Screen Magazine, August 10, 2005
By Dixon Galvez-Searle

Relationships are hard. Ask any company that’s trying to cozy up to consumers using only the traditional methods of print, radio and television advertising and they’ll tell you the public is playing a serious game of hard to get. It’s not that these media outlets are obsolete, they’re still quite effective, but a growing number of companies have seen the need to complement them using the developing practice of experiential marketing.

What is experiential marketing? In a nutshell, it’s when a company puts its product or brand out into the world for people to interact with. This can be in a store, at an event or out on the street, but the goal is to create an “experience” that people will remember fondly and associate with that particular brand. By being more proactive, companies hope to build solid relationships between themselves and consumers.

On April 19 and 20, Chicago’s Hyatt Regency hosted this year’s Experiential Marketing Summit. SCREEN stopped by to gauge the thoughts of companies and agencies from around the Midwest. We also contacted others who are involved in experiential marketing to see where they stood. What we found was a growing industry that is starting to grab a bigger piece of the marketing pie.

ADVERTISING 101
Live Marketing (Chicago) is a tradeshow and events agency that focuses on business-to-business marketing. Richard Norby, the company’s vice president of creative services, says companies are starting to take experiential marketing seriously and using it as part of their overall marketing strategy.

“People used to create experiences, but they didn’t think of it in those terms,” he says. “They used to think [about] entertainment or something to attract an audience, but it wasn’t integrated strategically.” Norby says he thinks experiences can be used to push a brand effectively, but that classic marketing strategies still apply. “No matter how entertaining [the experience] is, it has to be integrated with the company’s brand and their message has to be something that your target audience cares about,” he says.

Targeted marketing is central to Live Marketing’s work in the medical, high-tech, computer and telecommunications industry. Norby says, just like in any other type of marketing, a campaign can only succeed if the agency knows whom they’re supposed to be talking to.

“You have to look at who the target audience is for that campaign and tailor it to them,” he says, using one of Live Marketing’s clients, Intel, as an example. “Their audience really ranges into consumers as well,” says Norby. “Their business-to-business audience is way different than the audience of a company that makes medical equipment where they’re marketing specifically to doctors.”

Experiential marketers do more than use traditional marketing theories when coming up with campaigns. Dave Smith, senior vice president for Campbell-Ewald Promotions (Warren, MI) says he needs to consider all aspects of a company’s brand when designing an experience around that brand.

Smith cites Chevrolet’s “American Revolution” campaign as an example. He says the goal of any on-site promotion is to attract and engage the public, but that experiential creative needs to tie in closely with any existing marketing. “You really have to integrate with the plan, with your sponsorships, your interactive elements [and] your graphics,” says Smith. “All of it has to have that same look and feel.”

As a full-service agency, Campbell-Ewald comes up with concepts internally. “We brainstorm on the creative, on the interactive elements,” says Smith. “What is it that’s going to attract people to the display?” Again, everything Campbell-Ewald designs for on-site use is designed to fall in line with the overall brand that the public experiences in other spaces.

“We take the TV commercial that they just saw,” says Smith. “They just saw a newspaper ad and they’re on their way to the racetrack. When they get there, they see your brand and then they’re within that branded environment.”

EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING IN MOTION

With more and more companies investing in experiential marketing, there has been a surge in business surrounding those experiences. E Companies (Rochester Hills, MI), for example, is a collection of five individual companies that offer everything from design, strategies and training, to staffing and logistics.

E Companies is currently in its third year working with GM on the “Auto Show in Motion” event, where the company brings its vehicles, as well as those of its competitors, from city to city. “They have all these courses set up and all the consumers do is go through and experience the General Motors brand versus the competition,” says Matt McAlear, director of sales and marketing for the E Companies.

“Typically, people hate going to dealerships ‘cause it’s always a sales situation,” says McAlear. “This isn’t dealership driven, it’s driven by the company. You do nothing but come out and drive the cars in a no pressure situation. You can take Hummers on the off-road course and you can take Corvettes on the high speed course, and it’s all sanctioned and safe.”

While E Companies handles staffing and logistics for the two 90-person teams traveling across the country for “Auto Show in Motion,” Wishoo (Indianapolis) is handling another aspect of the show. They’re taking pictures. Far from doing the average promotional stills, Wishoo engages in what company president David Bolling calls “photo activation.” This involves capturing the image of a customer interacting with a product (driving a car, for instance), and then using that image to draw the customer back to the brand after the event is over.

At “Auto Show in Motion,” Wishoo uses 4” x 6” postcards to collect the names and emails of customers who want to claim their photographs at a later date. From a logistical standpoint, Wishoo collaborates with the agency to determine what “defining moment” they’ll be capturing on film, then sends a team to the event. For Bolling, the interactivity is part of what makes experiential marketing effective.

“It’s really pushing the product out for people to get their hands on, “ he says. “Drive the car, talk on the cell phone, eat the product, catch me doing that [and] wrap that around an experience. Photographs lead very well to identifying that consumer, capturing them interacting with the brand and continuing that experience back online.”

WE DON’T WANT ANY

One of the challenges for any experiential marketer is attracting customers to an event/display. Campus Media Group (St. Paul, MN) markets to students on high school and college campuses, so they’re familiar with how difficult it can be to sway a skeptical audience.

“Companies understand that they need to do more than just show up on campus with a skirted table and some key chains,” says Jason Bakker, director of marketing for the company. “[Students] are a savvy group that know they are being marketed to. They can smell the sell from a mile away.”

Bakker says companies that are comprehensive in their approach stand a better chance of attracting consumers. He thinks pre and post-event planning can be just as vital as the event itself. “An ad in the student newspaper or poster around campus will drive students to your event and make it a bigger success,” he says. “Follow up with them the same way. Thank them for coming the same way you invited them. It builds a positive brand image at a time when they are developing life-long options and allegiances to products and services.”

In a larger sense, Rich Walthers, director of marketing at Ravenswood Studio (Chicago) thinks experiential marketing is most effective when it connects to the values and lifestyle of the consumer. For example, Ravenswood, which builds and designs sets, booths and retail environments, recently built a Green Retail Learning Lab for the 23rd annual Natural Products Expo West. The booth was built with sustainable materials as a way to connect to environmentally conscious attendees.

Walthers says understanding and speaking to customer interests is one of the keys to a successful “experience.” “The purpose is to get repeat customers,” he says. “When the values of the company and the person are very closely aligned, then you have a strong experiential marketing function.”

HOW DO YOU REALLY FEEL?

About a year ago, Jack Morton Worldwide (New York, with offices in Chicago, Detroit and Minneapolis), started conducting a survey of consumer attitudes about experiential marketing. Liz Bigham, the company’s vice president/director, US brand marketing, shared the results of that survey at the Experiential Marketing Summit.

What Jack Morton Worldwide discovered, said Bigham, was that live, one-on-one experiences were more attractive to people than traditional media outlets, and that they looked to be more effective. “Overwhelmingly, consumers across groups said the way they want to be engaged in a brand is to be involved in experiences,” said Bigham.

Overall, demand for experiential marketing has increased tremendously. Everyone SCREEN spoke to noted a spike in demand and even new divisions of companies devoted to experiential marketing. “We live in a time and a place where people want to be engaged in experiences,” said Bigham. It seems marketers are latching onto that in a big way.