Music concerts and art festivals have become the hubs of brand activation and marketing campaigns. With only a few months left before Coachella and a few months after Tomorrowland, marketing teams of every leading brand across the globe are at the edge of their seats. Events like the Arts Festival and Coachella Valley Festival have evolved into the prime destination for all leading brands. Here the brand representatives interact with their target audience directly. Big names like Coca-Cola Co, Pepsico Inc, Heineken NV, and Red Bull are quite familiar in similar festival grounds. Since these brands usually appeal to the younger generations, the marketing teams target concerts, festivals, and camps that attract a similar crowd.
Marketing gurus identify these large and popular events as cultural tentpoles. Brands, especially the new ones, fail to create an immersive experience for their audience on their own. Some brands go onto sponsoring these recognizable events, while others remain content playing a supportive role. Nonetheless, these cultural tentpoles are the perfect platforms for almost all brands that find, engage and capture their target consumers.
Here’s how your brand should craft an experiential marketing campaign–
Identify your brand specific tentpoles
For traditional advertising, choosing the right platform and channel was critical for the success of the campaigns. Similarly, if you want to interact with your desired audience, you must find the right cultural events. If your consumer predominantly consists of 40-year-old men, you will find it a hard time to collect actionable consumer information via experiential marketing at an event like Coachella or Burning Man. You might have better luck targeting malls, pubs or indirectly targeting them through their better-half. However, if your audience consists of the younger demographic, you will find rewarding responses by becoming a part of a music and arts festival, competition or college events. Visit https://www.roots3productions.com/ to find out all you need to know about finding the right audience during event marketing.
It is imperative to fine-tune the marketing team’s idea of the cultural context surrounding any major event they want to target. If you have the right audience before you, organic opportunities will present themselves naturally. Creating events out-of-context at an event can hurt the brand’s reputation irreparably.
2. Offer something new to your audience
Before you give your team a go, find out if they have something organic and new to present. You must remember that interacting with the audience will not be your monopoly. A number of big names come to these cultural tentpoles, and your brand will suffer tremendously if your team does not have something fresh and enticing for a saturated audience. Gamified activities and hyper-tailored experiences are only some of the technologies you can explore to enrapt your audience. However, ensure that they make you stand out of the crowd.
For example – several brands and festivals have given out RFID wristbands to the attendees before. However, you can give that practice a new twist by giving these bands a purpose – like making some of the numbers clues in a scavenger hunt or turn them into keys for unlocking exclusive experiences of your product.
People don’t want to engage in an experience they cannot share with friends, family, and followers. Every person now wants to create an exclusive story on Instagram or write an all-inclusive real-time thread on Twitter. Unless a brand offers something worth sharing, the marketing team will have difficulty convincing people to convert.
Especially with the big brands present, your efforts have to be uber-competitive. Over 90% of the audience feel the urge to share an event from the grounds via social media. While people feel positive after attending a brand event, they are less likely to become brand loyalists unless they have generated enough social media content that creates an uproar.
Apart from giving your audience something they can remember, you need to provide them with something refreshing or funky that will compel them to share on social media.
Offering your consumers something unique, new and sharable not only cements your position as a brand, but it also ensures that your team can follow the impacts of the experiential marketing event weeks after the festival. Social media posts live long after the ripples of music and art festivals ebb out. The likes they generate, following conversations and shares, can tell a lot about the popularity of a new product and brand.
Leveraging the cultural tentpoles for experiential marketing takes grit and gravy. Very few new brands jump into the world of event-based marketing without the guidance of an experienced marketing team. If you believe you are ready to test the waters, check with a dedicated event-based marketing team first. Getting experiential marketing right can not only bring you profits, but it can bring you a loyal army of consumers, who will carve out your brand success.