Experiential marketing is a marketing strategy that engages the consumer and creates a real-life experience that will be remembered. This type of marketing focuses on getting the consumer to experience the brand.

Why should you do it?

Experience has become the keyword to sell products and for a good reason. With the advent of millennials who look for more than just a product before purchasing, connecting with them becomes an important factor. Interestingly this does not just stop with the millennials and spans across all age groups. When a brand engages with someone through an experience, customers always remember and this brand recall boosts business. In a world where personalization sells, there is a dire need to have additional channels to immerse potential customers with experiences they remember and cherish.

How do you do this?

Experiential marketing is all about curating that experience for potential clients. The first step in experiential marketing is to build on supporting themes surrounding their products. An experience can be funny, quirky, innovative, technologically advanced, or socially focused – at the end of the day, it is imperative to make a connection. These campaigns are

What can be done?

Take inspirations from various successful campaigns, the interesting element is that, videos that air the experiences also evokes a feeling of connectedness and propagates brand awareness. Some of the interesting experiential marketing

• Lean Cuisine, the US-based company that sells frozen food launched their campaign in the Grand Central Station in New York. They gave weighing scales to woman, each one had to share a personal message around their personal value beyond numbers on the scale

• Experiential marketing can extend beyond one campaign and Heineken Experience in Amsterdam is a classic example. The old brewery is transformed into an interactive museum which talks about the history of Heineken and shows the best of the city. To view the experience

• Oreo joined hands with Twitter to put up a vending machine that sells customized cookies, used Twitter to take the conversations online and it was a massive hit Video

• Gatorade Combine saw the intersection of technology and Gatorade. The brand caters to athletes, in this campaign it transformed its customers into athletes, using technology to conduct an athletic exam.

• Not all experiential marketing is about selling ones’ product. Google Impact Challenge: Bay Area identified top 10 change makers of the Bay Area and set the voting up across various locations in the city. One can vote in the bus stations, in the phones and more. To know the impact watch the video

Before works start at the experimentation lab, it is also important to know the cons of experiential marketing.

What can be avoided?

The experience most often than not requires a physical presence and limits scope and reach of a campaign. These efforts are labour intensive and tip higher on the budget scale. But the biggest factor to be aware of is the influence of social media in case the outcome is not what is expected. Knowing the stories of Jagermeister, Snapple, or Cadbury would come in handy while planning for campaigns.

Create experiences that matters…