The Power of Experiential Marketing and PR

Author
Lis Anderson
Director | AMBITIOUS PR COMMUNICATIONS
21st April 2022
Member roleChamber member

We live in a world of fast-paced personalisation and tailored experiences. With a click of a remote, your streaming services can help you choose what you’d like to watch tonight. Your products and services, seem to know you. 

Marketers are pushing a humanistic approach to marketing; experiential marketing is the driver of success for those who adopt it well. Especially when combined with PR to maximise visibility with your target audiences. It’s a powerful combination that really helps build trust and loyalty with a brand.  

These tools leave lasting impressions and get people talking. Incorporate experiential marketing into your B2B marketing strategy. Consider how will people experience your brand? 

Experiential marketing definition: “We define experience marketing as a strategic and holistic marketing of relevant (and meaningful) experiences, and experiential marketing as a tactical tool that helps to do marketing experientially.” 

Siiri Same and JormaLarimo  

Experiential marketing aims to create memorable experiences by providing positive experiences, leaving people with great feelings toward a brand.   

Ease of use and feeling valued 

One of the most attractive places in the employment market is Workday. Forbes marks Workday’s ‘inclusive culture’ as the reason for its success. Including personalised career training, and personalised experience.   

Workday put the same effort into valuing their clients, again with personalised plans to reach personal goals. A success manager is paired with each client. They aid with training, support, and resource; to help reach the goals agreed together. 

Every type of business can engage with all five senses. 

Our senses act as messengers to the brain to create emotions. Our senses alert us of danger, such as the smell of a gas leak. Whereas the smell of spaghetti Bolognesewould have the majority of us feeling hungry.  

Interaction with our senses, intentional or not, communicates and creates feelings about the service we are receiving.  

Sight 

There is few an hour in your life where you will not be met with some form of visual branding. Logos, packaging, fonts, colours, billboards and more, we are constantly shown brands in our environment. 

We are so familiar with visual branding that we now make associations quicker. Its effects have become part of our subconscious and conscious decision making. The visual element of a brand communicates, across languages and cultures, who they are and what they are about.  

We make assumptions about businesses based on what we see and hear about them.  

The launch of the iPhone was a success because Jobs made a conscious decision to design every aspect of Apple’s experience, to carry the same message. Apple’s experience starts from the first time your eyes meet the logo or products and is carried down to user experience on their devices.   

Apple’s visual branding is carried through the entire company, and it works. When we think of Apple, we don’t think of designers, we consider Apple to be an innovative, ground-breaking company with a reputation for excellence. 

Smell

Smells trigger memories and bring forward emotion. FrangranceX’s research found people were at least 100 times more likely to remember products/services when the smell is involved. 

A signature aroma has been created by countless brands. Singapore Airlines blended rose, lavender and citrus. Spraying their signature scent throughout their cabins and used by their staff. These smells create a relaxing, spa come countryside bedroom atmosphere. Leaving customers with positive emotional triggers when they step off the jet into everyday life.  

Touch 

Physical interaction with the brand has always been of great value but it has now become an exciting luxury after years of social distancing. Brands that now reach out and invite potential customers to physically touch, can be seen as innovative and daring.   

Chase Bank put an interactive pod in shopping centres, enticing people to come and tell the brand about themselves, by touching buttons. There was a chance to win vouchers worth up to £1000.   

Had Chase had a visual display in the middle of the centre without the element of touching and interaction, do you think anyone would have used it? Or that it made the news.  

Taste 

A financial company giving you a free burger would pique your interest. However, the return on investment could be low. But investing in taste can be seen to give a valuable return in the workplace. Many businesses see the benefits of team lunches, going for drinks with potential clients, including a pleasant taste in the experience makes it harder to let go of. 

Suppling regular lunches for your team may not directly keep them there, as this increasingly becomes common practice in the office environment. Especially since covid and employees aim to tempt employees back into the office. However, if your competitors are taking time to consider their employee and client experience, ignoring one of the senses such as taste could lose valuable people to your competition.  

Sound 

Mastercard ‘added a new dimension’ to their brand identity to make them even more recognisable to their audiences.They called this ‘sonic sound’. It is a ‘sound logo’ where the two circles of their iconic logo merged making a sound that users found incredibly satisfying and encouraging to use.  

Experiential marketing is already commonplace in corporate offices. 

Situations in which your employer or a client goes that ‘extra mile’ is all part of experiential marketing. 

  • Event marketing: retreats, business events, festivals, awards, etc.  
  • Activities and kiosks at trade shows  
  • Samplings or demo  
  • Create social good/action
     

We’re becoming experience junkies. Value is being placed into memorable experiences since the confinements of lock downed life. Confined to the same routine, new experiences are now what many people are now seeking.  

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