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As if losing your fella to FIFA 12 this year wasn’t bad enough, September saw the launch of the new OnLive gaming console at EuroGamer Expo, so ladies say goodbye to your man for good. This latest craze has swept … Continue reading
Ahhh Valentine’s Day… Commercial hype? Or a romantic occasion for all?
Well this year us marketers are getting even more creative with selling “love” as it’s a leap year, so step up to the mark ladies – time to propose to your gents!
A brand that has jumped on the Valentine’s Day & Leap Year bandwagon with both feet is Hendrick’s Gin. With their old school Victoriana charm and quirky old fashion rules of courtship they are the perfect brand to help us ladies pop the question.
Not only are they kindly running the “Hendricks School for Scoundrels” and the “Ladies School of Nuptial Conquest” – creative events held in leading drinking establishments around the country in February to teach us normal folk a thing or two in the art of wooing a loved one, they have also created a very unique experiential roadshow – the “Hendricks Preposterous Proposal Throne”.
A creative but simple stunt – a pop up throne positioned in surprise locations around London allowing ladies to take full advantage of the fateful 29th February.
Interested in reversing the normal rules of courtship? Then book yourself in some time on the throne… http://reversecourtship.hendricksgin.com/index.html
If like me you are a little sad to be taking down the Christmas tree,
packing away the decorations and of course saying goodbye to the infamous red
cups, well you needn’t fear…Starbucks have come up with a new scheme to help
beat those January blues.
January 2012 will see the launch of the new Starbucks App in the UK! Starbucks will be
replacing its current pre-pay members card with a new and improved loyalty
scheme, offering customers the chance to pay for their coffees using the new
Starbucks iPhone App.
The ‘My Starbucks Reward’ programme offers customers benefits such as:
Starbucks will also be extending the use of the app to allow customers to pay via their
smartphone – by swiping their phone at the till!
http://starbucks.co.uk/card/rewards
Is this the future of Smartphones? We already know how useful they are in
complimenting marketing campaigns and experiential activity but it seems now
that these clever little gadgets will be even more important to our daily
lives! Maybe before long we really will be able to replace our credit and debit
cards with a simple swipe of the smartphone….not as far-fetched as we may have
once thought – but hey, Richard Branson is already planning his plot for the
Virgin Galactic Hotel on the moon…..
I guess anything is possible!
Whilst working in the Tribe office on a Monday morning, a new brief came in which I was oh so excited about.
It reminded me of an event I went to recently – it turned to the early hours and I experienced that dreaded thought that it was time to trek home in my heels! Not always the easiest thing when you venture out and there’s a queue round the street of people waiting to hail a black cab!
Well, don’t fear. Low and behold, the new and oh-so-convenient new APP GetTaxi is here to save the day!
GetTaxi is a revolution for a quick and hassle free way to hail down a cab.
So how does it work? Simply download the APP to your Smartphone, order your taxi and watch your taxi on a map in real time. No money left on you? With GetTaxi, you can pay for rides instantly and the invoices are emailed to you (recalling what you have actually spent as well!)
And what better way to promote the app than with experiential marketing? Our Brand Warriors have been out spreading the word in London giving out £5 vouchers, creating an unforgettable experience for the revolution of taxi flagging!
Until next time..
A recent study from US company, Loyalty 360, has shown that customer satisfaction can no longer be relied on as a metric to predict loyalty. It is a component of loyalty, but it is not the totality. For instance:
If satisfaction is not an effective metric to predict loyalty, then what is? Engagement. The stronger and deeper a customer is engaged with the brand, the more loyal she or he will be.
Beloved brands such as Nokia, T-Mobile, Smirnoff, Pimms & Sony work hard to build deeper, more emotional, more meaningful and sustainable bonds between the customer and their brands. How experiences with a brand make a customer feel – which is critical because more than 70% of consumer loyalty and spending decisions are based on emotional factors – is what sets it apart from the competition.
Loyalty 360 have identified several key “feelings” that engage the customer, solidify the connection, and move the customer along the loyalty continuum. These drivers include:
As Howard Schultz, founder of one of our clients, Starbucks, is quoted as saying, “The art of marketing today is the ability to build this emotional connection. I am not going to tell people where they should be spending their money, but I would advise that all marketing be authentic, and relate to reaching into people’s hearts to let them know that you want to be part of their life.”
This is what creating customer loyalty is all about and that is where experiential marketing comes in…
See full article here: http://ht.ly/7qZ1G
I was at an event with a few friends recently when one noticed a QR code on the side of a bottle of Bulmers, with the tagline ‘Join the Experiment’. Out of our group only half had ever heard of or seen a QR code before, and fewer still had ever used one.
Don’t know what a QR code is? Download a free QR reader to your smartphone and give this one a try!
Since that conversation I have seen QR codes everywhere! They have them on TV cookery programs so you can get the recipe for the food, TV adverts so you can find out more about the products, magazines, ad boards, posters, trains, they’re practically anywhere that you have printed material.
