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This winter is the most exciting in recent memory for brand experience innovation

Brand experience innovation is changing the immediate future for experiential and all the benefits that come with it.

Crowds: a thing of the past and a distant sniff of the future, but traditionally a magnet for brands engaging in experiential marketing.

For the past 12 months, brands have been teased with groups coming back together only to see them quickly retreat under shifting guidelines. This has made it near impossible for brands who are largely experience-fuelled to find a physical platform to connect with their audiences. Or has it?

What’s changing?

The past year has taught us a great deal about the art of brand experiences. First, it has shown us the exceptional resilience of the industry and the people within it to keep the ball rolling during troubled times.

Second, we’ve learnt that brand experiences were never really about the environments they took place within. They are about people – brands augmenting their lives to make the every day a little more exciting. Just because the people weren’t on the streets didn’t mean the show couldn’t go on for experiences.

Where is everyone?

It doesn’t take the latest in-depth webinar series to know where people have gone. It turns out we’re adaptable. Rather than turning our back on the activities that were once only possible outside our front doors, we’ve brought our favourite past times into our homes.

According to data from McKinsey, we’ve seen a global increase in intent for activities such as cooking (+54%), at-home entertainment (+40%) and home improvement (+22%). Zoom’s daily user base grew from 10 million to 200 million in the initial three months of lockdown as working away from our offices became the norm. And, according to Shopify, there has been an 18% increase in e-commerce use in the UK for products normally bought in-store as a result of Covid-19.

The challenge for brands

These changes in behaviour have created unexpected new challenges for brands. The issues range from the very broad to the very specific.

For some brands, product trial may be the cornerstone of a marketing strategy. With the dramatic reduction in footfall in environments like commuter hubs and events, these brands now face the challenge of sampling efficiently.

For other brands, engagement may be the foundation of their approach. Content only goes so far – some brands need tangible interactions rather than passive absorption.

Then there are the brands with specific problems that seem almost impossible to overcome in the current climate. For example, the market for on-the-go products bought in convenience stores between the Tube station and the office. How can we address this most specific of problems?

The solution

The good news is solutions do exist for brands with these sorts of issues. Innovation is occurring that represents the immediate future for brand experiences and all the benefits that come with it. And the past few months have seen brands from all categories focusing their attention on reaching audiences at home to great effect.

Seedlip’s latest Dry January social sampling activity used targeted Facebook and Insta ads to allow users to request a sample can, which was then delivered to their home.

Camden Hells partnered with Hello Fresh to offer a profiled audience product samples to complement meals within their weekly recipe boxes, supported by social posts.

John Lewis & Partners offered Christmas virtual crafting workshops and sponsored alcohol-tasting sessions, while Blue Bunny’s “Ice Screen” driveway movies in the US invited neighbourhoods to use social media to request a doorstep visit from the brand’s promotional truck, which turned front yards into outdoor at-home movie theatres.

The common thread here is the continued brand desire to connect with their audience while recognising behavioural and cultural shifts.

Looking to the future

Despite a turbulent few months, this winter is the most exciting in recent memory for brand experience innovation. A few brands have pioneered the “at-home experience movement”, innovation that was necessary regardless of a global pandemic.

Whether or not we are back in festival mode or swarming to city centres, brands no longer need to be driven by these environments to interact with their audiences. The opportunity to engage with consumers in their homes exists. For those willing to grab that opportunity, the chance to stand out from the crowd and drive brand advocacy is enormous.

Lou Garrod is managing director of Sense London, a global brand experience agency.

This article first appeared in Campaign Magazine on 17th February 2021.

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.