Integrate experiential marketing with digital
The convergence of experiential and digital could represent one of the most important steps forward in modern marketing. It is little secret that today’s consumers are demanding a much more personal relationship with the brands they choose, and this has been a key factor in the rise of experiential marketing.
Digital, on the other hand, for all its growth, is still very much a broadcast or mass communications medium. However, combine the two and you bridge the potential shortcomings of both: experiential gives digital the ability to master proximity, and digital gives experiential the power to extend its reach and add value for both the brand and the consumer.
Live experiences offer the perfect opportunity to create a community around a brand, by allowing consumers to feel they are developing a personal relationship with the brand. Digital can then take over to help these brands build on that equity. Often this is done through social media such as Facebook or MySpace, but it can as easily be done through a traditional website which consumers are driven to following the live event.
By creating these online communities, brands are able to strengthen and deepen the relationships formed with consumers at an event – whether it’s a live music festival or an experiential activity. It also means that they are able to glean more in-depth information on their customers, over time, as they can communicate directly with their communities and target them with more and more personalised information on everything from new products to different events. It also enables brands to listen to these communities and to learn from what they are saying, both in terms of developing the brand or their activities around them.
In many ways this is the most powerful aspect of the coming together of these two disciplines, but the relationship between digital and experiential goes beyond that. With companies becoming more demanding as they look for ways to differentiate their brands, and striving to do something different at their events, new technologies and in particular digital offer a fantastic opportunity to do this.
The rise of mobile devices and connectivity ranging from wi-fi to Bluetooth means any event can still be a hotbed of digital interaction, whether it’s downloading games or promotions to mobiles or PDAs at an experiential activity or offering consumers the ability to download the latest tracks by bands they are watching at a festival. This is adding value to the consumer and building on the emotional connection created by the physical event itself.
We are in the middle of the digital age, and the mantra now is “personalisation”. Physical events will always form a key part of any marketing strategy as there will always be a need to touch and interact with a brand. Increasingly we will need to find more and more innovative ways to use digital technology within this process.
To master this convergence successfully, both skill sets need to be at the centre of the concept. It’s not about having one adding value to the other. It’s about both carrying equal weight. A dedicated digital agency wouldn’t have the knowledge of events and a dedicated events agency wouldn’t have the knowledge of digital. With all the skills in-house, integrated agencies find themselves in pole position to drive this new partnership forward.