“Why don’t we just create a really fantastic customer experience?”
In my mind, I like to imagine that this type of question is posed many times throughout the year, within boardrooms of all consumer brands.
There are multitude of reasons for this little fantasy, but the main reason is perhaps not so obvious.
You see, in my mind, I like to believe that all brands are solely focused on customer experience and their ambition is to repeatedly create, re-create and distill this goal into a delicious golden liquid marketing directors all over the world seek out and savour.
However, in this all too brief fantasy, the vaulting ambition, is closely followed with a riposte that emanates from a dark corner of the room. One that chills my very soul.
“Isn’t that quite expensive?”
From that point onwards, the very essence of that conversation becomes diluted and eventually everybody agrees upon a ‘kind of’ happy medium. One where the once burning light of the initial idea is turned down a touch, like a thermostat in the spring.
The end result is that the experience goes ‘well’ but not perhaps not well enough to convince everybody it was worth it.
One of the primary issues here is what it means to be ‘expensive’ which of course is entirely subjective and depends largely what it is you are paying for.
You see a customer is an incredibly valuable commodity. Over time, if nurtured, that customer becomes more than just a source of revenue. If treated well, that customer can become a word of mouth wonder. A loyal marketing tool, desperate to extoll the virtues of your brand and your products for as long as you’ll have them.
Experiential marketing, is a remarkable way for a brand to gain new customers. People who get involved will tend to be much more open to what you want to say. They are prepared to learn more about who you are and make up their own minds, based upon the type of people they talk to and the experience they have while they give up a few moments of their day. If you can make them go ‘wow’ at any point, for want of a less lascivious phrase, you’re in!
Any brand, no matter what sector, wants to be known as a wow brand. If you create garden hoses, you want to be the ‘wow hose’ that every gardener lusts after. If you create a miracle toe fungal spray, you want to be ‘Mr Toe Fungus – The Destroyer!’
Sadly, not every brand experience manages this. It may manage to tick all of the boxes in ‘being there’ with a group of great looking brand ambassadors and a stand, of sorts – but who, or what, are you trying to satisfy?
The customer receives a lukewarm experience. One which tells them nothing new about a brand other than they give out free samples occasionally on the way to work?
The Marketing creative sees another ‘brilliant vision’ become another ‘disappointing interpretation’ – something everybody else believed is what they must have ‘meant’.
And, an unsatisfied finance department who would rather have spent a larger proportion of the budget on something they understood better and offered a clearer set of ROI numbers.
Cost per awareness, cost per transaction, cost per acquisition…..
All of these are metrics are great to know, but still don’t offer us the full picture.
Two very different events in the same location on consecutive weekends, could enjoy a similar number of interactions with a similar footfall.
But when it comes to customer acquisition (only trackable in the longer term) – chances are, that one brand could be infinitely more successful.
The fact is you want customers. You want more to buy from you and more to stay with you.
Experiential marketing allows you to do just this. It helps you to offer valuable, positive and ultimately, human interactions to consumers. As people, we tend to only ever remember the really great things that happen in our lives. When they do, it can become a wonderful story that is re-told, over and over again.
Larry Page from Google spoke recently about ‘Moonshots’ where Google employees at the Google X department literally aim for the stars by exploring blue sky projects that could change the way we live.
He explains that within Google X, they aim for 10 x improvement, not just 10%
If brands really want to enjoy the benefits Experiential marketing, they need to adopt a Google X mentality and shoot for the moon.
Hotcow is a multi-award winning Experiential Marketing agency. We get brands in front of consumers in ways that persuade them to buy. We fully implement our ideas; nothing needs to be farmed out. For more information or free consultation, contact us
