Aldo's Experiential Marketing Campaign in Oxford Street was a great hit on the day. But did the campaign contribute value to the brand long term?

In a world where consumers are faced with more choice than ever and brands need to stand out from the crowd, Experiential Marketing has, unsurprisingly, quickly become a favourite with advertisers. But, with cost per contact typically being higher than many other forms of marketing, clients and agencies alike feel the increasing need for justification on experiential spend. Unhelpfully, Experiential Marketing has developed a dubious reputation for being un-measurable over the years.

In reality, however, Experiential Marketing is not only one of the most measurable methods of marketing around, but also one that can provide unique insights into consumer and brand behaviour when used with clear objectives. Experiential Marketing Campaigns can be measured in two stages: The Activity Stage that measures the immediate reach of the campaign and the Effect Stage that measures the extended reach of the Experiential Marketing Campaign.

Measuring the immediate reach of an Experiential Marketing activity requires agencies to track the results achieved on the day of the activity. This includes, for example, how many people engaged in the activity, received a sample, took a leaflet or left their data.

The more heavily debated (and often doubted) point is whether an Experiential Marketing campaign creates and adds value to the brand in the longer term and if this can be measured accurately or at all.

The good news is that as the Experiential Marketing Industry has grown, several ways of measuring the effect of Experiential Marketing Activity have become customary:

• Sales vouchers and money-off coupons are often used to get consumers to purchase post event. From this, redemption rates and sales uplift can be measured during and after an Experiential Marketing Campaign.

• If the campaign was aiming to collect as much consumer data as possible, then measuring both the quantity and the quality of the data becomes an important factor in determining the success and effect of the Experiential Marketing campaign.Many agencies now also use video or pictures of the interactions with the brand to show the emotional reactions of the consumer. Reactions from participants (good and bad) are a valuable resource for the client going forward, providing unique insights into the brand perception and consumer attitudes.

• Using surveys, questionnaires and sales-figure-tracking to measure the long term effects of the Experiential Marketing will help identify post-campaign change in consumer behavior and could prove increased trust and confidence in a brand.

And these are only just the basic measurement options for a stand-alone Experiential Marketing campaign. To lend an Experiential Marketing campaign immortality and to further extend the reach of the campaign, it should travel into the digital space, which has become a key tool in the spreading of WOM and sharing the positive brand ‘feelings’ created by an Experiential Marketing campaign.
Measuring these interactions is a key element in providing evidence of a successful piece of Experiential Marketing activity, so make sure you get your campaigns integrated with your social media streams and count your Facebook friends, brand likes and Twitter followers.

Whilst all these measurement options clearly demonstrate that the effect of Experiential Marketing is very measurable indeed, the Experiential Marketing industry still has some work to do until the measurement issue is completely resolved: The measurement of Experiential Marketing on a campaign by campaign basis is not a long-term-solution to the problem.
Industry key players need to develop a more strategic view on the effectiveness of Experiential Marketing and will hopefully soon agree an industry standard ROI framework for agencies to follow that will provide clients with the same familiar measurements as employed by more traditional forms of marketing, helping to install and increase trust in Experiential Marketing.

Written by: Miriam Kuhn, Marketing Coordinator

Measuring the success of experiential marketing campaigns comes down to three simple basics

In the increasingly intense battlefield that is consumer marketing, experiential marketing is growing in popularity due to its ability to engage consumers in a memorable way and to build meaningful, long-lasting relationships between brands and consumers.
But with experiential marketing campaign’s cost per contact being far higher than any other advertising medium, agencies and clients alike are gradually growing concerned about whether their spend on experiential marketing campaigns can be justified. The key questions have become: “What value do experiential campaigns add to the brand?” and “How can this be measured?”

The debate about whether experiential marketing is measurable is an old favourite. The fact is that when planned and implemented effectively, experiential marketing is one of the most measurable media around. And the experiential marketing industry has worked its socks off proving ROI on their campaigns to justify being awarded larger parts of brands’ overall marketing budgets.

The point that is often missed in this context, however, lies in the preparation and strategy behind the experiential campaign and its measurement. Any successful measurement of experiential marketing relies heavily on three basic requirements that are often overlooked:

The formulation of clear objectives before campaign start:
This is the most fundamental part of campaign measurement anywhere and yet it is frequently ignored: Without formulating clear objectives outlining what the experiential marketing campaign is looking to achieve, it is impossible to measure how well it has achieved its goals afterwards.

