According to CBS News, we live in a consumer culture that bombards us with more than 5,000 commercial messages each day!
Yes, messages are powerful. They create recognition, resonation, and influence. Remembering a catchy tune from a commercial may make someone more inclined to buy a certain cleaning product. A few bad Yelp reviews may steer someone away from choosing a restaurant. However, there is nothing more influential and powerful than an experience to motivate you to take action.
You buy the dish soap that made getting the grease off your pots and pans after Thanksgiving dinner easy. You go back to the restaurant where you celebrated your sister-in-law’s birthday because the tapas you tasted brought you back to Spain. People remember an experience over a message, advertisement, or recommendation because they are engaged at an emotional or sensory level. Comparatively, a Yelp review or celebrity endorsement becomes merely…noise.
Perhaps this is why Emily Lyons, founder of Canada’s leading event staffing agency, Femme Fatale Media, is calling experiential marketing “the most effective marketing channel in 2017.” She argues that experiential marketing is successful because it is “two-way communication between a brand and its audience, which is what successful marketing in the 21st century requires: a dialogue, instead of a screaming match between rival bands.”
It’s this interactive and engaging aspect of experiential marketing that gets people talking about a brand and building its reputation. According to Lyons, people who encounter experiential marketing tell approximately 17 other people about the product. And, according the Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey, “Recommendations from people I know” is the most trusted form of advertising.
Our team at The Regan Group understands how impactful experiential marketing can be for a brand. It gives a brand a more identifiable personality by creating a dialogue with consumers that will resonate with them on a physical and emotional level, and eventually influence their purchasing decisions. Knowing the high ROI that comes from experiential marketing, we launched an experiential marketing tour in a Red Vines VW bus throughout the coast of California to help Red Vines introduce their new California Collection. We wanted consumers to experience the new product in environments that reflected the California culture, and did so by sampling at various festivals, events, and other locations.
We teamed up with Executive Chef Lalo Talamantes at Twohey’s Restaurant in Pasadena to create specialty desserts that got visitors excited about the product and were featured in articles from Hometown Pasadena and Pasadena Now. The buzz generated from the experiential tour even landed the Red Vines VW bus on the morning news program at KTLA, the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, for their views to learn more about the product.
As Lyons argues, “the point of advertising in 2017 really should be more than just a price war”, it should be about the experience. Bring your brand to life through experiential marketing. Create recognition, resonation and emotional influence.
