The Underrated Weapon That Is Experiential Marketing
How social-first marketers are missing a trick.
It is April 2012, and we are in a crowded bar in Bandra, Mumbai Bombay.
Drinks are circulating, but all attention is riveted to a 10-metre stretch of track laid out along the plush floor. At it’s end - a speed gun.
One by one, twenty Twitter influencers take a deep breath, get into their best sprinting crouch, and dash/jog/jog very slowly across the track.
The speed gun scores their effort. These bakers, brewers, lifestyle experts-turned-athletes experience the whole gamut of emotion. Triumph - often fleeting. Anguish. Despair. And, finally, envy - as the fastest amongst them are crowned.
For a few short hours, these twenty influencers have been transformed into Olympic-level athletes, pitting mind, body and soul into simply being the fastest on track.
The Puma #FaasTweetup that my team at Jack In The Box Worldwide executed was my first brush with true experiential marketing. And it’s stayed with me - and those who attended - ever since.
A key component of my Human-Centric Framework is novelty, and it’s linked to declining human happiness. In short, people are spending money to find moments of joy in their lives. As everyday drudgery wears on our minds, bodies and souls, we seek out experiences that are different, that take us out of our realities for just a moment or two, and make life worth living. That could take the form of a trip to the cinema, an amusement park, a Harry Potter experience, adventure sports, go-karting…just about anything we could do that’s fun and exciting.
That’s the opportunity experiential marketing gives us. To break routines, to build emotional connections, to create authentic analog experiences in an increasingly digital world.
I’m not suggesting that a branded experience is the solution to human unhappiness. Just that we as marketers have the unique opportunity to transport our audiences to a different universe, just for a moment or two. And win hearts, minds and wallets in the process.
Take the incredible Audible Sound Experience from SXSW 2024. They took us out of the conference and into a carnival of sound, celebrating audio storytelling. The piece de resistance: a giant yellow ferris wheel, complete with gondolas where you could enjoy stories from different genres.
Hot tip: you don’t need to build a carnival village. This approach - immersion into a new reality - can work at various scales. Here’s what the team did to promote the film The First Omen.
So what does it take to build a beautiful, memorable and highly shareworthy experience?
Architectural design firm Gensler conducted a two-year study that led them to develop The Five Steps To Immersive Engagement. They sought to understand how to drive and sustain meaningful engagement between communal spaces and people; to keep location, identity, ability and literacy in mind while designing; and how immersion creates conditions for meaningful engagement.
The Five Steps they propose are:
Step 1: Awareness. Make visitors aware that an experience is available to them. Help them realise that interaction is possible. The era of “if we build it, they will come” is passe. Marketers must intentionally craft an invitation - through direct outreach, signage, PR, Social, etc.
Step 2: Willingness. Help visitors decide that the experience is “for them”, and that they will participate. The opportunity to experience something must outweigh the execution - which means we must create visible hooks to draw them in.
Step 3: Connection. It’s critical to overcome the expectations people have, and exceed them. Think about what’s on offer - and how visitors might contribute to make it truly responsive and interactive. Onboard them well - guide them in how to experience it to the fullest.
Step 4: Investment. Prove the value to the participant. This creates motivation to stay engaged, because we’ve captured their imagination. Where possible, progressively add to the experience to encourage repeated visits. Seek meaningful feedback.
Step 5: Sharing. Great experiences are experienced by few, but seen by many. Make visitors want to share their experience widely - this helps extend the impact and creates self-reinforcing engagement loops.
The most famous example, which ticks all these boxes, is a project I had a privilege to contribute a (small) amount to.
Apart from these principles, Gensler share more about how marketers can raise the bar further. Some tips:
Include the audience on their terms. Can they see it? If not, can they hear it? If neither, can they feel it?
Think about the “Experience Mode” - it impacts how willing visitors are to engage. Think about whether your experience is a social space, an entertainment space, a discovery space. And whatever you choose, make it a destination, not something people will more likely pass through.
Diverse, inclusive programming builds trust and opens the door for engagement. Represent communities and cohorts well.
Creating psychologically safe spaces enables people to fully immerse themselves and contribute more. Whether it’s getting them to dance or share their data. Observing others feel safe can help with this.
Subtlety will most often be lost. Clear and immediate responsiveness drives sustained engagement.
Finally, community networks may be a key to engagement loops. Being mindful of a particular group can help drive a ripple effect. Remember, there are people just waiting to be invited in.
Knowing there are things we can do to really elevate immersive experiential marketing, why are marketing teams so cautious about doing more?
Simple.
Marketers are increasingly becoming familiar with developments in marketing science as propounded by Binet, Field, Sharp, Wood, et al. But there’s far less evidence-based study about the impact of experiential marketing on business. Despite several days of digging, using both Google Search and Gemini, I couldn’t find any credible research on the impact of experiential marketing on sales (apart from lead-gen and retail promotions) and brand.
The entertainment industry gets it instinctively though. Their job is to create cultural cachet - and having an experience swiftly go viral equates directly to word-of-mouth for cinema releases, video streams, album launches and more.
Measurement of new-age brand building continues to be a challenge. While I usually look for social conversations and press pickup, it’s hard to quantify the business impact of these metrics. Which in turn hampers investment.
But there’s one recurring thought I’ll leave you with.
People forget what you said to them. They remember how you made them feel.
This simple truth suggests that the true role of experiential marketing is to help people truly feel the brand. In a multisensory way that advertising simply can’t deliver. When done right, it has the potential to drive advocacy, induce trial and deepen loyalty.
Great campaigns grow brands by by creating memory structures.
Great experiential marketing grows brands by creating real memories.
That is the insight.
Samit