Why is understanding the brand identity crucial for an experiential campaign

Experiential campaigns largely have only one primary agenda- to create memorable experiences for consumers in association with the product. And though creating direct experiences for customers is a newer concept, still in a short span of time experiential marketing as a practice has been adopted by brands all over the world and across all categories of brands.
All major brands in the country today have made significant attempts to come up with experiential activities and while some have truly managed to captivate a stronghold in the hearts of consumers, numerous others have failed miserably with an over the top and defocused approach. A copious chunk of the marketing budget is pumped into creation of an experiential campaign and hence it is very important for every brand to dwell deep on the concept, theme and execution of the activity.
Therefore it becomes extremely crucial for every brand to truly understand its brand identity to execute a successful experiential campaign.
It is important for every brand to establish how it wants to be identified in the market and an experiential campaign has to be fabricated accordingly. Lets take an example of Redbull, a brand acclaimed for its innovative experiential endeavors. The brand thrives on the tagline- “Gives you wings”- symbolizing its identity as a cool, adventurous, unique brand that supports the unconventional and adventures. And keeping in line with that it has established experiential activities such as B-Boying Championships, Stunt Chmapionship, Flug-Tag Race, Air Race World Championship, Soapbox race and others. All such activities have further elaborated the brand’s identity and hence have been examples of inspirational experiential campaigns.
Another brand whose experience driven campaigns are an extension of its identity is Samsung. The mobile brand is best known to inculcate the latest, the most stylish technological elements into their products and citing examples from their campaigns be it a Samsung Galaxy Edge 6 launch or a dealers meet, a small BTL activation or a concert they have associated themselves with; all campaigns are executed in a manner that showcases and emphasizes its technological edge.
Brands needs to understand today, that the eventual success of an experiential campaign is not determined by the amount of investment but by building brand value through it. A great example is Skore condoms which executed a successful experiential campaign aligned with their brand identity of having people speak openly about condoms in the country in form of Skore Fashionista-A fashion show that had all the costumes made only out of condoms.
While a bigger brand like Vodafone that has executed some of the best experiential campaigns in the past can be easily spotted struggling to find a perfect idea that defines the crux of all their experience driven campaigns; while their campaigns like Voadfone superstar mela, IPL activations, Fan army and Family day are also successful in their own ways but all of them combined create a blurred image of what is the final concept that the notable telecommunication brand actually wants to convey?
Experiential campaigns without realizing the brand’s identity is going to lead nowhere. A hastily designed campaign not only brings in a bad name to the overall brand prestige but also fails to really do anything fruitful for a brand in terms of creating memorable experiences.