The Three Most Important Questions Your Brand Needs To Ask Before Considering Experiential

As we've stepped into 2020 would you like to leverage the power of experiences to tell your brand story and engage new customers?

You are not alone, one in three marketers are planning to allocate up to half of their marketing budget to experiential over the next few years.

But there’s a big difference between jumping on the ‘experiential bandwagon’ and actually hitting the mark with an effective brand activation.

All too often I see experiential campaigns that have been poorly thought out, which fail to create the result the brand was hoping for or, more alarmingly, damaging their reputation with a mediocre experience.

Brand activations that lack a true brand strategy and narrative at their core can actually do more harm than good when faced with the demands of modern, switched-on consumers craving authenticity.

We need to stop creating just for the sake of building ‘something’ without seriously thinking through the meaning behind the activation. It’s so important to think more purposefully about the emotions, the message, the education piece and the connection that we’re trying to achieve.

So, what are the questions you need to be asking?

1. What’s the point?

Too many brands skip this crucial question. The point isn’t to tick a box or to satisfy yourself that you have an ‘experiential element’ to your campaign. This is not an event. A great brand activation needs to be the cornerstone of your campaign - and it needs to have meaning.

If you’re not having conversations around ‘What emotion are we trying to create?... Who do we want to be as a brand?... What is our brand essence?... What’s our narrative?... How can we demonstrate our values?’ then your strategy is coming from the wrong place.

You need to clearly define the message you’re trying to send. It may be a way to reinforce your brand values and build a deeper connection with existing consumers, or it may be to create an experience for a previously uninterested audience who aren’t sure how you fit into their lives. The message can be as bespoke as the commercial issue you’re aiming to tackle, but you need to identify what it is.

Experiential has moved on from being a ‘novelty’ or a ‘publicity stunt’ and brand activations can offer a quantifiable solution to real business problems - but only if you approach them with the right strategy. 

An excellent example of a past activation that has stood the test of time is The Refinery's 29 Rooms. Described as an array of one-of-a-kind experiences under one roof. It's been designed as a space for interaction and exploration: a place to dance, paint, think, make new friends, and most importantly "give a damn". Each year, the makers behind Refinery29 collaborate with visionaries, brands, and nonprofit organisations to create interactive experiences that "surprise and delight." The perfect mix of purpose and frivolity.

2. Who are we doing this for?

If your answer to this question is either ‘I don’t know’ or ‘the PR team’, then there are fatal flaws in your campaign. Brand activations that hit the mark are designed purely with the consumer in mind, and a very clear idea of who that consumer is.

Traditional broadcasting channels have become less appealing for marketers and, as audiences have gradually fragmented, the industry has shifted towards narrowcasting. Instead of trying to appeal to the nebulous masses (or chase generic press coverage), strategic activations are built to appeal to an exact audience and interact with them deeply and purposefully.

You need to think through why your consumers are driven to consume – and it’s no longer purely about functionality. The new breed of customer wants to align themselves with brands that speak to and reinforce their sense of self and you can’t do that unless you know who they are.

By intimately understanding who you are trying to reach, you can evoke genuine human emotion through creative experiences that add value to their lives. And, as a result, forge an enduring self-brand connection.

Without that, an activation will fall flat.

A great example of this is Anya Hindmarch's "I am a plastic bag" - leveraging her stores during LFW to make a statement about the huge issues of plastic waste. This bold activation also showcased her new collection of bags made out of...you guessed it...plastic bottles. It didn't feel gimmicky though because fans of Anya's work know that purpose and fun have always been important values for the brand.

3. What’s the ‘bigger picture’?

Truly powerful experiential campaigns take an integrated approach that naturally goes far beyond the experience itself.

The idea is to give consumers a way to experience a brand tangibly off-line, but to form a strong enough emotional connection that they talk about the brand on-line.

I see a lot of brands thinking the wrong way round – focusing too heavily on how the event will be represented on social media, and not on the emotions of consumers in real-time. You must focus first and foremost on creating a positive emotional experience in real-life. That way, the resulting UGC amplifies your message in the way that you intended.

Think through an integrated approach to amplify the reach of your campaign – introducing a branded hashtag, ensuring strong visual elements in your design and providing talking points for your consumer to share digitally– but have enough faith in your activations to trust that experiences which genuinely provoke strong positive emotion will spread online organically.

Your message will be amplified online only the experience is perfectly pitched. Look at the bigger picture, by focusing on the interaction you’re creating.

The power of traditional advertising continues to decline as consumers increasingly want meaningful connection from the brands they consume. Brands that don’t embrace the shift and ask themselves the right questions before jumping on the bandwagon are simply missing the point as well as the opportunity.

The landscape of marketing is changing and experiential is undoubtedly the future, but to get it right you need to know what you’re doing.

(Alternatively, make sure you’re working with somebody who does. Like us.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meredith O'Shaughnessy has dedicated her life to the world of experiences. From working in the heady world of 90's nightclubs to advising multinationals on how to benefit from changing consumer trends she inherently understands what makes people tick. Described as an experiential wizard, she is an award winning creative powerhouse who delights in helping brands emotionally engage with their target markets whilst gaining market share in original and bold ways.

Her work is regularly featured in the global media from Vogue to The Independent, BBC to CBS. Whilst brands such as Whirlpool, Manolo Blahnik and Warner Bros leverage her original thinking and strategic approach across their channels.

#brandactivations #creativity #marketing #brandstrategy #experiential #experiences #experience #economy

?