Experiential Marketing
by Fred Roed on 11/09/06 at 10:27 am
3 comments
This weekend, the missus and I decided to go out on a night on the town. A friend of mine invited me to the launch of a seriously hip new night club called Chrome.
When my wife and I first met, our lives revolved around going to parties and coming home late into the next morning, However, we had not been clubbing since 2002, which happens to be when we had our first child.
Neither of us knew what to expect, but when we arrived I was amazed to see how much club culture has changed in just 5 years. There was still a dance-floor and a bar, and we ended up having a great party, but there was a marked difference in the ‘experience’ of the place.
No longer was a nightclub merely a forum for meeting people, having a few drinks, and getting down to some nifty dance manoeuvres. The entire place had been engineered to be an ‘alternative-marketing’ medium.
It would take too long to describe the entire night, but here are some of the headlines:
- The VIP section was privy to a model shoot, which promoted both the model agency and the club.
- Ferraris and Maseratis were parked intentionally outside the entrance, which mainly promoted the club.
- Marlboro ladies were walking around handing out cigarettes to anyone who asked for them.
- The DJ stopped the music midway through the night to introduce a stand-up comedian that was launching a CD of his work.
- Various scantily-clad ‘drinks-ladies’ were cruising through the dance-floor touting their wares.
- An entertainment magazine editor was interviewing the various celebrities attending the event. After asking her about the interviews, the editor explained to us that most of the celebs were actually being paid to be there (ha!)
There were a bunch of other little subversive marketing efforts, but the overall impression was that the entire evening had been one great big brand-building exercise. We had a blast (Jon and his girlfriend Leah came with us and also had a great time), but I know a couple of people who would rather have their toes clamped than be subjected to the same kind of constant promotional assault. Charl, a marketing friend of mine, calls this experiential marketing. The intention is clear – that this is the new ‘real’ communication, i.e. get in where the people are and meet them face-to-face.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
Andrew
Sep 11th, 2006
The cigarette companies were forced to take their multi-multi-million Rand budgets away from traditional advertising and put into this type of marketing, and the statistics seem to show that it has worked. Perhaps other products picked up this strategy from them.
Shane
Sep 11th, 2006
Fred, how do you think ‘Experiential Marketing’ can be practically applied to small businesses? Perhaps you could write a seperate post for this?
Karin
Sep 11th, 2006
Hate ‘big’ words. Why/where/how is this so-called Experiential Marketing different from the ‘old-fashion’ social networking opportunities you can have/create in even the smallest, local, rural Pub? (Every week!!)