Many consumers, particularly those of the Millennial generation, value experiences over things.
That doesn’t mean that they don’t buy items, including luxury goods – it simply means that they want an experience attached to their purchase. They don’t want a car: they want a luxury lifestyle. This desire is what drives the new business focus on experiential marketing. When you are selling anything to today’s consumer, you would be wise to make the transaction an experience to remember. If you do not, your competition will.
Experiential Marketing
Many marketing events revolve around product demonstrations and traditional (and often dry) presentations. You may serve drinks and canapés for hours while your potential customers stand around and try to look interested. Experiential marketing is a hands on technique that promotes a product or service while engaging the client’s participation. One striking example of this approach is held by Refinery29. Their 29Rooms event is literally comprised of 29 rooms, each the domain of one brand partner, with everyone involved following a theme. For instance, when the theme was “Turn it into Art,” one sponsor had attendees put on boxing gloves and hit bags that created different sounds. That way, participants could create their own “symphony.” This interaction raised brand awareness while offering an experience to remember.
Another example is Lean Cuisine’s #WeighThis campaign where women decided how they wanted to be weighed instead of finding out how much they weighed. The scales were props meant to emphasize a new way to measure success. Most participants focused on weighing their accomplishments instead of their pounds. Perhaps they weighed their recent return to school or their promotion at work. This campaign let women celebrate their success instead of worrying about their figures. As a result, Lean Cuisine branded itself as a healthy image product.
Staffing Needs
By its very nature, experiential marketing comes with large staffing needs that require the help of an excellent marketing service company. You cannot expect your human resources staff and a few temps to step in and run a large interactive event.
GC Marketing can fill the staffing needs for all types of sales events, including experiential marketing. They take complete responsibility for event staffing and can meet the needs of clients throughout the country with their nation-wide talent database of over 140,000 brand ambassadors. Last year alone, they provided staffing for 150,000 hours.
Without a reliable staffing partner, you will have difficulty pulling off an experiential marketing event. The personnel must be able to provide one to one attention to participants when necessary; otherwise, the experience will not be memorable – at least not in a positive way. Plus, you need a company that provides excellent employee management. You simply cannot afford to have amateurs running amok and failing to provide a top-notch experience for potential customers.
Experiential marketing works, largely because it includes the client in the campaign. Most people, particularly members of the younger generations, value experience more than any other product factor. If you want to sell them a watch, it had better come with some enhanced feature, such as an online link to an exclusive rewards club or a travel discount. Pulling off these campaigns requires the help of an experienced staffing company that offers trained, professional event ambassadors. To be successful, all elements of the experience need to be customer friendly and just plain fun.
