Experiential Marketing Delivers Engaged Consumers

Experiential marketing employs an arsenal of effective tactics ranging from nightlife marketing to campus activations, custom vehicle marketing to guerilla street teams, mall tours to word of mouth programs, and luxury marketing to publicity stunts.  Regardless of the tactic selected, there is one deliverable both client and agency agree is crucial — the engaged customer.

Without discounting the importance of acquiring new customers or re-engaging past customers (both essential), we believe experiential marketing can deliver results in the most sustained fashion by way of the long tail.   Be it the digital long tail of sustained content that feeds search, or the long tail of sales – all can be positively affected by events, experiences, and brand engagements that generate trial, consideration, adoration and conversation.

The Long Tail (image by Anup Shah)

Experiential Marketing Delivers Long Term ROI

The Advertising Research Foundation states in a recent study on experiential marketing that brand experiences “improve profitability by increasing both short-term sales and long-run brand demand… The tendency is to think they only have short-term impacts. On the contrary, the power of experiential marketing is shown in this study to go beyond short-term effects to generate a longer-term brand value.”

There isn’t a brand manager or CMO alive that would NOT want to get – and keep – 10-15% of their consumers “wagging.”  The lifetime consumers.  The new consumers interested in base, mainstay products.  The consumers interested in a company’s aggregate smaller product lines; and there’s good reason…Netflix being a great example.

Search engine optimization, word of mouth, and social media in general “wag” the Long Tail online with a constant supply of Flickr pics, blog comments, YouTube videos and comments, tweets and Facebook fan activity.  Brand generated content can get things started, but the real dividend of an experiential investment is consumer generated activity and its impact.

Experiential Marketing Delivers Lasting Relationships

Relationships begin with conversation, and at our shop that’s exactly what we sell.  We are conversant in sight, sound, scent, taste, touch, and the persuasive arts.

The Art of Conversation (image via tendaysontheisland.com)

It is in these conversations that brand advocacy is fostered, adopters become adorers, and new customers are won.  It is in these conversations that the prospects for a tail to grow long are greatly enhanced.  Brands can achieve both short-term and long-term goals with experiential marketing; it is a force multiplier in terms of real ROI…and that’s something to wag about.

Gillette’s “Uncut” campaign is a brilliantly produced series of short music films featuring four of today’s top music artists/acts. Rather than jamming these artists into typical celebrity spokesperson roles, Gillette opted to give consumers something they couldn’t get anywhere else – a ringside seat on tour with – and in the dressing room of – will.i.am (Black Eyed Peas), All American Rejects, Mark Hoppus (Blink 182), and Tim McGraw.

Give something of value.

will.i.am, Black Eyed Peas

Danny Clinch, whose extensive experience with rock photography and live concert films is apparent, delivers a brief yet intimate look into life on tour in authentic rock-umentary fashion. With delivery ranging from thoughtful to inspired to cocky, the artists invite viewers to experience their private pre-show rituals.

Make it great and people will talk.

Tim McGraw

Not surprisingly, every short film includes shaving in the preparations, but it’s done with a touch so deft it feels completely natural. Consumers who want to dive deeper (and who have the patience for things to load) can learn how to “shave like a rock star” with assorted Gillette (and P&G) brands on the website.

Deliver brand message with authenticity.

All American Rejects

While I’m not Gillette’s target market, as a consumer/marketer/music-lover I’m impressed on multiple levels by this campaign – and I’m talking about it. If more brands considered how to add value to their consumers’ lives, advertising as we know it would be dramatically different.

It’s no surprise that experiential marketing has become a staple in the marketing mix of thoughtful brands – it intrinsically delivers value to consumers. When experiential marketing is designed, planned, and executed properly consumers talk – in person and via social media – about the brand experience, ultimately resulting in substantial ROI.

Generate WOM to deliver ROI.

So congratulations, Gillette!  You’ve certainly captured my attention.  While you probably didn’t design “Uncut” with experiential marketing tenets in mind, it’s clear that we share a fundamental approach to winning the hearts and minds (and buying power) of consumers.  Any time you want to talk, I’ll be backstage getting ready for the curtain to rise.

Mark Hoppus, Blink 182

As I sift through volumes of recent data and insight regarding social media (SM) and ROI, I am transported back in time. Long before Twitter and other SM platforms existed, we in the experiential marketing space faced the same brand team doubts and ROI questions:

• “How in the world can this expense be justified?”
• “How do we know if we got our money’s worth?”
• “Can you compare it to TV? We understand TV!”

A decade later, experiential marketing is an accepted entity while the “new kid on the block,” social media, is taking the brunt of industry skepticism. We experiential marketers must push for (and facilitate) the understanding of ROI in social media because we are inextricably linked by our disciplines’ abilities to significantly affect consumer mindset and – subsequently – consumer behavior. Our best practices bring out the best ROI in each other.

Experiential marketing is the epicenter, the nexus, the place where groupthink – or whatever you want to name it – happens. It’s where shared experience drives the sharing of the experience. It’s where the brand connects with the consumer, and the consumer becomes the conduit to their social network.

Because of social media, the energy of the brand experience is more easily broadcast to like-minded consumers. Engaged consumers at an event like Bacardi B-LIVE will share the experience with simpaticos in person and via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. The digital ripple that emanates from the event is mighty, and it is measurable.

