Experiential Marketing Best Practices
The Power of Live EventsBrand-To-Fan Engagement
Experiential marketing is one of the best and most tactile forms of brand-to-fan engagement available to us as marketers, but it comes with increased consumer expectations and risk if you don’t nail the execution. To avoid the potential stumbles, consider these three simple pillars when devising a successful campaign or activation: creation, execution, and amplification. By creating a custom activation that seamlessly integrates your brand on-site and adds values to the fans’ experience, you’ll be making your brand part of something worth remembering (and for all the right reasons).
Create
Sure people engage with generic activations, football tosses, prize wheels, etc., but to really create a connection between your brand/product and fans you need to create a custom and valuable experience. Be different and add value. Find a way to weave your brand into a unique role to which the fanbase feels like, “They get me.”
- Create a custom experience
- Be creative
- Add value to for the fans, make it about them
- Take advantage of the brand-to-fan experience
Execute
A third of marketers cite internal resources as a stumbling block for event marketing. Tap into a team of agency experts that have experience with all of the hiccups that inevitably arise. Brands have one shot to make a great impression on-site – take advantage of partners with the creative, fabrication, event tech, production and logistical experience.
- Integrate sponsorship and media assets
- Be interactive, fun and educational
- Utilize event tech that adds not distracts (people love photos and ready-to-share content)
- Have plans (and contingency plans) – no detail is too small in a live-event environment
Amplify
Make a one-day experience live on through public relations, data capture, content creation and social media. You created a relationship with a highly-targeted fan group, now take advantage of it and continue the conversation. Most purchases are not made on-site, so add value to stay top-of-mind during the consideration period.
- Amplify pre-/during-/post- through social media and PR
- Utilize sharable content, make each consumer a brand ambassador within their own networks
- Capture data and have a follow-up strategy to use it
- Set benchmarks and measure your results
Delta Faucet #Happimess
Last year we created a massive footprint and group shower experience for competitors at the end Warrior Dash mud runs. The shower itself both brought value to the fan experience, as well as a record-breaking (thanks Guinness World Records). This year we expanded the footprint to include singing in the shower karaoke – keeping people clean, engaged and sharing hilarious content.
Case Study >
Goose Island: Hop Harvest
rEvolution’s hospitality and creative services teams aligned to conceptualize a multi-day, tentpole event for Goose Island that would give an unprecedented look at its brand – unprecedented even for longtime Goose Island employees. Not a simple day trip or two to the farm with hotel accommodations, instead, a temporary camping resort was set up – providing all of the comforts of a luxury sleepaway and maintaining all of the charm and wonder of a night under the stars.
Case Study >
Nickelodeon: 90s Fest
Take Nickelodeon in the ’90s – Splat, Slime and Rugrats – throw them on a boat and bring them to life on Governors Island in New York. We built the ultimate touchpoint for ‘90s kids and millennials of all ages to reconnect with their favorite “golden era” Nickelodeon game shows in a highly sharable – and competitive – environment, ripped straight out of the greatest decade.
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Continental Tire
We burn through plenty of Continental Tires driving around all year-long and across the country activating at Continental’s racing (IMSA), soccer (MLS) and college basketball sponsorships. We have created unique activations within each platform to resonate with the fans of each sport, and we have boxes of soccer scarves to prove it.
Case Study >
PAW Patrol: On Tour
There is nothing more custom than fabricating a cartoon playground, bringing it to life and driving it around the country. In 2016, we brought Spin Master’s PAW Patrol to life with a 53-foot trailer that morphed into Adventure Bay at different fairs, festivals and retail partners.
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Chipotle: MLS Homegrown Game
rEvolution and Chipotle rolled out a comprehensive program pulling together nationwide youth clinics, athlete endorsements from top talent, original content, media, social and broadcast elements. At the center of it all is the Chipotle Homegrown Game – a proprietary All-Star Week event showcasing the league’s best rising talent, developed domestically through Club academies.
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