Experiential Favours the Brave (and how to embrace it)

They say that fortune favours the brave. And so does experiential.

Experiential marketing is driven by a new breed of consumer that demands two things – a more meaningful connection with the brands they consume and the ability to create their own experience around those brands. For businesses, meeting those demands takes bravery.

Over the last few years, the bar for what it means to be a brand that’s in tune with consumers has fundamentally changed.  It’s no longer okay to hide behind advertising, at a safe distance from customers with a read-only campaign in traditional media. In an era when consumer trust in organisations is at an all-time low, with 67% of consumers saying they would stop buying a brand if they did not come to trust the company behind it [1], customers are demanding more honesty and authenticity from the brands they choose to build a relationship with. 

For brands, this presents a challenge; a necessity to put themselves out there in a way they haven’t had to before. Where traditional advertising gave companies a platform to say “You just need to trust us”, Experiential gives brave brands the opportunity to say “look, we can prove it.” This new playing field provides the touchpoint for brands and consumers to forge a new level of trust. But only for those bold enough to rise to the challenge.

Intrinsically, experiential marketing has to be brave. There is literally nowhere to hide. By creating experiences where the consumer has the opportunity to interact with a product or service in real-time and real-life, their reactions are instant and the opinions they form of the brand – be that negative or positive -  are long lasting (and far reaching). Experiential means letting your consumer create their own individual experience and having faith that your product, your concept and your activation are strong enough to spark meaningful emotions.

More than that, experiential humanises a brand to a consumer and creates a far more intimate relationship than traditional marketing or advertising. Both the opportunity and the challenge is that engagement and conversation go a lot deeper, and the brand advocacy that results is much stronger.

It can feel daunting to put yourself out there so openly but you have to be willing to take those risks as a way of demonstrating your authenticity. The new breed of savvy consumer is quick to call out a brand anytime something feels inauthentic and customers can spot lazy activations a mile off.

There is huge opportunity in experience. Consumers are actively seeking to align themselves with brands that speak to their personal values, but that can only result from a willingness for brands to creatively demonstrate who they are and be brave enough to do something that evokes genuine emotion.

For brave brands who embrace the challenge -  who use creativity to build exciting activations bold enough to make customers feel something about their products - the rewards are immense. If your concept is creative enough, and its activation is executed well, you have the chance to create meaningful, genuine brand-consumer relationships in a way that simply isn’t possible in any other medium.

Experiential favours the brave and paves the way to emotive, immersive, long-lasting connections.  You just need to take the leap.

[1] Source: 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer