Five Experiential Marketing Trends to look out for in 2020

EE News Desk Jan 02, 2020

The 2010s was a landmark decade for marketing change, where consumers' demand for high-quality experience instead of interruptive advertising reached its greatest height. But how do you meet the unforgiving expectations of the world that will pass you by unless it is engaged face to face?

From creating targeted and personalised content to engaging large-scale events and activations, these are some of the experiential marketing trends that we will see on a rise 2020.

Brands everywhere are cutting through the clutter to engage stakeholders in person. Everywhere you look, the experience is the ultimate competitive matrix.

Here are top 5 experiential trends and strategies to keep in mind as we ride into the new decade:

Engaging the Senses

In our increasingly digital world, the human senses are weakening. That’s why some of the most engaging experiential events take great care to delight all five of them. We are constantly filtering day-in and day-out what impacts us most. More than any other medium, experiential can fully immerse audiences in an experience using all the senses.

Multisensory experiences help brands break through the clutter and make an impact that is felt and retained at a deeper human level because it imprints on more of the brain, creating a more powerful memory.

Smooth Content Experience

A seamless content experience asks one simple thing of a brand: think it the whole way through. Events keep getting bigger and more complex, requiring larger content development teams that are frequently structured into disconnected way. What’s more, attendees are physically drained by hiking through vast event environments and are overwhelmed by the complexity, when they would respond best to simplicity and convenience.

It doesn’t need to sell out a stadium, it doesn’t need to have a star-studded performance, but a brand’s event should be seamless so that at all times the thing that the consumer wants to experience next is available via one small but easily navigated step, as if the host read their mind and placed it exactly where they knew the guest would want it. To do this it needs to be thought through from head to toe.

Depersonalized Personalization

One doesn’t have to look further than their local QSRs for a pitch-perfect example of the rise of depersonalized personalization. With their mobile ordering capabilities, they’ve been able to remove the friction between a one on one and personal interaction by eliminating the need for human-to-human interaction (depersonalization), while still catering to a consumer's unique desires, making for a highly personalized experience.

This means no more lines, no more waiting for your drink or food, no more waiting to know the cost before you provide payment and receive change or card approval. When parts are missing from this model, it becomes apparent. This type of exchange between customer and product will become more and more noticeable over the next five years.

Physical/Digital Hybrid Experience

This experiential trend leverages the attraction of large-scale physical objects, drawing attention from afar to engage consumers in physical activities - critical in large crowd experiences whether they’re branded engagements at music festivals or booths at malls.

Traditionally, large-scale activations would only engage those taking part in the activity, but where the transition is seen through video: connecting the physical action to large-scale video activations or projections, alongside compelling interactive content.

Fail to translate that attention into action and engagement and the brand loses out on both a rich interaction with a primary consumer, as well as the ripple effects that engages crowds in the content.

CSR Intiatives

When it comes to CSR programs, if it’s not fully authentic, it’s unlikely to connect with audiences. One of the greatest gifts that consumers will give you is their ability to sniff out a phony—CSR is the best example.

Event marketing is the communication medium that best helps stakeholders “look the brand in the eye” and judge its authenticity. It’s no longer about pasting something on top of an experience, it’s about building the CSR mission into every pore of the experience.