One tangible outcome of a powerful engagement such as B-LIVE is enhanced search engine optimization (SEO). A brand can climb the list in organic search by virtue of consumers blogging and driving traffic through comments on Twitter, Facebook, etc.. Give consumers a rich, sustained experiential and social media campaign experience to talk about, and they will do so. The more they mention the brand, the better the search results ultimately become.

It’s a finely knit garment, this blend of experiential marketing, social media, and SEO…but it’s real, it’s tangible, and it can be measured. It creates profound brand affinity and likelihood-to-purchase shifts in the consumer mindset.

For additional information about the ROI of social media, you may find the articles below helpful:

• HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
• 8 Predictions for SEO in 2010
• The Only Social Media Metric that Matters

We attended Lolla last week to see some music and catch a quality contact buzz – mission accomplished. We also attended as students of the industry, eager to observe what brands brands were doing to activate their sponsorships. Typically, there were the brands that are aware that Lolla is a young, hip music focused event and then there are the brands that come off like mom chaperoning at a high school dance.

The Good – Adidas
Adidas had a couple of really engaging experiences. Concertgoers were invited to design a pair of shoes on a custom Mac for  Lolla performers: Kings of Leon, A-Trak or Kid Cudi. The artists chose the winners and both the designer and artist were given a pair of the custom shoes. How cool.

Lollapalooza - Custom Adidas

There was also a VW van set up to showcase shoes. You could check out all the classic sneakers, get product info and also get you photo taken next to the VW. A Photo Card was given out which directed to a URL where you could upload your photo after submitting some info – can you say data capture.

Lollapalooza - Adidas VW

Finally, Adidas had a marker board filled with classic sneaker illustrations. Consumers were invited to color in the illustration and ultimately create a piece of community created artwork  – can you find the oh-so-clever obscenities.

Lollapalooza - Adidas Marker Board

The Bad – Energizer
Energizer put a couple of frightened girls in oversized, pink, Hanes Beefy Ts out in front of the main entrance. They handed out free battery powered phone chargers – how useful. The girls had no battery-powered chargers for the #1 selling phone on the planet earth – how sad.

Lollapalooza - Energizer

I crack up every time I see a slightly inebriated sign waver in a soiled gorilla suit, frantically waving an offer for “$5 Pizza,” “Taxes Done Now” or “Buy a Lazy-Boy, Get a Free Plasma TV.

I created a not-so-scientific competition between a sign waver for a local pizza shop and a Google Ad Word campaign for Javelin. The competition was full-on for a nail-biting 24 hours. Results?

IMPRESSIONS
Sign Waver – 22 (cars that drove by)
Google – 75,000

HOURS WORKED
Sign Waver – 2.4 (he was supposed to work 6 but ended up passing out)
Google – 24

ACTIVATION
Sign Waver – ? (I spoke with the pizza manager and he said, “it’s probably a waste but I pay him cash.”)
Google – 32 clicks

COST
Sign Waver – $20
Google – $10

So who wins?  Extrapolated over one month, Javelin’s Google Ad generates 1,000,000+ impressions and hundreds of unique visitors to the website while Pizza Shop’s frantic sign waver generates 3,750 impressions.  While Javelin is a casual office, showing up drunk in a gorilla suit is always frowned upon.  We’ll let you decide who the real winner is, Pizza Shop or Javelin…

Experiential agency selection demands careful consideration of where your spend is going. The current topic for everyone is of course the economy–or the “new” economy (a way to not say recession). But I think there is something to that turn of a phrase — let’s take a look:

Consider the term new economy not so much as a description of current conditions, but rather as a mantra — to think and spend and invest with new economy, with a new focus on value and a new premium on “being economical.”

I have a New Hampshire “Yankee” aunt. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” is her mantra. In her world there NEVER, ever was a thing wrong with being “economical.” Her old economy, is our new economy, and it does have importance in Experiential Marketing. Here’s how:

If you are a person responsible for the marketing dollars of your brand, service, cable network, whatever, you have always had a fiduciary responsibility to seek the best deal for your company — and now you have to do that even better. The way you go about being more nimble, more “economical” requires a broader base of options, and the willingness to break old purchase habits. The “newly economical” require “new” services and vendors.

In our business there are largely two groups of experiential agency players — the ones who belong to big conglomerates, and the best-of-class independents We are the latter. In all honesty, both have merits, but we believe in this “new economy” marketers must adopt a “new economical” approach to doing business. This is where the privately held agency can deliver even more.

It is a tough time to justify the corporate fee/stipend/tax/revenue that subsidiary agencies must pay out of their P&E back to the holding company — usually it hovers between 15-20%!

That means every $1M of YOUR experiential budget can have $150,000 used to cover the network/holding company fee they assess to their subsidiary agencies — that’s a lot of dollars that could be better spent getting engagements with YOUR customers. Or in other words, not a very “economical” expenditure.

Thinking about the new economy - photo via Robert Rizzato, Flickr

If you are going to think in an entrepreneurial way to navigate the marketplace in these times — you would, it seems, be best served by looking anew at entrepreneurial agencies. Creative and strategy combined with executional capability should still win business — but don’t you think you can still get that and maximize your budget?

Those with the skills to be scalable, reactive, and still deliver best-of-class product will provide the best return on investment. We believe experiential marketing is an ideal marketing tool in which one can find great economy and maintain (if not increase) ROI over other marketing channels… even more so if you question the corporate tax/agency overhead that does not add anything to your program!

Put more of your budget into getting conversation, quality engagement and consumer consideration — not into the accounting, legal, and debt service needs of the network agency.