The best fans in baseball have latched onto a furry friend, the rally squirrel, to push the St. Louis Cardinals further into postseason play.  The rally squirrel made his debut during several of the Division Series games in St. Louis and reportedly took a road trip to Philly for Game 5.  Redbird fans have taken him “under their wing” as a good luck charm.

Buschie, as some have dubbed him, has become the most popular personality in St. Louis in just over a week.  There are currently over 50 pages on Facebook dedicated to the little guy, and he has his own Twitter feed.  Untold numbers of t-shirt designs, hats, stuffed animals, and more have been created for fans who want to show their team support by showcasing Buschie and his bushy tail.

Hundreds of news stories have been written, making Buschie even more famous.   Busch Stadium will be giving out rally towels at Game 3 of the NLCS to over 40,000 fans.  I’m sure you’ll hear the catchy Rally Squirrel song playing at the pep rally in Ballpark Village this week as well.  Whether Buschie is the Cardinals’ good luck charm, a fantastic marketing opportunity for local t-shirt manufacturers, or a social media phenomenon – he’s cute and cuddly, and St. Louis has fallen in love with him!  Go Cardinals!

Gamification is the new black.  Not familiar with the term?  You will be.

Simply put, gamification uses gaming mechanics and techniques in non-game environments to make things more fun.  It’s not a new concept – just think of Mary Poppins – but the convergence of a generation raised on videogames, the rapid evolution of technology, and the advent of social media have resulted in the marketing equivalent of The Big Bang.

In 2010 corporations spent $100 million on gamification and that’s expected to rise to $2.8 billion by 2016.  Why?  Because it works – and it works especially well with Millennials, the first generation to have television/gaming/computer/phone screens in their faces (or hands) every second of every day since birth.  Traditional marketing is easy to ignore in an over-stimulated world, so successful brands are thinking out of the box.

You’d like an example?  Of course you would.

Coca-Cola has developed a way to give consumers a completely custom product, paired with a fully interactive experience.  Coca-Cola Freestyle touch screen dispensers enable consumers to makes dozens of branded beverages fresh to order from more than 100 calorie and no-calorie brands – including varieties of waters, juices, teas and sparkling beverages that have never been sold in the United States.

Chandra Stephens-Albright, Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development for the brand, says, “It brings back the magic of the fountain of the past, re-imagines it for the future and then takes it a step farther by celebrating the idea that consumers can truly have their say at fountain — with choices tailored completely for them.”

Do you see that?  Tapping into customization and nostalgia all at once.  Nice!  But I digress.

To accompany the real-life machines, the Coca-Cola Freestyle Facebook app lets consumers use a digital vending machine to pick a cup design, mix a custom drink, add virtual ice, name the creation, and share it with friends.  The app contains a map of all the locations of the real-life Freestyle machines to facilitate experiencing it in real life.

There’s also a game app called PUSH+Play, uses the virtual Coca-Cola Freestyle machines as the foundation of a music-based memory game ala Simon.  Players can earn points for accuracy and speed, win badges, share their scores with friends, and of course search for Coca-Cola Freestyle locations nearby.

Other brands are tapping into gamification as well, to varying degrees:

•    Nike+ enables people to track their running progress using compatible personal GPS transceivers (iPhone, Nike SportBand, etc.,) to save their runs, establish and track goals, share routes with friends, challenge fellow runners, monitor pounds burned, and compare performances with others in the community at large.  The Nike+ website also provides suggested next steps for each user’s training regime. The “what’s happening now” section displays the most recent results and activity in the user’s country, and the Facebook broadcasting feature allows automatic sharing of the details of the user’s runs.
•    Audi uses the iPhone as a platform for mobile gaming apps, and Sony’s Playstation Home for building a virtual Audi Space.
•    Ford Fusion Hybrid has gamified greener driving.  The dashboard features a digital tree that flourishes or dies based on how well the driver utilizes the car’s energy-saving technology.  Drivers use the constant dashboard feedback to reduce emissions and keep their tree alive.

