There is a growing body of evidence that people trust advertising less today than ever before, and prefer to build their own brand associations from experience and other influences. The big brand champions have latched on to this trend and adopted experiential marketing as a new tool to help gain influence and trust in their brands.
This is of course nothing new. Who hasn’t been offered a new brand of chocolate or a packet of crisps on a mainline station? The suck-it-and-see promotion has been around as long as marketing itself, but many companies are now adopting new and innovative ways to get their targets to experience their brands.
According to results of an extensive new survey by Jack Morton Worldwide, live event marketing experiences are among the most effective ways to influence coveted consumer audiences. In the USA, spending on experiential marketing grew to a staggering $166 billion in 2004.
A classic example of a super-brand devoting large chunks of marketing budget to experiential marketing is Nokia. The phone giant is now operating experience centres in 25 US cities not to sell the product, but simply to get people to try out their phones. These are not retail outlets but living advertisements in high-traffic areas enabling consumers to get hands-on with Nokia products without the pressure of having to buy. The Nokia staff members present are simply there to help the visitors explore the many new phone features.
In 2003, Coca Cola opened red lounges vermillion kiosks as gathering areas for teens. They featured sound domes, plasma screens showcasing exclusive music, videos and games, as well as vending machines stocked with the company’s beverages. Apple stores are opening in major cities. Not as traditional retail outlets, but as venues where we can get close to the cool and trendy Apple Macs and iPods; it’s the hands-on that counts. And big brand Ikea is now partnering hotel chains to open Ikea hotels, where a traveler can relax in rooms exclusively furnished by Ikea.
Experiential marketing is developing fast and plays a big part in influencing the human brain’s processing of brand associations. Companies now actively incorporate BEM (Brand Experience Marketing) as part of the marketing mix as it actually improves the performance of advertising.
All of these examples are from B2C, and I can hear the arguments that this is not for the world of B2B. Our products are more complex. The buying process is far more intricate. We don’t have the budget to open Experience Centres in major cities, and our targets are much more difficult to reach, and certainly don’t tend to hand around shopping malls on Saturday afternoons!
However, let’s think for a minute, hasn’t the B2B world been embracing a form of experiential marketing for decades? Isn’t the trade show precisely that a marketing tool, where our stands enable our target audiences to meet us and experience our brand and our products?
ABBA members suggest that the B2B world can embrace experiential marketing in a far more innovative way than it does now, and that a buyer’s brand empathy created and nurtured through such experience applies just as much in B2B markets as it does in consumer.
It can be argued that a trade show is not a true brand experience. The fact that everyone else is there doing exactly the same thing dilutes any effect that experiencing your brand might have. All the exhibitors are there to sell, and this misses the key point of brand experience marketing, which in its simplest terms is; we don’t want to sell you this product now, we just want you to understand and feel at ease with it.
B2B brand experiences don’t need to be on the high street or in shopping malls. They can be where B2B buyers go. This can be at venues ranging from airports, offices and your distributors, to hotels, conferences and seminars.
And finally, the place where most B2B audiences converge is the Internet. The web offers a huge opportunity to allow prospective customers to experience your brand, products, services, ethos and attitude. Your website must not be a boring brochure-on-the-web package, nor does it have to be an Argos catalogue of every product and service you offer.
Careful web design can offer real interaction with your brand, it can provide site visitors with a true taste of what you are and what you stand for and, more importantly, leave them with a brand experience that lasts.
ABBA agencies understand this phenomenon and not just in technology markets, but across the whole spectrum of B2B sectors. That’s why we all advocate the use of the Internet as an integral part of the mix. We realise that visitors are there out of choice and that each visitor is an opportunity for interaction with our brands.
As Confucius said, I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