We have also used them several times across our Experiential Marketing campaigns. It is a great tool to drive consumers to a website, especially if there is a call to action. We ran an experiential campaign for William Hill earlier in the year where the use of a QR code was successful in driving consumers directly to a webpage to download a new smart phone app.
It is a wonder then that more people don’t know about them, considering that you can’t miss them. They are so easy to create and can be done is seconds. They are also great for getting people to visit your website, join your CRM program and just getting people to find out more about your brand!
If you’re thinking about including a QR code in your next campaign, check out Mashable’s 5 steps to a successful QR Code Marketing Campaign – http://mashable.com/2011/11/11/qr-code-marketing-tips/
In the past Experiential Marketing has suffered from one major drawback; however good your activity, its reach was limited to the people who actually experienced it.
Everything has changed. Social networking has transformed the role of experiential activity – making it exponentially more powerful as a marketing tool than ever before.For FMCG brands, the engine of social media engagement is content. Nothing creates more powerful content than brilliant branded experiences.
And nobody does that better than us, as some of our recent activity proves…
We don’t think of consumers as an audience – we recognise that they are the media channel. Engage and enthuse a few of them, and tens of thousands will know about it within minutes through their social networks.
Pop-ups are the epitome of our high-speed, short-attention-span culture – a perfect concept for our hype-heavy society. They’re born from a strong fascination with the contemporary, with the here-today-and-gone-tomorrow, the idea of excitement, urgency and a dynamic interaction with (usually urban) spaces.
They allow brands to engage in face-to-face interactions with their consumers – and can act as an informal, unacknowledged market research project. Dan Germain, head of creative at Innocent, said the Innocent Five for Five café that ran in 2011 was “a no brainer. Put on a bit of a party for the people who buy the drinks, meet and hang out with them, and find out stuff you wouldn’t discover in some weird research group… We could just loiter in Sainsbury’s by the fridges and watch the people who come and buy our drinks, but we’d probably get kicked out”.
They’re also a positive way of making more intensive use of urban space, aiding regeneration. It’s estimated that 13% of all UK shops are currently empty – and that one in five of those may never be used again! This is a perfect opportunity for brands to make a genuine difference on a relatively small budget and standout from
competitors for doing something a little different.
Of course, there have been countless pop-ups appearing across the UK since the concept blew up in 2004 (Commes des Garcons) with pop-up gigs in laundrettes, restaurants in front rooms, films projected in disused petrol stations or on to hay bales in fields. Some of my personal favourites are the aforementioned Innocent Five for Five Café, Jacques Townhouse and the Marmite shop – I’m now a complete brand advocate
for each of these, telling all my friends, family and colleagues about the different experiences and spreading the word on Twitter and Facebook. This word-of-mouth equity is a brand’s power to generate messages that influence the consumer’s decision to purchase.
Pop-ups, when done well,surprise and engage consumers in new and more meaningful ways, guaranteeing exclusivity because of the limited timespan and the discovery-driven element. Yes, the reach is lower than the more traditional means of marketing (like an advertising campaign) but you’re getting a more intense return, forging relationships that will last a lifetime.
Innocent’s Five for Five Café:
Jacques Townhouse:
Marmite Shop:
Read more about pop-ups here: http://bit.ly/barvOp
We’ve been saying it all along… and now a recent study from BDRC Continental of more than 50 experiential marketing campaigns proves our point! Here are the highlights…
On average, experiential marketing increases spontaneous brand awareness by 90% according to the survey, likelihood to purchase rises by 91% and word of mouth is also greatly influenced by consumers experiencing a brand directly through sampling or bigger events.
The research also claims that for every one person who attends an event, they go on to recommend to a further four people.
The ability to integrate an experiential campaign into the rest of the marketing mix while retaining its measurability is becoming key, particularly with a view to exploiting social media. The ability to merge the high volume impact of advertising with low-cost media such as YouTube by using the catalyst/content created from an experiential campaign creates greater reach and ROI.
The key to an experiential marketing campaign’s success often is not just its pure measurability as a standalone campaign, but its ability to integrate into an established online brand presence which can often be more measurable in terms of online metrics.
View the full article on Marketing Week here: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/briefings/free-samples-still-best-way-to-win-friends/3031292.article
Experiential Marketing is a very forward thinking industry which allows us to think outside the box, push boundaries and innovate. As marketers, we can often be quite stubborn – we cling to myths and outmoded industry theories rather than recognising change.
A study called the Marketing Gap details what Marketers think consumers think VS what consumers actually think – the eye opening report highlight some very serious and interesting facts, which we as marketers need to take note of if we are to ensure we don’t unnecessarily waste budgets, which are becoming increasingly harder to win.
A couple of thoughts on the use of coupons!
The report highlights the importance of insight – what we think is not always correct and therefore it’s crucial that we sense check our opinions against actual FACTS – a prime example of how expensive this can be is:
The war in Iraq – The former US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, admits in his memoirs that he made a mistake in claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction sites round Baghdad and Tikrit, one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq invasion.
Rumsfeld says now: “I made a misstatement.” What he meant to say is there were ‘suspect sites’.
The War in Iraq cost the US – 816 Billion and the UK 9 Billion – a rather expensive mistake to make.
