Does this tactic work or is it just a new way for ad agencies to maintain marketing spend?
Recently, we have been seeing more and more brands using “experiential activity” as part of their advertising campaign. Experiential marketing campaigns can produce great content and this can be used in both the traditional and social media channels.
Below we look at a brand getting it right, and a brand getting it wrong. Why did one brand produce a highly effective advert and why is one fundamentally flawed? The answer lies in the two campaigns’ differing strategic approaches and motives for doing what they did.
First things first – organic and manufactured content
We know that experiential marketing can produce incredibly rich content and we know that people love to relive experiences. Documenting and sharing an experience with tangible media such as images or video gives people the chance to relive this over and over again. We call this “organic content”.
Organic content comes from a real-life experience that is then shared across media channels. It is organic as both the audience and the brand are in control of its dissemination.
Manufactured content relates to the increasingly popular phenomenon of brands creating content that is staged, solely for use in the mass-media channels.
Tropicana – “Brighter Mornings”
Tropicana ran a campaign in Inuvik, in Canada’s Arctic North that provided residents of the remote town with an artificial sun for one month of their winter – a season that ordinarily brings no sun whatsoever due to its Arctic location.
In February we highlighted the creative campaign on Hotcow’s Mootalk blog and various discussion forums. The video prompted a huge reaction, with people raving about both the activity and the brand. This all sounds pretty perfect but the success has not happened without careful strategic planning.
Brighter Mornings created a real experience that then took advantage of various media channels, including TV, to amplify the activity. Thumbs up to the team behind the campaign – it was great because it followed three basic principles of engagement strategies: do something remarkable, add value to the audience and finally entertain people.
With these principles in place, the content resulting from the activity pretty much made itself. Sure filming, production and editing came in to play to polish the resulting advert but the real, genuine reactions on people’s faces? There is no replacement for that. This is the type of advert that would inspire people in to action.
The ING video below paints a different picture.
ING Direct – “Bus”
Leo Burnett, Italy created this campaign for ING which involved a range of human billboards, including one man attached to a bus (no really!!) with the strap-line “Ask those who have it already”. Technically this was quite a clever concept but in reality it actually leaves you asking why rather than watching it in awe, imagining you were there. Check it out below…
Frank Wainwright of Field Marketing and Brand Experience Magazine eloquently picks holes with the campaign on his blog where he points out the following…“I bet, when you saw the video clip your first reaction was how did they get that past health and safety? If you did then you are seeing the ‘event’ unfold as a viewer rather than imagining what it must have been like to be there”.
He goes on to talk about the wooden ‘acting’ in the advert and this raises suspicion about their strap-line. ING are encouraging us to “ask those who have it already” so are these people really their customers?! Would you get strapped to the side of a bus in an Italian rush hour because you loved a brand that much?!
This is not an experiential advert. Portraying a piece of experiential activity might result in an increase in brand awareness, but it is unlikely to inspire people in to action.
Strategy is key
Ad agencies and brands are starting to realise the value of experiential marketing, how the experience is now the core of a marketing communications plan and how mass media can be used to broadcast these real experiences.
Tropicana put the experience first – meaning all resulting content was remarkable, real and added something to the viewer. Compare this to ING who looked to make a TV spot without a genuine experience. The contrived nature of the advert becomes painfully obvious when looked at more closely – the fact it is listed in the TV directory of the Coloribus database (a global advertising archive) is a big clue as to the motives of the advert.
Once upon a time we all talked about the T-mobile adverts but now they provide us with a great example of the implications of becoming complacent with your experiences and confusing a strategy. The first time the adverts hit our screen, we loved, laughed and most importantly believed what we were seeing. T-mobile appeared to be adding value to people’s lives… right up to the point they started creating experiences purely for TV. The ‘experience’ became tired and contrived.
Final word
The issue people have with most TV ads is that they are over the top, fake or too clever, meaning people don’t know what they are talking about. Ultimately the purpose of TV has always been for brand awareness, not engagement.
Ad agencies are great at creating TV spots, but can they really deliver a true ‘experience’ with the depth that is required for believability, which ultimately results in people being more connected to the brand?
Hotcow strategically plan and implement experience-based campaigns in the right way to make your marketing spend go further. For more information or a free consultation, contact us.
Hotcow is a multi-award winning brand engagement agency specialising in experiential marketing. Our mission is simple: to help brands understand the power of “experience-based marketing” and offer expertise in how to develop, plan and execute campaigns in the right way to get the right results, while showing that every pound spent is measurable. Visit www.hotcow.co.uk for more information.