Experiential marketing

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Experiential marketing attempts to connect consumers with brands in personally relevant and memorable ways. The alternative term customer-experience marketing emphasises the idea of communicating the essence of a brand through a personalised experience.

As a marketing methodology, experiential marketing aims to move beyond the traditional "features-and-benefits" marketing, cast to a wide audience that includes not only those who may benefit from a brand or product, but also those who would not benefit at all. (As a result of such traditional marketing, people avoid messages whenever possible and by any means possible i.e. pop-up blockers, the United States National Do Not Call Registry and DVRs (such as TiVo) to avoid exposure to commercials.) In contrast, experiential marketing presents an experience that people choose to attend to and participate in after identifying the relevance of a brand or product to their needs.

Contents

[edit] Psychology

In the simplified paradigm of lateralization of brain function, experiential marketing reflects a right-brain bias in that it aims to fulfill consumers' aspirations to experience certain feelings — comfort and pleasure on the one hand, and avoidance of discomfort and displeasure on the other. It involves a perceived one-to-one interaction between a brand and an individual consumer. Experiential marketing creates a stronger relationship with the consumer by delivering a message that has a deep connected meaning and relevance to the consumer and the brand delivering the message.[citation needed]

In contrast, traditional product-centric marketing reflects a left-brain bias because it generally seeks to persuade consumers by invoking rational factors that position the advertised brand as better than competing brands. Product-centric marketing presumes a degree of rationality in consumers' decision-making that contemporary neuropsychology does not support.[citation needed] (Emotionally-generated feelings influence consumers' much more than rationally-derived thought does.[citation needed].)

[edit] Methodology

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[edit] Category growth

Experiential marketing has become an accepted alternative marketing methodology.[citation needed] As of 10 November 2007 searches using Google found the following numbers of results for the respective strings:

"experiential marketing": 508,000 results 
"field marketing":        684,000 results 
"guerilla marketing":     988,000 results 
"social marketing":     1,260,000 results 
"viral marketing":      1,500,000 results
"marketing":          505,000,000 results

Experiential marketing continues to grow in popularity[citation needed] as mainstream marketers adopt it more widely[citation needed].

[edit] Perceived need

With emerging media making a growing impact in the marketplace, vying for consumers’ attention becomes increasingly difficult.

Advertisers once saw experiential marketing as an alternative approach to reaching the most media-savvy audience.[citation needed] It offers an engaging, entertaining and interactive brand experience unmatched by traditional marketing.[citation needed] In today's marketing landscape experiential marketing leads the way.[citation needed]

In the past ten years, experiential marketing has become a hot topic in the branding world.[citation needed] Some of the most prominent brands such as Levi's, Nokia, Harley-Davidson, Wells Fargo and Volkswagen have implemented successful experiential programs to reach their target.[citations needed]

Organizations such as Starbucks, Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Cadbury Schweppes, Unilever, Kraft Foods, Expedia, T-Mobile USA, and DirecTV employ this approach.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Bibliography

  • Max Lenderman: Experience the Message: How Experiential Marketing is Changing the Brand World
  • B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore: Experience Economy
  • C.K Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy: The Future of Competition: Co-creating unique value with Customers
  • Bernd Schmitt: Experiential Marketing: How to Get Customers to Sense, Feel, Think, Act, Relate
  • David B. Wolfe: Ageless Marketing: strategies for reaching the hearts & minds of the new customer majority. Chicago, Illinois: Dearborn Trade Publishing, c2003. ISBN 0793177553

[edit] Footnotes