Part Two
In last week’s column, we answered the inquiry of Bernie S. who asked us to know more about a growing trend, experiential marketing, and the best way we can do it well.
We first defined it as marketing a product or service through experiences that engage customers and create an emotional attachment to the product or service. That is why it is also called engagement marketing, on-ground marketing or participation marketing.
We then got a little help from John Millard, from his marketingprofs.com article, “The How and Why of Experiential Marketing: 7 Tips to Do It Right,” who shared with us some tips on how to do it right.
Some of Millard’s tips:
- Experiences make people happy.
- Focus on people and relationships.
- Don’t try to save time, invest in it.
- Enhance, never interrupt.
- Human connection is key.
- Solve, not sell.
- Bring the joy.
This week, we will cite some of the best practices in experiential marketing, which Braden Becker lists in “11 Examples of Experiential Marketing Campaigns That’ll Give You Serious Envy Content” in hubspot.com.
Join in the fun and be amazed as we go through five of these amazing experiential marketing ideas:
1 Red Bull: Stratos. Red Bull has been at the forefront of extreme sports coverage for as long as the brand existed. But in 2012, the company brought its content marketing to literally new heights with a world record height.
Stratos, Red Bull’s superterrestrial marketing campaign, featured Felix Baumgartner, a skydiver from Austria who partnered with Red Bull to set the world record for the world’s highest skydive.
That record: 128,000 feet, above 24 miles above the Earth’s surface. To pull off this amazing stunt, Red Bull housed Felix in a small communication capsule and sent him up to the stratosphere using a large helium-filled balloon.
With that, Red Bull set another record by streaming the entire event online and saw the highest viewing traffic of any live stream ever broadcast on YouTube with just over 8 million viewers.
Becker’s takeaway for marketers: “Don’t underestimate the power of suspense when hosting an event your audience can own a piece of themselves. Being able to witness something new, and maybe a little scary is such a personal experience. And the better the result, the longer your audience will remember and reminisce over it.”
2 Volkswagen: Piano Staircase. In 2009, Volkswagen caught people at their most musical by turning a subway staircase in Stockholm, Sweden, into a giant piano when no one was looking. The next day, each step produced the sound of a different piano key as people climbed up and down the stairs.
The campaign was part of “The Fun Theory,” which suggests people are more likely to do something if it looks fun. In the case of Volkswagen, it wanted to help make people’s personal habits healthier to go along with it.
Fun was clearly the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better, as 66 percent more people chose the stairs over the escalator at that particular subway terminal, as a result of Volkswagen’s piano staircase.
Becker’s takeaway for marketers: “With every marketing campaign you launch, find the ‘fun factor.’ Once you find our fun factor, find the ‘good’ factor. Hosting an experience is your chance to make an impact on your community, not just the users of your product.”
3 Google: Building a better Bay Area. When the search engine giant gave away $5.5 million to Bay Area nonprofits, it let the public decide where that money would go—in an unconventional, interactive way.
Google allowed people to vote online, but also wanted to involve the Bay Area community in a tangible way by installing large interactive posters—in places like bus shelters, food trucks, and restaurants—that locals could use to vote for a cause.
With the help of the online voting integration—and a branded hashtag: #GoogleImpactChallenge—the campaign ended up generating 400,000 votes over the course of three-and-a-half weeks.
Becker’s takeaway for marketers: “Create a branded hashtag that participants can use to share the experience in social media. Then make sure you’ve integrated an online partner with another brand to create an even better experience.”
Also, “don’t be afraid to nurture your leads. Find a way to remind someone that they’ve participated.”
4 Guinness: Guinness Class. For a few weeks, ambassadors dressed in Guinness-branded flight attendant uniforms entered bars across the United Kingdom, where they surprised unsuspecting customers with a chance to win all kinds of prizes.
In order to participate, bar-goers had to order a pint of Guinness, after which they would shake a prize-generating mobile tablet that displayed what they won, which included passport cases and keychains. But one player per night would get the ultimate prize: a free trip to Dublin—via private jet—with four friends.
This experience associated Guinness with something aspirational, like traveling by private jet. It also allowed a brand that’s nearly 257 years old to maintain its authenticity, while also adapting to a changing landscape and audience.
Becker’s takeaway for marketers: “78 percent of millennials would rather spend money on a memorable experience or event than buy desirable things. Think about what things your target audience might aspire to, and that you’d like to associate with your brand. Then, build an experience around that.”
Likewise, “if you do require a product purchase in order to participate in the experience, make it convenient. In this case, people had to buy a pint of Guinness to win a prize, but they were already in a bar that served it.”
5 Facebook: Facebook IQ Live. Facebook—who also owns Instagram—has always understood how much data it has on how people use these platforms. For that reason, it created the Facebook IQ Live experience.
For this experience, that data was used to curate live scenes that depicted the data. Among them was the IQ Mart, a “retail” setting that represented the online shopper’s conversion path when using social media, an Instagram café, chockfull of millennial-esque photo opportunities.
The campaign wasn’t just memorable, it also proved to be really helpful—93 percent of the 1,500 attendees said that the experience provided them with valuable insights on how to use Facebook for business.
Becker’s takeaway for marketers: “Build an experience for people who aren’t sure about how they would use your product or service. Find ways for them to interact with your brand in a way that creatively spells out how it can benefit them.”
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the United Kingdom-based International Public Relations Association (Ipra), the world’s premier association for senior professionals around the world. Millie F. Dizon, the senior vice president for Marketing and Communications of SM, is the former local chairman.
We are devoting a special column each month to answer the reader’s questions about public relations. Please send your comments and questions to askipraphil@gmail.com.