2005 Seems Like Only Yesterday!

When Event Marketer published its first issue 15 years ago, event organizations were just starting to understand their strategic value. And now here we are, 2019!

Oh, how things have changed.

Since that first issue, we have been honored to feature several hundred Fortune 1000 marketers on the cover of your favorite magazine. It’s been a thrilling ride, getting a front row seat to the evolution of the experiential marketing discipline through the perspectives of these intrepid cover subjects. As we commemorate our 15th anniversary, we wondered—what are these people up to today, and what have they learned about experiential since we featured them on the cover?

So what better way to take the temperature on where we’ve been and where we’re going than to circle back to some of the faces of the past and ask: what have you learned since we had you on the cover, where has experiential been and—looking ahead to the next 15 years—where is this industry going?

Buckle up and enjoy their perspectives. First up, Peter Weedfald.

PETER WEEDFALD

SVP - Sales and Marketing

SHARP

"It’s important to understand that what we do in experiential marketing is service imagination. We don’t sell the cold steel of a microwave oven or a kitchen, we sell by servicing your imagination."

Twelve years ago as senior vp-sales and marketing for consumer electronics and North American corporate marketing at Samsung, Peter Weedfald believed in the power of uniting sales and marketing. Now at Sharp, where he runs sales and marketing for the entire home appliance business, that strategy still holds true. “The advantage we can have in marketing is the fact that we connect sales and marketing as one tour de force,” he says, adding that in his mind, sales plus marketing equals “won.”

At Samsung, another of his marketing mantras was “use every channel,” which he believes also pertains today, whether marketers are activating on a street corner, at a trade show or on the internet. “It’s now truly omni, it’s everywhere, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You just have to know when and where to jump in,” he says.

Read on for more pearls of Weedfald’s wisdom:

EM: Besides “sales plus marketing equals w-o-n,” what else have you learned throughout your years in marketing?

PW: It’s important to understand that what we do in experiential marketing is service imagination. I don’t sell the cold steel of a microwave oven or a kitchen, I sell by servicing your imagination, so that you can have the most delicious meal you possibly can in our SuperSteam Oven. And to service imagination, you need to be highly relevant and highly creative.

EM: What do you wish you had known then that you know now?

PW: What I better understand now is what I’ll call the last three feet of the sale, which means it’s more important for me to give someone an experiential sales and marketing experience there than thousands of miles away at a trade show.

EM: What opportunities do you see in event marketing today?

PW: There is a huge opportunity, one that is lost among many retailers today, to do experiential marketing in the local community, and using the power of the cloud to administer to those local people. You should have all the priests and rabbis in your data base, all the school teachers, all the plumbers, all the people who work for Sharp within a five-mile radius of your store. That would be a huge advantage, and then they could do experiential marketing, because you know what CRM stands for, besides customer relationship management? Consumers Really Matter!

EM: Where do you see experiential marketing headed?

PW: I think it’s going to be bigger and more important than ever because experiential marketing is really about a social event that, as I define it, is highly relevant and highly relevant to you. It delivers knowledge and creates demand by creativity. And it is going to come in different forms, including across the screen. And it will be more targeted.

EM: Do you have a favorite marketing campaign?

PW: I believe Apple is the greatest, and what makes it great is that every touch point it has is designed to service your imagination—its stores, its products, its design. 

Our October 2005 cover story... seems like just yesterday!