What Exactly Is Experiential Marketing?

Marketing is losing its touch in 2020. It seems as if marketers have hit their creative limit and the customers are already tired of the traditional forms of marketing. Moreover, many people nowadays use ad blockers to get rid of online ads. That is very bad news for brands as well as marketers. However, there is one form of marketing which has emerged in today’s world where the attention span of everyone is less than 5 seconds. Marketers as well brands are now turning towards something called Experiential marketing. One of the most important ingredients in an experiential marketing campaign is the audience. Yes, this form of marketing actively interacts with the audience it is marketing to. It is very similar to event marketing. The idea is to completely immerse the audience in the experience and make sure they never forget it. Experiential marketing campaigns create a very strong bond between the customers and a brand. This form of marketing can be better understood with some examples. Here are a few examples of when brands won over their audience with some of the most brilliant experiential marketing campaigns:

Coca Cola’s brilliant use of AR at the Fifa world cup 2018: In 2018, Coca Cola invited people to immerse themselves in the augmented reality of football. It was the time when FIFA world cup 2018 had just begun and the world had been taken over by football fever. Coca Cola capitalized on this and gave the people a truly amazing AR experience where they could show off their football skills and get a chance to win the official match ball of the FIFA world cup. This was a master experiential marketing campaign by Coca Cola which gained popularity quite fast.

Samsung at the 2012 Olympics: Similar to Coca Cola, Samsung also capitalized on a major sporting event and profited heavily from it. Samsung set up experiential events at various destinations where visitors were able to play games on the smartphone Galaxy S3 which was about to be launched by Samsung. They could also take their photos with the phone and get them turned into badges. People kept returning to get the special badges as there was a chance for them to win an all-around-the-world trip and even the new Galaxy S3 smartphones. The event was on such a grand scale that people flocked to buy the new S3 when it was eventually launched.

IKEA’s sleepover: In 2011, a facebook group was formed by fans of IKEA called ‘I wanna have a sleepover in IKEA’. IKEA’s social media team quickly got knowledge of the group and an IKEA store inEssex, UK hosted a sleepover with 100 lucky members of that group. When the sleepover was announced, people joined that facebook group in masses in order to have a chance to get invited for the sleepover. Just before the winners were announced, the facebook group had over 100,000 members. The winners who actually got to go to the sleepovers were also given gifts and massages. All in all, it was a very successful experiential marketing event. 

Your brand can actually benefit a lot from experiential marketing. However, you need to have a competent marketing firm by your side. One such firm in India is Laqshya Media Group.