Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The experiential marketing experience

Over Memorial Day I enjoyed a little R&R in Tampa. After a lazy drive up the coast, our entourage stopped in at The Pier, a popular tourist destination. After stopping for a round of neon colored slurpies, we wandered outside and wandered right into an experiential marketing experience.

Washed up on shore at The Pier were giant-sized plastic bottles. Nestled in piles of sand, each bottle displayed a roomful of furniture. Weaving in between the bottles were a half dozen smiling people clad in matching t-shirts and distributing small plastic bottles with messages inside. The rolled up piece of paper cleverly stated that your home was sending you a message: “Get new furniture.” Where? At the new Ikea store, of course.

I’ve never been to an Ikea store and I don’t think my home really wants new furniture (I just gave it new kitchen appliances), but I was ready to check out the Ikea store anyway. Any store that can figure out how to put furniture in giant plastic bottles is well worth visiting. And, that is exactly what Ikea’s experiential marketing team wants you to think.

Getting prospective customers to experience a company’s brand in a non-traditional environment is the goal of this unusual type of marketing called Experiential Marketing. Like Ikea, many companies are finding that Experiential Marketing can successfully draw customers to their brands by engaging them in an unexpected manner.

Charmin discovered the power of Experiential Marketing when it put restrooms in New York’s Times Square during the holiday season. The “Charmin Experience” provided New Yorkers with clean, public restrooms courtesy of their favorite bath tissue. The “Charmin Experience” was so popular, one couple chose the restrooms as their wedding spot. The bride wore white Charmin.

You don’t have to build bathrooms in Times Square to launch an Experiential Marketing campaign for your company. The key is to determine who you want to reach and develop a way to get that person to experience your product or service first-hand. If you sell shoes, put a runway outside your store and hire people to walk the catwalk in your shoes. If you sell mattresses, take them on the road. Bring a bed to a well-attended event and offer a rest-stop to weary attendees.

Experiential Marketing is all about getting your customers to interact with your brand outside of your normal sales channels. So you just have to get out there and get creative. If Charmin can figure out a way to get New Yorkers to experience toilet paper, think what you can do with your brand.

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