NEED FOR CREDIBLE BRANDS PUTS EXPERIENCE AT THE HEART OF STRATEGY
14th July 2010
By Rob Sellers
Slice
At the end of 2008 when the economic markets crashed, those of us in the experiential marketing industry were probably more worried than most. Putting on major consumer experiences is expensive. For starters, you have to pay for a venue, dress it up, sort out the music and hire guest speakers. And that’s even before you think about catering and goody bags. Also, although there are metrics available and evaluation techniques available, experiential ROI is never as transparent as channels like sales promotion and direct marketing.
However, nearly two years later and Experiential Marketing is in rude health. With the 20:20 vision provided by hindsight, the reason for this has been brands realising the importance of social media in terms of both brand awareness, but also brand credibility. The old model of brand ‘broadcast’ is dead, it’s no longer enough for brands to make a big promise and use mass communications to deliver this to their target audiences. The reason for this is transparency. It’s incredibly easy for consumers to find out anything about a brand with just a basic bit of Googling. So creating an event that delivers on your brand promise or values is essential if you want to be believed; consumers demand that brands ‘walk the walk’.
There are big positives for brands too – and the best have embraced the opportunity to put both experience and social media at the heart of their strategies. The great thing about how people use the internet these days is they will SHARE what they think is cool, worthy or sexy. And experiences can be all of those things, with bigger impact and validity than traditional comms channels. Events create content, the life-blood of conversation and sharing, so it’s no surprise that almost every brief we work on these days asks for an experiential idea that sits at the very heart of an integrated marketing strategy.
