Sense launches guide to measuring the effectiveness of experiential marketing campaigns

Measuring Experiential Marketing Campaigns

Many brands and agencies still struggle to measure experiential. Sense’s new book Real World Impact outlines how experiential marketing CAN be successfully measured and it shares learnings and updated techniques from 10 years of applying the agency’s measurement technique, ‘EMR’ – Experiential Measurement and Research.

“Experiential measurement techniques are evolving, and since our first guide in 2008, measuring over 80 campaigns has developed our expertise and learnings, which has allowed us to refine our approach even further,” explained Sense MD Nick Adams.

Experiential marketing has been growing in popularity over recent years, both in the UK and globally. Second only to online marketing, investment by brands in experiential has increased year-on-year in the UK for several years in succession, according to the quarterly IPA Bellwether report. What’s more, a global study by Freeman in 2017 revealed that half of chief marketers plan to spend at least a fifth of their budget on experiential in the near future, compared to less than a third who did so when the research was undertaken.

Calls have been made to develop a standard experiential marketing measurement tool, but Adams, whose agency assesses the success of every one of its campaigns, believes this is the wrong approach. “If someone ever tells you they have a formula or ‘automated model’ figured out for measuring experiential, be sceptical. Scrutinise it closely, for while you can apply such things to other forms of marketing, brand experiences are much harder to pin down,” he said.

Real World Impact advocates measuring each campaign individually against a set of criteria relating to the original objectives of the activity. It sets out in detail the key steps that need to be taken, including understanding the campaign, establishing performance measures, and gathering and analysing key data. The process forms part of Sense’s proprietary EMR service, which has been developed and refined over the past decade.

“We’re lifting the lid on EMR for the first time because we think it’s important that marketers realise that experiential can be measured effectively if approached in the right way,” said Adams. “This is vital to the success of future campaigns as well as for the continuing development of the discipline.”

Real World Impact – A Guide to Measuring Brand Experiences in the Real World is free to download from the Sense website.

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Discover our latest guides to help brighten your brand experience strategy or amplify your retail marketing moves. Get them here at The Futures Lab.

London

5th Floor Century House
100 Oxford Street
London
W1D 1LN

New York

243 E 14th
#2 C/O SQ
New York
NY 10003

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Discover our latest guides to help brighten your brand experience strategy here at The Future Lab

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Experiential

Whether it be Festivals, Trade Shows, PR Stunts, Installations or Pop Ups to name a few, we believe brand experiences are one of the most powerful forms of marketing to impact consumer perception and attitude towards a brand. They can create real behaviour change when born out of a deep consumer insight allied to a compelling idea. And it’s these fundamentals we look to get right whatever the live, virtual or hybrid task in hand.

Sampling.

Sampling is all too often perceived as an unsophisticated, somewhat ‘blunt’ marketing tool. Over the last 16 years Sense has pioneered a set of strategic principles which underpin our unique approach to sampling and which are highly measurable from both an ROI and consumer behaviour change perspective. We will happily guide brands through the myriad of sampling channels and products available so whether it’s mass face to face sampling, in offices, digitally, at home or just a strategic framework that you are after, we can provide a blend of tactics to fulfil both brand and sales objectives.

Retail.

With many clients now focused on activating in channels more closely associated with a sale, our heavyweight retail experience closes the loop on a typical shopper journey by encompassing the moment of truth in store. Be it prize promotions, shopper toolkits, key visual creation, path-to-purchase communications, category strategy, B2B campaigns or Amazon optimisation, our goal is to create forward-thinking retail experiences that deliver demonstrable brand value. We aim to make ‘retail fail’ a thing of the past for ambitious brands looking to thrive is an ever-competitive landscape and believe our streamlined team is perfectly placed to do this.

Foresight.

Knowing what will keep a brand bright, exciting, and vital means we need to keep one step ahead of the curve. Our thought leadership hub, The Futures Lab, helps us to understand the marketing trends of tomorrow. It’s also the origin of strategies and methodologies which have created over 65 award-winning campaigns. 

Rigour.

Creativity is nothing without results. And we know that commissioning bold concepts, capable of changing minds, requires reassurance that it’s the right thing to do. 

Data, insights, and research precedes every campaign we do, and our proprietary measurement tool, EMR, gives us a decade of campaign performance metrics. Which is why we’re proud to have been recognised as industry-leading by brands like The Economist, Coca-Cola, and Molson Coors. 

Trust.

We believe brand experience is inherently more varied than other forms of marketing. No formula, no template, no cookie-cutter approach – and often no precedent. 

That’s why, Sense places trust at the heart of its business – grounded in teamwork between our people and yours. Our processes are efficient, our senior team stay involved and our partnership mentality had helped us sustain powerful client relationships, some lasting over 10 years.