As marketers and advertisers chase trends and tools to reach elusive audiences, they have often ignored experiential marketing in favor of digital and television ads.That is a serious mistake; experiential campaigns are more important than ever and will continue to be crucial for the foreseeable future.
A confluence of market forces is making experiential indispensible. Perhaps the most prevalent is the fact that messaging is becoming more complex for people to process. Just think about all the telephone plans, offers and features that various carriers use to compete with each other, or financing options for appliances and cars. The higher the price of the item, the more experiential marketing is needed to inform, involve and incentivize people. Campaigns need real-world outreach and personal engagement. This is exactly the advantage that experiential marketing provides.
Interestingly, an increasing number of TV spots are actually experiential campaigns on camera. Think of the
Push For Drama video for TNT or any one of those car spots where real people take real test drives. Experiential ideas are becoming fodder to TV-centric work and more of this kind of hybridization is on the horizon.
It’s important to note that at time when most people mistrust advertising, we are beginning to use real people to tell brand stories for us. This is as experiential as it gets. The ability to be authentic and credible through real-world experiences is integral for brand trust. Great brands should be eager to create unfiltered engagements with their audiences, and experiential approaches to their marketing strategies do just that.
Experientialism is certainly found in broadcast and video content, but it is equally applicable to online and mobile marketing. As "digital" becomes more prevalent in our consuming life, the need for "physical" engagements will grow in parallel.
In fact, creating bridges between physical and digital experiences will integral to experiential campaigns going forward. Products and innovations will follow suit. The physical-digital dynamic — increasingly symbiotic and important to marketing campaigns — manifests itself in many different ways.
Take Amazon’s Dash button, for instance. This physical button lets you place an order for a single, specific product from brands like Glad, Gatorade, Clorox, Maxwell House, Tide, Gillette and Bounty. Stick the button anywhere you like and, when you run low, press the button and an order is automatically shipped to you. And Amazon sells each one for $4.99.
A recent
survey from Javelin found that people are now using their phones to buy more physical than digital things. "Even with the mobile purchasing of digital goods such as music, games and apps, physical goods now are the most popular products bought by the majority (51%) of mobile purchasers," it stated. "Physical goods are the only product type to grow in the world of mobile purchasing."
This example, of how we will use our digital tools to transact physical purchases and experiences, provides a glimpse into the future of our business. And experiential approaches are at the heart of what’s to come. We will increasingly rely on real-world campaigns that require authentic engagements and live experiences. In other words, experiential will make marketing more personal, more responsive and more human. It’s a brand-new world, indeed.
About the Author
Max Lenderman in founder and CEO of School, a purposeful creative agency that specializes in digital, social and experiential campaigns. His book called
Experience the Message has been cited as “the best book about experiential marketing.” His second book called
Brand New World has been translated into five languages and is available in India.
Twitter @maxlenderman.
(The article first appeared on the Oct-Nov '15 issue of BW APPLAUSE)
