Whilst trawling cyberspace this week looking for a suitable article to write a response to (yes…we do our research…) we noticed something rather interesting. To be honest, we’re always noticing interesting things – particularly on the internet – but this one related specifically to experiential marketing so we thought we’d share…
Put simply there have, over the last few months, been ever-rising numbers of articles on our particular aspect of the marketing industry. We’re not talking about the ones that hail experiential marketing as a new discipline (in fact, we find it hard to believe that they’re still doing the rounds – but they are!). No, we’re talking about the ones that are slowly but surely and repeatedly putting the case for experiential marketing forward (articles like this http:/eventsreview.com/news/view/1172″ http:/eventsreview.com/news/view/1172).
This widespread – and spreading ever wider – acceptance of experiential marketing as not only a genuine and powerful marketing method but as a major growth industry in 2008 and beyond looks set to cause massive changes within our corner of the industry.
For a start, it is still – despite these sorts of stories – often difficult to persuade potential clients that, rather than being some kind of gimmick, experiential marketing is a serious business capable of delivering remarkable campaigns, vastly more accurate statistical analysis than traditional methods and the sort of eye-catching innovation that can actually drag the average consumer out of their jaded, advertising blind rut and encourage them to connect with a brand again.
Similarly (and ultimately much more damagingly) a, still-fledgling, industry sector such as ours is subject to rot from within – with relatively few benchmarks and standards to measure ourselves against it is still possible for fly-by-night, cowboy outfits to trade as “experiential marketers” and cause untold damage to the reputation of the industry as a whole.
Whilst this is to be expected given that clients often don’t know what to expect and we often don’t know just what it is possible to deliver, it is still galling.
But these problems for the sector look set to fade away over the coming year or two and we’re more than a little eager to see where it leaves us. At the very least we expect to, finally, take our rightful place at the top table of advertising methods.
We’re looking forward to not having to struggle to get ideas across to clients who aren’t sure exactly what it is experiential marketers do. And we also expect to see the last of the kinds of companies that give us a bad name (or at least the vast percentage of them – any industry will always have a few of these bad apples).
These are the things it is easy enough to predict and expect at this time and having seen what the media is embracing…other progressions and advances it’s not so easy to see – particularly since the glare of an incredibly bright future is blinding us somewhat at the moment.
One thing we do know is that Hotcow will be leading the charge.