Make Brand Activation Local Again

A few months into a pandemic and a few days into social upheaval, the rosier predictions for event marketing’s comeback need to be seriously reconsidered.

The ferocity with which some people jumped back into socializing and “living their life” was equaled by other people’s determination to stay home and minimize local deaths from the virus. And the vision of a lot of people all in one place passionately participating in a live event or experience has now been completely usurped by the nightly images of mass marches, protests and riots.

Just a few weeks ago, experts were all agreeing that live events can and will come back with proper social distancing, disinfection and mask-wearing. Just a few days ago, it was reported that people were yelling “liberal pussy” to people wearing masks on Nashville’s Broadway Street and a massive pool party on Memorial Day in the Lake of the Ozarks could have started another viral hotspot. In Orange County, protests erupted when beaches were closed and then protests erupted when they were opened up again.

In some places, attending events is becoming a political act. In others, staying home is an ethical (and economic) decision.

Therefore, the correlation between politics, economics and ethics can provide more sobering predictions for the future of event marketing, sponsorships and live brand activations. And my contention is that a focus on local will drive a lot of future brand and marketing activations.

“Think global, act local” is a political sobriquet that is now necessarily applied to these aforementioned experiential marketing activations. As our culture non-figuratively morphs through a viral pandemic and a virulent social rejection of systemic racism, it is seemingly moving toward a modern definition of local commerce, local politics and local brand patronage.

Throughout the viral pandemic, brands and companies have rallied around their employees and vendors while people have gone out of their way to shop local in the hopes of keeping small businesses alive in their communities. A global survey from Ernst & Young found that 42 percent of consumers believe the way they shop will fundamentally change as a result of COVID-19, including 34 percent indicating they would pay more for local products. When it comes to brands and products, 34% of consumers indicate that they would pay more for local products, 25% for trusted brands and 23% for ethical products.

Here in the US, the growth of “shop local” parallels with a more community-minded focus that has emerged during COVID-19. According to a report by Vox Media, people say “he pandemic has led them to feel more unity with their community (55%), and they also are looking for more information on how to support local businesses (72%). “And while many have talked about the coming retail apocalypse, less than half (48%) believe they can buy everything they need online,” the report states. “Marketers need to pay attention to the power of local businesses and how partnerships at this level can create lasting relationships with consumers.”

As this consumer mindset changes, experiential marketing must change with it by taking into account local needs, tastes and communities when creating live events and brand activations. This may seem obvious; but a majority of brand activation budgets are devoted to national campaigns with local activations in the supporting cast. This strategy should be reversed: brand activations should be local in nature and the emanative insights and ideas should be amplified on a national scale.

Think about American Express Small Business Saturday and the “Shop Small” campaign as an example. The largest and longest-running program at Amex, the campaign celebrated ten years of serving local communities and small businesses in 2019. It has been reported that in those 10 years, people spend over $120 billion at small businesses on Small Business Saturday. “A vast majority of respondents who shopped on Small Business Saturday (96%) agree that shopping at small, independently-owned businesses supports their commitment to making purchases that have a positive social, economic and environmental impact… and 95% reported the day makes them want to shop or eat at small, independently-owned businesses all year long, not just during the holiday season.”

The focus on local doesn’t necessarily mean near. Another interesting “local campaign” called AirBnB Online Experiences:Live was launched during COVID-19. Conducted over Zoom by guides from around the world, the service provides a thoroughly local experience over the course of an hour or two. Here are just a few examples as detailed in The New York Times: “Dance Like a K-pop Star,” presented live by a guide in South Korea; “Cooking with a Moroccan Family,” from Marrakesh; “Tokyo Anime and Subcultures,” from Japan; “Day in the Life of a Shark Scientist,” from South Africa; “Follow a Plague Doctor Through Prague” is a walking tour of the Czech Republic’s capital city; “Guided Meditation with Sleepy Sheep” lets you fall asleep listening to farmhouse in Loch Lomond, Scotland. The average price per person is about $10, but you might pay as little as $2 (“Cultural Journey through London Chinatown”) or as much as $73 (“Private Astrology Reading & Natal Chart,” from Barcelona).

As the Times reports, these experiences “are live and two-way, and you are with people. The classes are generally small enough that you can chat, discuss and joke with both your instructor and your fellow classmates. You hear their various accents, notice the sun’s different position in their time zones, and get a sense of their interior decoration tastes….As page after page of five-star reviews make clear, you really do meet new people in new places; you genuinely do lose yourself in another world.”

This kind of live experience is local and authentic. You get a sense that you are part of a different community and a different kind of one-on-one engagement – one that you are willing to pay for and share. This, in essence, is the goal of any live event experience as well.

The impetus of AirBnB’s Online Experiences Live comes from the deleterious effect of travel shutdowns, but the true intention is to help locals in other countries stay in business. It opens up travel in a really new way: instead of visiting a place, you are being welcomed by locals into their community. Not only is this a helpful experience (to both provider and customer), it is a window into the people of the place and not the place itself.

This may seem like an abrupt pivot here, but the notion of community has been laid starkly bare by the protests in dozens of cities after the killing of George Floyd. The focus on how particular communities live and survive in our country has been sharpened and amplified through thousands of handheld videos and media soundbites. It is community leaders that are emerging as our heroes. It is community members that have come out every morning after the protests to clean up and reopen. It is community activism and community canvassing that has been hailed as the modus operandi for legislative and long-lasting societal and behavioral change.

People are beginning to realize that the notion of local runs parallel to the concept of community. The notion of local therefore becomes not just a function of proximity. There needs to be elements of impact and service in this as well. And the concept of community grows from social mobilization to economic mobilization, people are increasingly likely to vote with their dollars and direct them to places and causes that are near (and dear) to them.

Brands that understand the evolving dynamic between local and community will be able to activate themselves easier and at scale. Understanding the local dynamics and acknowledging the community needs will be imperative for brand activations.

An intentional, conscious and curated approach to experiential marketing and advertising may seem foreign, hard, expensive and skills-prohibitive for many brands that rely on big national platforms and sponsorships to carry their experiential budgets. So it’s time for them to adapt to it. The more local and community-minded the brand activation, the more relevant and trusted the brand becomes.

Equally important, the ad agencies that create and sell the experiential campaigns to their clients need to adopt the local and community mindset. This means that insights and strategies can’t be blanketed on a national scale; that an intention to help or inspire must be in the creative; and that they should start using local subcontractors and vendors to produce the work.  

Perhaps it’s time that brands and agencies start taking off SXSW, Coachella, Super Bowl or US Open off their experiential calendars and focus more on smaller, local and community-driven experiences. We’re already seeing widespread interest in scaled-down activations like outdoor movie screenings and socially-distanced pop-ups. There will be more.

A focus on local and community will help the experiential marketing industry move from old days of mass activations to the new ways of targeted, intentional and locally-minded campaigns and events. If community is loosely defined as a “group of strangers that care about each other more than they should,” then brand activations could now be seen as a group of companies who care about people more than they should (as solely consumers).” Getting closer to their wants and needs at the local level is a great way to prove that care.