a big song and dance about a particular product, so they go all experiential and initiate a unique experience for an audience.
But whilst experiential marketing can quite easily accomplish a company’s marketing goals in this fashion, don’t underestimate the power that a good campaign can create.
Because actually, experiential marketing can be used to change people’s perceptions, of a brand, a market or an industry issue.
And since that sort of result can increase revenue potential, it’s a highly relevant point.
Take tequila brand Patron Spirits, for example.
Patron Spirits is a premium brand, but it has had a problem to overcome: that of the public perception of tequila. When a lot of people think of tequila, they think of a bad drunken experience. In turn, that makes tequila a much harder sell that, say, a quality wine.
Interestingly, Patron Spirits has been using experiential marketing to try and change this perception. And since they’re a successful global brand that sells tequila in over 150 countries, the approach appears to be working.
One of their main strategies was to create a dining society which holds events in London. It’s a very prestigious affair and mainly invite-only, but it’s designed to create a certain ambience which can be associated with their product.
It’s a question of repositioning tequila as something to be enjoyed and appreciated, not slung down the neck in a late-night bar.
Using experiences to change the perception of something isn’t anything new. Consider Selfridges. When founder Harry Selfridge opened his shop in 1909, he opened the store with a ‘silence room’.
This was a room where customers could get some peace and quiet away from the chaos that comes with a busy shopping experience.
This addition resulted in a much more pleasurable experience for Selfridge’s shoppers. It was quite the genius move too, since it was actually more of a prediction than anything else.
If you can, when you’re marketing a product or service, think of a worst case scenario and try to build a contingency plan into your experiential strategy.
Hotcow is a non-traditional creative agency that specialises in experiential marketing that goes viral. Our campaigns generate buzz through crowd participation, PR and content sharing. Contact us on 0207 5030442 or email us on info@hotcow.co.uk.
