Billington Cartmell are the 2007 ISP AGENCY OF THE YEAR

Creative Direction Award: Beri Cheetham

GOLD and BRONZE for Mazda Operation Renesis

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2 SILVERS for Peperami Fanimal

SILVER for Pot Noodle Experiential Activity

You had me at hello – but there must be more to this relationship?

How many marketers do you know in the
UK who have not encountered the word ‘experiential’ over the past 12 months, so ubiquitous has this buzzword become. In this era of consumer power, an engaging experience can often be the deciding influence when choosing what brand of clothing you wear, what mobile phone contract you have or even choosing your next drink. So what you say when the Marketing Director asks, “So what did we actually achieve for our money…?” 

As brands hunt more targeted ways to communicate with consumers, experiential marketing can offer the answer. BUT… Brand experience is a complicated area. One of the biggest pitfalls is to get a creatively successful idea that turns out to be either impossible to implement or twice as expensive as expected. Established integrated agencies know how people navigate and interact with brands; experiential agencies will have to be able to do the same if they are to survive in business over the next five years and develop campaign that have a positive impact on commercial objectives.  

Brand experience gives consumers an opportunity to immerse themselves in a brand’s ethos. The smart approach is to place experiential activity at the heart of a marketing campaign as a medium that interacts with other marcoms strategies . Live experiences should become the backbone of an integrated campaign with other media channels amplifying the activity to ensure an on-going conversation with consumers. This is a step change from the current position in many companies where experiential marketing is seen a tactical strategy to deliver short term sales and is often considered after more traditional media routes have been decided. 

Experiential Marketing comes in many different guises including-          partnerships with other relevant brands to create a shared experience-          taking a brand experience to the consumer in their own environment-          sponsoring an event-          creating a series of events to which you invite 

Effective experiential campaigns should be part of an end to end sales process including -          Data strategy to correctly identify and hand raise our audience-          Pre event direct marketing to recruit the right prospects-          Post event direct marketing to continue the dialogue  

You should be knocking on the Marketing Director’s door before he asks, with a great story to tell – and a positive commercial one -   a story as good as the one Mazda have to tell. 

Mazda wanted to use an experiential event to help address consumers perception of the brand and to increase sales. Closer created an event concept, Operation Renesis, that had key brand truths at its core and was highly motivational, but which was developed into a multi faceted integrated campaign (including digital advertising and DM) to ensure we recruited exactly the right people to attend. An amazing 20,000 people signed up. We then selected 3500 bulls-eye prospects. Post event we delivered nearly 1000 test drives, 1200% above the normal response rates expected from a stand alone DM campaign. 348 of the cars had been sold as a direct result of the campaign. That’s experiential ROI, but not achievable without the creation of a bigger integrated campaign idea. 

The Mazda story is not about ‘automotive’. It’s about a way of thinking about experiential that focuses on commercial results. It started with commercial objectives, and ends with commercial success – and in between is the award-winning integrated magic of which we are also rightly proud! 

It’s a process we’ve used to great effect across many different sectors, from FMCG to Luxury to Financial Service, B2C and B2B alike   

Experiential marketing aims to ensure consumers take away a lasting and positive impression of the brand and the discipline should now focus on brand benefits that engender loyalty – and not just a one off purchase. Without a doubt this has to be achieved through integration with a bigger campaign idea to drive long term relationships and sales.  

Brand experience campaigns have the power to make a lasting impression. In effect it is the purist form of direct marketing and therefore must be viewed as a key consumer retention strategy rather than a fight for tactical short term sales. 

Experiential marketing as part of an integrated campaign is the way forward and will be key for Clients to be able to build positive relationships with consumers – and not just another one night stand.