What does it mean in the bigger scheme of things?  Brands that use rich media, user generated content, and location-based technology to offer contests, competitions, and intangible or tangible rewards can hold consumers’ attention for longer periods of time, and keep them coming back for more.

From an experiential standpoint, I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Over the last 6 to 10 years, experiential marketing has been a big buzzword. The general thinking was that creating exciting live experiences between brands and consumers drives results. Experiential programs were broadly focused without much of a focal point on measurement, amplification, or building long-term relationships with consumers.

Over the last few years as the economy tanked, marketers found themselves in a new world where they needed to justify their expenditures – especially when it came to experiential engagement. Programs had to pay for themselves or they simply wouldn’t get approval from upper management. Rather quickly the new buzzwords became digital and social media, word of mouth, metrics and KMI’s. Data capture became incredibly attractive . Who was actually attending those live experiences that cost so much to create? Some circles turned to virtual events to offset huge fabrication costs and create just-as-compelling experiences in a digital environment, thinking “Why not? More people can be engaged at a lower overall cost.”

Our industry, like all others, is ever-evolving. New priorities (and thus buzzwords) have entered our lexicon, and will continue to do so as the economy, marketplace, and our industry move forward. Transactional experiences. Narrow-casting. Ownable content. Always-on experiences that facilitate seamless engagements between brands and consumers through online and offline modes of communication. Marketing campaigns without a definable beginning and end. These are the new realities of our today and tomorrow.

Today consumers skip nimbly from medium to medium – from a live conversation to a Google search to a Facebook post to a mobile app to retail, back to mobile to perhaps browse through an online catalog for the store they’re standing in, accessing an augmented reality app through their device where they can actually visualize themselves trying on various outfits from that very store, then pressing a button to purchase the items online at a discount. Some even have an automatic update about the purchase post to Facebook, visible to their friends.

This is the world we live in. As an experiential marketing agency, we understand how savvy brands need to approach consumer engagement in this complicated environment. It’s no longer about who can create the best experience, who can best leverage social media or digital, or who has the coolest mobile app. Tactical execution is critical, but strategy trumps all.

We are Javelin.

While reading the latest issue of Event Marketer, I stumbled upon an article about brand ambassadors entering the digital age, leveraging their social networks on behalf of brands.  It immediately reminded me of something similar I wrote here a year ago, though Sandy O’Loughlin was far more eloquent.

For an industry-wide snapshot of what kind of influence brand ambassadors are wielding – and will be expected to wield – in the social media jungle, check out EM’s article for examples like Yahoo at the Olympics, or Samsung and the Guinness World Record.

Where do you see the role of brand ambassadors going?

It's a social media jungle!

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.

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

Organic social media presence kick-started the WeLikeBike42 experiential brand activation. 42BELOW Vodka’s native New Zealand is known for its sense of adventure and environmental conscience.  In that spirit, the brand selected 42 cyclists to ride from NYC to LA in a massive celebration of biking culture.  After training, a kickoff party, and an appearance on The Today Show, the riders parted ways to conquer a northern route and a southern route.

This video features photos taken by a variety of the riders as well as a couple by Javelin crew members. It’s a stunning display of appreciation for beauty in nature, adventure, and the sheer joy of living.

In major markets along the way, consumers cheered the riders on at parties hosted by 42BELOW Vodka, complete with the brand’s signature Caipiroska 42. Fans could join the journey by reading the individual riders’ blogs and Twitter accounts, and by following the tour at @WeLikeBike42.

Over 58 days riders witnessed some of the most beautiful scenery the country has to offer, pedaled a combined 8,549 miles, and exceeded their goal of getting 20,000 followers on Twitter.  In turn, 42BELOW made a $42K donation to the Alliance for Biking & Walking at the finish line event.

With more than 125K WeLikeBike42.com page views, 4.9 million blog views, radio reach of 2 million, 1.45 million over-the-road impressions, and more, 42 Below’s We Like Bike had an experiential program reach of more than 72 million. This extensive reach would not have been possible without the robust social media presence the riders brought to the experience through their blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr accounts.  Cycling enthusiasts, adventure devotees, and lovers of the vast beauty found across the United States all found something compelling to participate in, over and over.