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The events industry market is poised to nearly double invalue over the next decade. According to Allied Market Research, the industry’s $438.8 billion in 2023 will reach$819.1 billion by 2035. This momentum isn’t entirely attributable toexperiential marketing alone. Still, it demonstrates the potential for impactfor those brands that partner with an expert team to create interactive andimmersive experiences that connect with their customers.
People want to be in the world - they love to attend music and art performances, sports and festival events — to be there, in real time, making memories. Experiential marketing leverages this desire by giveing a business a real life presence with its audience, right there, in the heart of things.
More businesses today recognize the value of live customer engagement and brand activation. Many of these businesses also understand the value that comes from partnering with an event marketing agency to create and execute the best brand experience possible.
Here we are focusing on notable success stories to highlight how partnering with an expert team ensures that your brand experience combines data gathering, logistical prowess, and creative community building to improve the success of an experiential campaign.
Prioritizing a meaningful brand experience
Experiential or event marketing puts the customer’s experience at the center when promoting products. The personal, meaningful interactions at the heart of this strategy help brands gain traction as a consumer-first business.
Incorporating a new marketing approach can have its challenges. Which is why many brands choose to partner with an expert experiential company so their investment drives the most ROI from the start. Below are three ways an agency can ensure your customer engagement campaigns make progress against your goals with as little friction for you as possible.
Doing More with Data
Your company understands its target audience, their buying habits, and product preferences. You’ve researched market trends, industry changes, and what your competitors are doing. But, you might not know how to translate those data and insights into engaging events.
That’s where the best experiential companies make all the difference. They use your existing data and apply their own insights to develop a campaign strategy that is truly customized to your needs. They will focus on personalization efforts that create connections with prospects or deepen relationships with existing customers.
In an Adweek article, one marketer commented that data is becoming the “driving force behind event marketing success.” They went on to say that “data is absolutely changing the game for those who can capitalize on it.”
An expert agency not only understands how to capitalize on data from an experiential perspective, but will suggest ways to capture attendee data during the campaign. This can offer fresh insight into consumer behaviors, help brands learn what works, and identify areas to iterate in the future.
Brands can connect with their target audience while collecting data using tools including, but not limited to:
- Virtual reality
- Augmented reality
- Mobile apps
- AI algorithms
- Social media platforms
Data in Action: M&M Flavor Tasting Room
The M&M Flavor Tasting Room in New York City is a great example of an event that engaged customers and supported the brand’s objectives while generating insightful data. The pop-up experience invited guests to experience different rooms with snacks, drinks, decor, and event scents tied to new flavors the brand was considering launching. It was an enjoyable event for the consumers, who got to try new products and post about their experiences online. At the same time, it gave the brand a direct connection to customer feedback.
The event was also part of an omni-channel campaign. Even those who weren’t in New York to experience the live tastings, could voice their opinion as part of the Flavor Vote campaign (on social or via text) or by posting a selfie with stickers representing their flavor pick on a dedicated site.
Logistical Prowess
Coordinating any marketing campaign is complex, but adding the experiential element can increase the logistical requirements substantially. When you execute a live event, timing, resources, and scope is key, as well as ensuring consistent messaging and maintaining brand integrity, just as you would with any marketing campaign.
With event marketing, you’ll also need to budget for items including:
- Marketing and promoting the event
- Live technology (e.g. lighting, sound, AR/VR)
- Staffing, including brand ambassadors
- Product samples
- Props
- Location
- Permits
- Transportation
One of the biggest responsibilities an event agency has is guaranteeing smooth execution of brand events, no matter what the environment. A Little Bird has executed brand activations everywhere from major global cities to golf courses, in English pubs, at baseball games, and in snowy Utah during the Sundance Festival.
Challenging Logistics: Yasso
Our collaboration with Yasso had a brand tour that took extra planning on part. Since people typically want to try frozen dessert treats when a warm sun is shining, we took brand engagement on the road in the heat of summer. All told, some 700,000 people were able to get their hands on Yasso’s delectable creamy Greek yogurt bars.
But, let’s take a step back and consider the logistics. Yasso wanted to take their frozen snacks out of the freezer aisle onto the road. Ensuring product integrity was key to our mission. First, we repurposed a traditional ice cream truck for the tour, which helped keep the product samples cold during the events. But the real work continued behind the scenes to make sure that all our cool props (including a massive melting popsicle and popsicle stick bench) made it to each site on time, and that we had the right type of cold transit lined up to keep the product safe on the road.
Creative Community Building
It’s easy enough today for consumers to purchase products or sign up for services by clicking a few buttons online. But e-commerce and brand websites do make it challenging for even industry leaders to connect with audiences in a way that truly makes a lasting impression.
Immersive experiences can maximize engagement for a variety of industries. In the consumer packaged goods (CPG) arena, for example, many companies turn to pop-up shops to distribute product samples while building credibility with customers and solidifying brand relationships.
Like many agencies, we’ve worked with CPG clients and our retail partners to set up stations in stores where people might try a new cold brew or a fresh flavor of a protein snack for themselves.
Yet, we also work hard to unleash the power of connecting with the right people at the right time in the right place, building brand communities.
Strength in Brand Community: CELSIUS
Consider our work for CELSIUS. Sure, we could have offered sample sips at the local retailer to get people to try these stand-out energy drinks. The brand ambassadors would no doubt have enjoyed the air conditioning. Yet to truly connect with CELSIUS’s target audience, we went directly to athletes when they would benefit the most from CELSIUS - during race time.
We designed brand activations that would thrive in some truly rough conditions, as we brought the client’s product tour to Tough Mudder events around the country. Our teams often worked out in the middle of nowhere, setting up product sampling tents and interactive athlete warmup stations on dirt, gravel, and muddy sites — in all sorts of weather conditions.
Nevertheless, the hard work paid off. We can’t say we got quite the same buzz as the athletes who finished in personal best times. But, we did enjoy knowing that we’d taken CELSIUS straight to its audience and helped the brand expand and deepen the connection to its community.
Transform ideas into immersive experiences
The best companies expertly combine ingenuity and data-driven marketing strategies while drawing on deep brand engagement and event marketing expertise to create immersive brand experiences.
We’ve helped commercial clients worldwide yield measurable results, interact with their consumers more, and set themselves apart. Contact us to learn more.