Experiential marketing continues to be one of the key marketing growth channels as brands look to engage with consumers in a real-world tangible way that complements their digital channels.
Our lives are now all ridiculously digital, but experiential design offers brands a chance to steal consumer’s attention away from their screens in a more disruptive and most importantly, emotionally bonding way.
Competition in the digital media space is fierce, and incredible creative often only captures the public’s attention for the time it takes your thumb to scroll across the screen.
Great experiential matters. It offers something that digital cannot. It draws the public into your brand’s world and allows you to immerse yourself in the brand’s story which creates that all important emotional connection.
Emotional response is the ultimate KPI – and no marketing tool delivers it more powerfully than experiential marketing. Here are some key elements to keep in mind when designing a physical brand experience:
01. Engage the senses (including emotion)
While engaging the senses sounds like a no brainer, it is so often overlooked. It is like activating success ‘cheat mode’ to develop a great experience by creating brand touchpoints that stimulate the often-overlooked senses of sound, taste and smell.
I would also add in a very important sixth sense of emotion. Ask yourself ‘How is the product meant to make you feel?’ Then, design the experience to bring that feeling to life.
02. Reframe the brand’s message
From a creative agency perspective, brands are often very prescriptive in what mandatory touchpoints need to be included in the experience’s consumer journey to ensure they are delivering all the brand’s key features and product USPs.
It is the creative agency's role to see the experience through the consumer’s eyes, to pick apart the brand story and rewrite it in a way that excites the consumer. Respect the brand’s ideas, but don’t follow them blindly as ultimately it is the consumer that we all answer to.
03. Ask, is your idea newsworthy?
I find this is a great tool for sense checking a creative concept; try distilling your creative idea into a two-sentence elevator pitch. If it doesn’t sound exciting to you or the people you test it on, then it likely isn’t.
Successful experiential activations no longer operate in isolation and the multiplier effect that can be gained from press and social coverage is often the most valuable success factor.
04. Manage crowds correctly
This is becoming ever more important in the digitally created hype culture we live in where social media can drive huge crowds to visit experiences. Nobody wants to spend hours in a queue or be crushed in a stampede to get their hands on an exclusive product.
Plans need to be put in place to manage crowds with tools such as digital queueing systems so guests can reserve a slot, grab a coffee, and come back when it’s their turn.
Equally, brands should be responsible and be careful about the hype they create. If you offer free pairs of trainers to the first 100 people, then you could have thousands turn up excited to receive this offer and things can turn ugly when people get disappointed en masse.
05. Aim for self-expression moments, not brand ads
We love sharing content so build shareability into the experience and craft content moments that are on brand, but not overtly branded; content that people will want to share should not be brand-first, it should be about creating moments of self-expression in a creative environment that people will enjoy engaging with online, not a free ad for the brand.
On a practical note, make sure it is lit well, so often content moments are too dark!
06. Be generous
This is possibly my top tip! To give this context, if you are a fan of the brand and have travelled two hours to visit the brand’s latest immersive pop up shop only to be rewarded with a photobooth and free sample, then you are not going to walk away feeling like your time and effort has been rewarded by the brand.
Brands don’t have to give away a ton of value for free but think about mutual value exchange; offer more substantial rewards in return for content sharing, product feedback, data capture and purchase. Be generous, as a project is only expensive if it doesn’t work!
07. Look past the stats
Standard audience profiles of ABC1 and male/female % splits offer very little aid to the creative process above what you would have already guessed yourself.
You are trying to create an experience that is simply unmissable if you are a brand fan, so dive deep into their world to create an experience that inspires.
What are the unusual or innovative ways customers are using your product, what other products are they obsessed with, what other categories do they engage with and what inspiration can you take from that world?
08. Measure success differently
Success can be measured by the discrete quantifiable metrics of number of visitors, demos delivered, content shared, column inches generated, samples distributed and the Financial Directors favourite, sales!
These are all totally valid metrics, but they do not measure the metric that stands experiential marketing apart from other marketing channels, which is ‘how did it make you feel?’
No other marketing discipline can deliver a greater shift in how people emotionally perceive your brand or how much they would recommend it to others as part of that feeling of brand love that has been created.
Emotions are complex so require a little more effort to measure, but a simple post-event survey can provide you with a wealth of insights and I have never received one to-date that didn’t conclude that people now think more highly of the brand.
To conclude, brand experiences are here to stay. We live in ever more digitally enabled worlds and real-world experiences offer us a more human way to interact with one another and experience the products we love or will love.
As such, the future of experience design is incredibly exciting, as passionate and talented creative folk look to create brand worlds that harness the possibilities of new technologies. But just remember, the tools are evolving, but the mission stays the same: design experiences that people FEEL!
Discover more about experiential design and Backlash via our Day in the Life series with Backlash's Katie Peake.
