When Intel was planning the launch of its Centrino product, a wireless Internet connection chip embedded in laptops, it identified business users as a key target audience. It knew that busy executives would appreciate the mobility and ease of wireless Internet connections. The problem it faced was demonstrating to those executives exactly how it would work and just how useful it would be to them. It was a new concept and potential buyers were wary.
So, Intel hired Live, a brand experience agency. Live took Centrino directly to business people at lounges in Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle and Munich airports. While waiting for their flights, executives tested laptops equipped with the Centrino chip. They checked their emails, visited websites and experienced the mobility and ease of a wireless connection. Live also ran a competition to win a laptop and so gathered contact details for more than 30,000 business people.
This is just one example of the growing trend for B2B brands to use experiential marketing. It is already a popular technique amongst consumer marketers. Go to any music festival and you will be bombarded with opportunities to experience dozens of consumer brands. The take-up amongst B2B marketers has begun but is slow. As Graham Ede, managing director at relationship marketing agency Ion Group, puts it, “The success of brand experience within the B2C market has not gone unnoticed, and B2B marketers are waking up to the potential of brand experience. However, there is a long way to go before they catch up with their B2C counterparts.”
There are three main obstacles standing in the path of greater B2B take-up of brand experience. There is still some confusion over what it means, finding good locations is difficult, and marketers are worried about costs. These barriers are gradually coming down, and it looks as though in the years to come experiential marketing will become an important element of the B2B mix.
The first obstacle to overcome is the widespread confusion over terminology. For some, field marketing is marketing that takes place in a public space, and brand experience is simply an extension of it. Tracey Wills, client services director at Candour Event Marketing, says: “Field marketing encompasses merchandising, auditing, product sampling, leafleting, demonstrations, exhibitions, mystery shopping, in-store activity and specific brand promotions. Brand experience is its younger sibling and is multi-dimensional in that it makes the potential customer participate and interact.”
She continues: “There will always be a need for customers to learn about new products through leaflets, samples and demonstrations, but brand experience marketing has taken it to the next level. Companies are looking for more than just a fleeting moment with their target audiences and so have developed this more theatrical form of field marketing that provides the potential customer with sensory experiences of the brand.”
However, Alison Williams, chair of the Direct Marketing Association’s Field Marketing Council, argues that this is a mistaken definition of field marketing. She says: “Field marketing is using people to sell your products. It is essentially face-to-face sales. Brand experience is something entirely different and is only relevant to consumer marketing. It is about getting consumers engaged with your brand through sensory experience.”
As the Intel Centrino example demonstrates, B2B marketers are in fact using brand experience, but clearly to such a small extent that even Williams has not heard of it. This confusion over terminology is not helping take-up, but as brand experience becomes more popular amongst B2B marketers, we can expect this confusion to dissipate, and a consensus to emerge.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to effective experiential marketing is finding a location at which enough potential buyers are gathered. For consumer marketers this is easy. If a gym wants to attract new members, it can walk onto the high street and persuade potential customers to experience the brand. A manufacturer of MP3 players can go to a music festival and find potential customers who will be willing to experience the brand. The only equivalent space for the business marketer is the trade fair and it is usually very difficult to achieve standout at these events.
However, B2B marketers are beginning to find and create their own spaces for experiential marketing. The most obvious place to find business buyers is their workplace. One car manufacturer recently sent an articulated lorry and trailer with brand ambassadors and the car to visit each dealership in its distribution network. The brand ambassadors educated and enthused dealership staff about the car and then offered them a test drive.
Apple has deals with companies, such as BT and Merrill Lynch, to sell its consumer products to employees of those companies at reduced rates. To promote these deals it hired experiential marketing agency Gekko. Its MD, Daniel Todaro, says: “We set up stands in the reception areas and invite employees to try out the iPods, notebooks and iMacs. This is ultimately consumer marketing, but the businesses see it as a major employee benefit.”
More innovative B2B marketers are looking beyond the workplace. Peter de Wesselow at marketing agency FPP, says: “Cash and carry stores are great places to engage retailers. For example, companies sponsoring the football World Cup this summer are likely to spend millions on the consumer brand experience in Germany and in competing countries. They should also be using experiential marketing in cash and carry stores to involve retailers. After all, those retailers are the ultimate brand ambassadors for them and in that environment there is also the possibility of immediate purchase.”
Other business marketers are operating in places where there are high concentrations of business buyers. In terms of geography, this is commuter train stations or areas where there are many head offices such as Golden Square, Broadgate Arena and Russell Square in London, St Paul’s Square in Birmingham or The Oracle in Reading. In terms of lifestyle these are events that attract senior decision makers such as major sporting events, Henley Regatta and the opera etc.
B2B marketers tend to operate within more limited budgets than their consumer counterparts. Experiential marketing is undeniably expensive and this deters a significant number of B2B marketers. However, Dan Stanton, MD at experiental marketing agency Push, believes the costs can be controlled.
He says: “The trick is to use the equipment in several locations. We worked with Disney launching the Narnia film to distributors. Rather than producing the usual 15 minute trade trailer, we devised a Narnia experience, where distributors could go through the wardrobe into Narnia. It was a great success and because we took it to 5000 people in seven cities across Europe the cost-per-contact was quite low.”
Others prefer to point out that, while brand experience is more expensive than traditional forms of marketing, it is also more effective. Richard Donovan, MD of Live, says: “It provides a deeper level of engagement and can turn contacts into brand advocates. You can send all the mailers you want, you can design the best website in the world, but none of it works as well as someone telling their friends or colleagues about a great new product they’ve just tried out.”
Few companies in any sector will have the inhouse resources to do their own experiential marketing, so, to a greater extent than any other form of marketing it is reliant on agency expertise.
Cameron Day, business development director at experiential marketing agency, RPM, believes that agencies are beginning to build a strong business case for B2B experiential marketing.
He says: “It’s all about measuring the results. We did an event for Umbro at which they wanted to show retail buyers that they’re about more than just the England football shirt. We created an entire event at which those buyers played in a five-a-side tournament and tested the entire range of Umbro kit. We followed up with regional sales managers one, six and 12 months after the event, and can now show how much more effective this approach was. Six or seven years ago consumer marketers were baulking at the costs of experiental marketing, but now they see the benefits, it’s not a problem. The same will happen with B2B marketers.”
