Experiential Marketing

Chapter Eight The 10 Habits of Highly Experiential Brands

People often ask us which brands create the best experiences and which most effectively use experiential marketing.

There isn’t a single brand that excels above all others. But there are certainly many that have “cracked the code” and are using live experiences as the driver of an integrated mix that connects, engages, and converts. In many cases, harnessing the incredible power of experiential marketing required marketers to rewire their strategies—to accept and understand that what has worked for their companies for the last 25 years won’t work for the next 25.

Nobody has studied and been given access to more experiential marketing strategies and programs than we have. And through that access we’ve discovered four Common Strategic Traits shared among highly successful users of brand experiences.

• Dependency on Strategy. Brands develop and leverage a specific road map for achieving goals with experiential marketing.
• Balanced Mix. Brand experiences are connected to the rest of the marketing mix, often used as the lead driver of strategy or lead provider of content.
• Definitive Target. A well-defined and isolated target audience is identified and engaged via experiential marketing. (Many of our friends in the industry have heard us joke for years that, “18 to 55 is not a target audience. It’s the human race.”)
• Bold Ideas. A lack of fear and a willingness to take risk are absolutely key to the successful use of experience ...