The point of experiential marketing is simple: it’s to engineer a situation where people can emotionally connect with a brand and, hopefully, generate brand loyalty and influence them to buy whatever the business is selling.
That’s the theory. The skill behind experiential marketing is delivering the right experience, knowing what campaign to create for each audience demographic. You can use product sampling, PR stunts, guerrilla marketing, you name it. You’re really only limited by your own imagination.
But the background of experiential marketing makes for interesting reading, because it explains why it’s so effective.
A lot of research has gone into how crowded every marketplace is. Because of advanced technology, customers have never been more accessible, but equally you could argue that customers have never been so picky about brands they identify with (via social media or any other platform).
The easy at which people can now be reached is also tempered with the fact that competitors are always just a click or a swipe away. Additionally, the digital generation is also short of time, so we have to ask ourselves: how does a brand make itself heard quickly and effectively? By answering that, we come to the crux of why experiential marketing can deliver amazing results…
Experiential marketing forms and nurtures a relationship between a person and a brand. Extracting emotion and creating a memorable experience will always be more powerful than a company communicating their own messages, or traditional advertising methods.
Experiential marketing enhances a brand in a way that goes way beyond what most platforms can manage. Take Adidas for example. They wanted to promote their new Derrick Rose (from the Chicago Bulls) trainers and could clearly take a number of routes. The one they opted for was extremely memorable.
They took over a store in London, branded it, then got Derrick Rose to show off his basketball skills and demonstrate his jumping ability in the trainers. It created a buzz and huge numbers of fans flocked to get a glimpse of the sports star. But there was more. As well as giving fans the chance to meet Rose, Adidas created a shelf stacked with pairs of the new trainers 10 feet off the ground – the same height as a regulation basketball hoop. The premise was simple: if you could jump and reach the trainers, you could keep a pair.
Check out the video:
The event was a huge success. It resonated enormously well with the target audience; it found the exact sweet spot between advertising the trainers and delivering a brilliant experience.
Ultimately, it was so much more effective than any traditional marketing campaign they could have thought up.
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.