The measurement of the experiential marketing campaign in two stages:
The first stage of measurement for an experiential marketing campaign should be the activity stage, where the immediate reach of the campaign is determined. How many people have participated in the campaign, taken a leaflet, spoke to a member of staff etc? The second stage of post-campaign-measurement is the effect stage, demonstrating the “extended reach” of the campaign: Have sales figures increased, have consumer attitudes changed, are people blogging about the product?

Properly enabled post-campaign-measurement:
Agencies cannot evaluate the effects of their campaigns without key information that is only accessible by their client. In order to achieve accurate post-campaign measurements, clients need to share their research that shows propensity to purchase following campaign activities (e.g. sampling of a product) so agencies can project life time values and returns from the campaign.

It is only once these rudiments have been established and incorporated that the successful measurement of an experiential marketing campaign becomes possible. And it wouldn’t be surprising if it turned out that many experiential campaigns claimed to be un-measurable failed on at least one of these counts.

Written by Miriam Kuhn, Marketing Coordinator

With great advertising opportunities like the Jubilee celebrations, the Olympic Games and Euro 2012 almost upon us,brands will face the harder-than-ever task to build relationships with their audiences due to the high volume of advertising experienced daily by consumers.

But help might be at hand: Last week consultancy Creston Unlimited published their “Brand Enrichment Report”. The report identifies pleasure, responsibility and status as the most influential factors for consumers when choosing a brand.  But appealing to these factors alone won’t cut it for brands – in fact the report exposes several areas where marketing is failing to make the most of these connections. And this is mostly down to whom brands are targeting.

Some target groups are more desirable from a marketing perspective than others. Not a revolutionary insight admittedly – brands and marketers have known for ages to target the ABC1s, the city workers, stable family units, yummy mummies, males with high disposable income… Well, it turns out brands are missing quite a few tricks by targeting these audiences, as they perceive brands to have little or no influence on their quality of life.

The people brands should really be targeting as revealed in the report, are, controversially, the ones on a low income, particularly woman and single parents. These audiences overall gain far more from brands than average, the research showed, and claimed that brands improve their lives. Low-earning women feel particularly enriched by brands and the same holds true for single parents, for whom brands can act as “surrogate partners” as well as providing escapism.

But single parents rarely feature in advertising and you almost never see the C2DE demographic as a target audience on a creative brief. This is a profitable missed opportunity for those in charge of brand communications, demonstrating that companies across all sectors still have much to learn about what consumers gain from their relationships with brands.

There are a number of obvious reasons though, why brands target whom they target. These are mostly linked to brand image: Brands fear for their perceived value and status when positioning themselves as the single parent, low-income-audience-brand through mass advertising.

So we suggest they don’t.  (Bet now we’ve got you scratching your head.)  What you really want to do is approach the C2DEs first-hand. Filter out single parents and those on low income and talk to them directly. Build on their desire for a personal, in-depth relationship with your brand and exploit it to the full.  This is not something you achieve through mass advertising – you best achieve this through an experiential marketing campaign.

Experiential Marketing allows brands to engage with consumers on a personal level, by delivering one-to-one brand experiences and fostering emotional connections. The best way to get someone to like a brand is to encourage them to try it out for themselves, which is exactly the type of experience an Experiential Marketing campaign is looking to promote.

An Experiential Marketing activity is also designed to filter target audiences better than a mass communication tool. The experiential activity can be planned and set up to seek out the C2DEs and single parents. This way brands can optimise their spend by reaching exactly who they set out to reach.

Experiential Marketing is also often useful in enhancing brands’ CRM efforts. Data-capture mechanisms such as Digi Walkers, face-to-face surveys and questionnaires work very well during Experiential Marketing campaigns and will increase the ROI of the Experiential Marketing Activity immensely.

Experiential Marketing could just bring the best of both marketing worlds within a brands’ reach: If a brand is looking to engage with single parents or hoping to build long-term relationships with low-income audiences, Experiential Marketing is a great way to exploit the brand bonding opportunities with these highly loyal target audiences, without compromising the brands’ image and status.

Written By: Miriam Kuhn, Marketing Coordinator, Ambient Media Worldwide Ltd

Sources:

Barnett, M. (2012), “Laid Bare: The facts about brand bonding”, in Marketing Week, [www] http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/trends/laid-bare-the-facts-about-brand-bonding/4000383.article (last accessed: 14th March 2012)

Creston Unlimited (2012), “Brand Enrichment Report – Creating effective brand value”, [www] http://www.creston.com/Documents/Studies/Brand%20Enrichment.pdf (last accessed: 15^th March 2012)

Our team in the Ute - stuffed full after Marketing Week Live!

A busy two days at the Marketing Week Live exhibition at London’s Kensington Olympia last week resulted in this amusing photo of our team heading back from the show in a fully laden ute along with two recent additions to the team.

