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5 Best Examples Of Experiential Marketing
The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing, it just feels like another experience. But a memorable one! The most effective marketing campaigns tend to be those which incite a captivating narrative.
And this makes sense; when we share stories in real-life we tend to choose those stories that will elicit emotion and unite us with our fellow humans; be that through humour, the low hum of political rage, empathy or wonder.
The ability to inspire these emotions with experiences is what birthed what we now call experiential marketing.
Here’s a collection of compelling experiential marketing campaigns from throughout the last decade that we think encapsulate exactly what good marketing should be – an experience.
What Is Experiential Marketing?
Technically speaking, experiential marketing is a marketing strategy that invites an audience to physically interact with a business in a real-world situation. This type of marketing typically uses tangible, hands-on, branding material to show its customers not just what the company offers, but what it stands for in a way that resonates deeper than viewing a digital campaign.
Why Is Experiential Marketing So Effective?
In the digital age, the challenge for marketers is to meaningfully connect with people through the screens that separate us. Today’s consumer values veracity in branding. In fact, an international survey by Cohn & Wolfe found that 87% of global consumers rank authenticity above both innovation (72%) and uniqueness (71%) when asked what they value most in a brand.
So if we’re striving to make real-life connections, shouldn’t we focus our marketing strategies on accessing people through real-world experiences? Branded experiences offer a means through which people can actively engage with brands, beyond CTA buttons and subscriptions to mailing lists.
PETA's "Eye To Eye"
To reinvent the experience of activism, PETA created a virtual reality in which members of the public could interact with a live version of the brand icon – the PETA rabbit.
In the virtual experience, users would engage in an in-depth conversation with the rabbit at eye-level. After this, users would experience life through the rabbit’s eyes following a story about animal abuse.
Innovative use of technology meant that each virtual experience was unique to the user. Following the campaign, hundreds of participants became PETA ambassadors, over 3 million people saw the video footage from the campaign, and huge PR waves were made.
This campaign was shortlisted for the D&AD Pencil Award for ‘Use of Technology in Experiential Marketing’.
This is an extremely impressive example of a powerful branded experience. To shape the way people think about the treatment of animals, what could be more powerful than literally seeing life through the animal’s eyes?
And if we can’t make people see life through the animal’s eyes, we will put animals directly in the people’s eye-line.
WWF’S #STOPWILDLIFETRAFFICKING
In 2018 a life-sized holographic elephant roamed the streets of London for WWF’s #StopWildlifeTrafficking campaign.
As part of a wider marketing campaign that printed endangered animals onto pedestrian crossings, the elephant worked to combat the out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude toward the nearing extinction of numerous species.
WWF succeeded in effectively using experiential marketing to bring an issue directly into the path of passers-by. Thus, making a seemingly distant issue seem relevant to their day-to-day lives.
Also, a holographic elephant outside St Paul’s Cathedral is not something people will likely forget.
Now, from London to New York City.
Lean Cuisine #WEIGHTHIS
To remodel the way people think about their weight and to combat the undue importance put on this arbitrary measurement, Lean Cuisine put a scale in the middle of Grand Central Station in New York City.
The #WeighThis campaign asked members of the public about an item which to them represents their greatest achievement in life. Items ranged from doctorate degree certificates to backpacks, to wedding rings to actual human beings.
Coupled with the slogan “feeding what really matters to you”, Lean Cuisine’s campaign fails to even mention their product. And yet, it creates a community; an immediate unity through how people are alike in their capacity to cherish, rather than different in their body types.
This campaign demonstrates how experiential marketing can be a powerful tool for brand awareness when it employs social messaging that can be interpreted universally.
The Columbia Journalism Review’s ‘Fake News Stand’
Uniting people through a shared love or, sometimes even better, a shared disdain tends to always be an effective marketing strategy.
In 2016, the Columbia Journalism Review succeeded in tapping into the shared disdain of the American population. The US election had brought with it the rise of the now infamous ‘fake news’ and according to research, 1 in 4 Americans admitted to having shared propaganda online. What’s more, two-thirds of Americans believe that ‘fake news’ influenced the election results.
In a confronting experiential marketing move, the Columbia Journalism Review created a ‘fake newsstand’ in which the covers of what looked like real newspapers and magazines were sensationalist headlines taken from real-life fake news stories. That is, all the headlines had been published in one form or another during the months surrounding the election.
Inside each magazine or newspaper were informative inserts instructing members of the public on how to spot fake news, and encouraging people to question what they might read or share.
Nothing draws people together quite like shared hatred. But the Columbia Review managed to convert hatred in the nation into not only education but also a damn good branding move.
Nicely done.
Nothing draws people together quite like shared hatred. But the Columbia Review managed to convert hatred in the nation into not only education but also a damn good branding move.
Nicely done.
Magnum’s Ruby Room
More recently, and more light-heartedly, Magnum set up a multi-sensory pop-up installation to combat Blue Monday.
In South Bank, London, a pink room stood containing an optical illusion and a custom made soundtrack; both designed to lift the mood of the passing Londoner and, of course, launch the new Ruby flavour Magnum.
In terms of marketing strategy, we can’t fault it. Magnum created a haven of pleasure for people to enter into during the least pleasurable month of the year. And to top it off, a delicious new product.
What all these experiential marketing campaigns have in common is a captivating narrative. Somehow, in each of these branded experiences, we forget that we are in the wake of a marketing strategy.
For people, it’s just a memorable experience.
