Due to marketing overload, an explosion of product choices and lack of trust, consumers are changing the way they listen, research, talk and purchase products. People want to buy products that satisfy personal emotions and brands need to work harder than ever to provide the right information and product experiences to enhance the buying decision.
Each day, people are exposed to over 10,000 visual advertising attempts. This intense clutter creates great competition amongst brands, which poses the question- how can marketers be sure that their brand message is getting through to consumers?
When it comes to Christmas shopping this year, retailers will need to focus more on the customer experience. Last years Christmas season was hugely successful for online retailers with an increase of 44% when compared to 2009. Whilst consumers are spending more time online, as they hunt for the best ideas and discounts, most people still enjoy shopping in the real world. When consumers are out shopping they looking for entertainment and to experience something that they cannot get online.
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On our blog we discuss how interactive media is rapidly becoming the next big thing. The use of transvision screens and innovative technologies such as digital signage or multi-touch displays are indeed far more effective than traditional media at capturing people’s attention and engaging them with your brand.
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Facebook fan pages are one of the great tools that brands can use to spread the word, to drive attention and interest of consumers to their products or services. What you can offer equates to what makes people to ‘Like’ your brand, but the number of ‘Likes’ doesn’t mean that you are actually engaging with your fans. More and more, we have been seeing great examples of brands integrating Facebook apps onto their marketing strategy, creating amusing social experiences to increase the number of ‘likes’ of their fan base. However, our question is – does a ‘like’ turn into a sale? When you like something on Facebook what does this ultimately mean to you?
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Cocooning was coined in the late 1980′s by trendspotter Faith Popcorn. She predicted an en masse retreat from social and public life in favour of “cocooning” in one’s home. The cocooning trend was commercially significant fuelling spending in homewares – home coffee machines, huge plasmas screen TV’s and anything else that provides superior in-home comfort.
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This week we featured a thought leadership piece on our blog with a top five selection of the best creative uses of QR codes. There is no doubt that QR codes are becoming more useful and important in promotional activity, enabling brands to create various modes of interaction with the public, as well as inciting the curiosity of consumers to find out what is hidden behind that code.
There are many discussions around the regulations on ambush marketing during 2012 Olympic Games and LOCOG is demanding strict measures to protect official sponsors and partners who support the Olympic movement.
We all know that a multicultural event such as the Olympics, brands will try to make the most of spectators’ experience but before planning any marketing activity you need to be aware of all legal implications to avoid pitfalls and ensure you won’t get caught out with a marketing bill as well as a legal fine.
People come to the Olympics to be part of the crowd, the experience and the buzz. Creating an experience that will engage people in a unique, memorable and relevant manner will have much to add to their experience and their memory of your brand.
The value of experiential marketing is to allow consumers to experience or immerse themselves with the brand and understand the message they are conveying. The average number of campaigns consumers are exposed to everyday is on around 2000 different brand messages so you need to know what you want to get out of your campaign and the memory you want to leave behind with your audience.
For a multicultural crowd such as the Olympics it is important to know how to make the right choices to suit your brand. You need to be realistic about your expectations and target the audience in the right way considering the location and messages that will be used to make it easier to track and measure your ROI.
If you are thinking about preparing an experiential activity during the Olympics check out our 5 top tips here.
Sally Durcan
MD, Hotcow Experiential Marketing Agency
www.hotcow.co.uk
@hotcow
A while ago we have discussed the importance of integrating the channels of communication mix to deliver an effective brand message and increase the ROI spend. With more brands looking to incorporate experiential activities in to their mix, why take the risk of damaging your brand by leaving the responsibility with non-specialists?
Talking from the experiential side, we believe there could be implications of executing experiential marketing in the wrong way and it is certainly a job for specialist agencies that know how to plan, manage and measure correctly.
Specialists know the limitations and understand the capabilities to better place experiential campaign into a overall marketing planning and how to approach the target audience in the right way.
How to get the most out of experiential marketing? Brands need a deep understanding of how it can work inside the communications strategy. For starters we try to show brands that experiential marketing is a one-to-one communication, a strategy implemented in a dynamic environment that allows consumers to experience the brand, build trust, drive purchase and recommend to friends.
Ultimately, specialists do this day in and day out. They know the challenges and pitfalls to avoid and the best approach to achieving your end result.
Got a question? We would be happy to answer it!
Sally Durcan
MD, Hotcow Experiential Marketing Agency
www.hotcow.co.uk
@hotcow
Recently, we have been seeing more and more brands using “experiential activity” as part of their advertising campaign. We know that experiential marketing campaigns can produce great content that can be used in both the traditional and social media channels and last week we had an in-depth look at two examples on our blog.
One got it right and one got it wrong. Want to check it out in its entirety? Go here.
The basic jist of it was as follows…
People love to relive experiences and with constant technological advancements, it has never been easier to document and share an experience. Ad agencies and brands are starting to realise the value of the experience, how it is now the core of a marketing communications plan and the ways in which mass media can be used to broadcast these real experiences.
The brands that get it right are the ones that put the experience first. Any content resulting from these is remarkable, real and adds value to the viewer. In our blog we looked at a staged “experience” from ING in Italy. The contrived nature of the advert became painfully obvious when looked at more closely and the fact it was listed in the TV directory of the Coloribus database (a global advertising archive) was a big clue as to ING’s motives from the outset.
Once upon a time we all talked about the T-mobile adverts but now they provide us with a great example of the implications of becoming complacent with your experiences and confusing a strategy. The first time the adverts hit our screen, we loved, laughed and most importantly believed what we were seeing. T-mobile appeared to be adding value to people’s lives… right up to the point they started creating experiences purely for TV. The ‘experience’ became tired and contrived.
The issue people have with most TV ads is that they are over the top, fake or too clever, meaning people don’t know what they are talking about. Ultimately the purpose of TV has always been for brand awareness, not engagement.
Ad agencies are great at creating TV spots, but can they really deliver a true ‘experience’ with the depth that is required for believability, which ultimately results in people being more connected to the brand?
In this consumer-savvy world we think not, but your thoughts would be appreciated.
Sally Durcan
MD, Hotcow Experiential Marketing Agency
www.hotcow.co.uk
@hotcow
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