Our mannequins, Nicole and Danny, featured prominently in our stand wearing our Look Walker and Look Walker Digital respectively!

The show also included the first UK appearance of our revolutionary Sampling product: BooBox – the interactive sampling vending machine (pictured below).

The BooBox enables brands to distribute product samples in exchange for consumers’ details. A variety of vending options are available and brands can display video, print vouchers, scan codes and integrate sampling with social media.

Further information on this and all of our products can be found at www.AmbientMediaWW.com

Jonathan Schultz

Director

3D Digital Light Projections are becoming more and more popular and brands are beginning to take serious advantage of the creative possibilities they provide.

This recent campaign for the launch of the new Nissan Juke is an outstanding example and really illustrates the audio, visual and creative capabilities.

Working on innovative Ambient Media campaigns around the world exposes us to a multitude of creative applications and every-so-often you see something that makes you smile for the sheer simplicity and impact created with the most modest of budgets.

This example from Duracell by O&M in India caught our eye for this precise reason and we wanted to share it with you! It illustrates so well the effectiveness of Ambient Media.

If I think of some of the most profound and memorable campaigns I have seen they stem from well executed simplistic ideas.

Experiential, outdoor, guerrilla, viral, online and mobile digital are the crafty, unconventional mix of the marketing underworld. More and more these disciplines are coalescing to form cutting-edge campaigns that penetrate saturated markets and reach further into personal consumer spheres.

A recent Microsoft Advertising report illustrated that the most successful campaigns are ones that “exploit the relative strengths” of the media they deploy and “create natural links to maximise engagement”.  For me, this affirms my own observation of how marketers can be distracted from objectives and goals in favour of egotistical campaigns daunted by heavy production costs.

Choreographed Flash Mobs such as T Mobile Dance, New York No Underwear Subway, San Francisco H&M Kids and Piccadilly Circus Single Ladies definitely have become a much loved marketing trend that I think exemplify this simplicity.  They have demonstrated they have the versatility required to transcend media platforms; on and off, below and above the line. Their power is instantaneous, creating a resonate connection with an audience and generating immediate buzz and viral activity.

However, you don’t need to orchestrate a mass choreographed dance assembly to tap into the benefits and the long-lasting effect which this type of marketing activity provides. This Ray Ban and this powerful Green Peace effort illustrate the effectiveness of simplicity.

I think these examples of marketing creativity enable a multi-dimensional campaign to flourish with a desirable viral effect.

What do you think?

Check this out. In May  Samsung ran three nights of an amazing 3D projection mapping installation in Amsterdam to promote their new range of 3D LED TV’s.

Perfectly mapped to a historic building in Amsterdam, an ideal location for such an awe inspiring dispaly! The 3D animation was the first of it’s kind in the Netherlands. The projection realistically cracks the building in half, sending debris shattering down before it fills up with water and then drains into a rain forest revealing the new Samsung 3D LED TV!

Absolutely amazing

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What is street marketing?

Street marketing or (Ambient, Guerrilla or Street Advertising as it is sometimes known), incorporates non-traditional and alternative methods to generate a lasting market buzz for brands.

And, there is no shortage of street marketing option available. From the bold and brash light projections and street skins to the more understated clean graffiti or chalk stencils there is a vast array of opportunities available to gain brand exposure to people when they aren’t expecting to see it.

What Makes this Unique?

Well, the majority of advertising budgets are still spent on ‘traditional’ formats such as TV and Press. However, when people turn on the television they expect to be bombarded with advertisements, they are prepared for them on the radio and in magazines.

It is because of this assault that we have created somewhat of a filter to block a lot of forms of advertising out and advertisers have to really try hard to make their message noticed and to target the most valuable audiences.

However, if you can catch your audience’s eye and their imagination you are more likely to make a lasting impression and this is what makes ‘Ambient Media’ unique – the ability to enable the media itself to cut through. That coupled with the ‘word of mouth’ effect from a well executed campaign, encourages interaction with a brand and hence consumer ‘ownership’ of that brand leading to greater loyalty.

Street marketing, alongside an existing marketing mix, has the potential to help build customer base, brand awareness and establish a loyal following.

Hats off to Heineken who have out-done themselves with this piece of Guerilla marketing magic. They staged a fake concert which was a mix of classical music and poetry (hell) to coincide with one of the biggest matches imaginable.

Two hundred accomplices were recruited, ranging from girlfriends and bosses to lecturers, for the  marketing stunt which took place in October of last year. They attempted to convince their partner, colleagues and students that they would be better off at the recital than watching football, then sat back waiting for the big reveal!

Very well done guys.