Julia El Sidawi - About Experiential Marketing

Create an experience. Create a Mood. Create a customer.

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Imagine you are an agriculture company with a new hydroponic system you want to promote in a new market. A market that would benefit from growing more food locally and reducing its dependency on imports.?You may know where you want to promote your new product but you don’t know how.

This is the challenge I was faced one month ago

First, you start with the basics.

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Know the new market.

Know the competition.

Do your research.

This is not new advice but it is timeless.?

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You don’t want to try to sell your product in a market that already has some strong competition, not unless you know you can differentiate your product in some way.

Let’s say your new system is more efficient. It produces more food with less water. It’s vertical so it requires less space. You know your next right market. But the harder question is how.

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How do we target the right market and the right market segment with the right message?

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One way we do it is by creating an experience. Everything in our life is about experiences.

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Experiential marketing is a strategy that immediately engages a customer or potential customer and creates a moment…and a memory. It’s powerful because it reaches people on a deeper level than a fact or a statistic to inspire them to buy the product or service.

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Think about how important scent is in creating an experience. it can conjure a memory faster than any other sensory experience. That’s why so many luxury hotels have a signature fragrance. Hotel Costes in Paris—I hope a few of you have been there— has a signature scent the lobby, the lounge areas, they all have a wonderful, very French scent. And you can actually buy a candle?called Hotel Costes to recreate the scent at home.

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Scentscaping, this is called.

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The Dubai Mall has a custom-made scent as well.

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Music is another.?Again at the Hotel Costes they play this music, sophisticated, a bit edgy, always unique…but never off brand.

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And now the hotel’s playlist is available on streaming services like Spotify. You listen to the playlist to remember how it felt to visit the hotel on the weekend with your girlfriends, you had a great night, and it makes you want to return to the hotel. It’s a self reinforcing experience. A good mood loop. Especially ,if you also buy their candle.

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Visual media is the most commonly used medium to create an experience and the most common for a reason. Everyone here remembers the visuals of the Apple iPod ad where the silhouettes are dancing against coloured backdrops. They made you want to dance too.

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And most everyone imagines the same shade of blue when I mention Tiffany’s.

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Visual communication is vital for any company that wishes to build a trust-based relationship with their customers.

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In today’s digital world it matters even more because it allows companies to create immersive online experiences. And if you’re not someplace amazing like the Hotel Costes, you’re probably online

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But…the real question again is…how? As the Americans say, the devil is in the details.

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There are some important rules to know when you create an experience for your customers.

The first encounter must be positive.

It must be memorable.

It should inspire curiosity.

It should be expertly delivered to reinforce the brand as a high value quality product.

If possible it should provide social proof, this means showing that others in the market find it valuable.

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The new consumer looks to experience something unusual, unrepeatable and valuable.

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Here’s where we talk about digital and media, because everyone is constantly connected. So how do we engage the constantly connected consumer?

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We have to do it in real time.

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Real Time media depends on current information. Marketing is based on an event as the event happens, for instance.

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-We create some content and give it to the speaker at an event. It’s also given to journalists and exhibitors to post on their own social networks. So your content takes on a life of its own. It has stamina.

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-Large screens show real-time coverage (photos, video interviews with experts, photo quotes from the business program).?You can see how many posts have been done, how many reposts, and what is the engagement on it. One thing I love about Digital real time media is you can also view numbers in real time and numbers don’t lie

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Most companies don’t have a department that can handle more than a press release or a few blog articles. In our world nowadays no matter how good is the company and their services they will be lost in one million companies who are upfront with their digital campaigns and media coverage. To stay at the forefront of marketing to not only use the current technologies to their fullest potential but to know what’s just ahead on the horizon, you need a media company whose only product is promoting your product.

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We can do even more…For an authentic brand experience, we design scalable projections on buildings, domes, bridges, cars, and any physical object. Imagine your content projected on the face of a famous high-rise building while millions watch and record with their phones and broadcast out to their social networks.

Because you can’t forget about the basic things like creating a presence online

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One very important thing is Strategy – you must be sure you have the right person or company doing your strategy, whether you target the end consumer or the company, you must know that the direction and audience are right for what you are selling.

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So, if there’s a trend wave rippling around the world you can catch it and ride it gracefully.