Experiential marketing can easily be defined as marketing that gives the potential consumer an experience. However, this unhelpful definition draws a very fuzzy line between it and content marketing. A better way to explain this type of marketing is ‘to give the consumer an immersive brand experience’. Better yet, the purpose of experiential marketing is ‘to create a stronger trust between the consumer and the brand by immersing them in a fun and memorable experience’. Eliciting positive emotions in potential customers encourages brand loyalty, and if the experience is good enough, it becomes memorable.
Here are some great examples of brands that really nailed the experiential marketing experience for their consumers.
Experiential Marketing
Angry Birds & T-Mobile
T-Mobile provided an incredible experience for it’s audience in Barcelona by literally creating a real-life Angry Birds game complete with sound effects. The phenomenon grew to a huge party by the end of the event, with a live band, crowds of cheering people, and a line down the block to ‘push the button’.
Game of Thrones Dragon
This bus-sized dragon skull is arguably HBO’s most successful advertising stunt to date. Found ‘washed-up’ on a beach shore near Dorset, this skull heralded the arrival of season 3 of Game of Thrones. This particular stunt was arranged by Blinkbox, who saw a 632% increase in yearly revenue after it added that season of GOT in 2013.
Lean Cuisine: #WeighThis
This was an inspirational experiential marketing event put on by Lean Cuisine. It asked women at Grand Central Station ‘how they wanted to be weighed’, which resulted in a plethora of inspiring traits hanging on the wall.
Misereor: Donation Billboard
The name of this campaign is The Social Swipe, and it was the first interactive billboard to accept credit cards. The idea is to encourage people to donate by being able to see their impact by initiating a visual upon swiping a card.
Volkswagen – Piano Staircase
This experiential marketing stunt took place in Stockholm, Sweden. The idea was to encourage people to take the stairs by making them musical—not necessarily connected to vehicles in any way, but fun for the participants never-the-less.