Agencies Everywhere See Experiential Marketing as the Next Big Thing, and Brands Want In

Advertisers haven’t had to look too far for negative news lately. But as broadcast spending dips and clients question the safety and effectiveness of digital buys, more and more agencies are turning toward a rare bright spot in the ad world: experiential marketing.

“Experiential work is where the rubber hits the road—where advertising meets the Amazon review, quote unquote,” says Denise Wong, president of George P. Johnson Experiential Marketing. “We can not only go out with a brand’s message and promise, but give consumers a chance to try it.”

This sort of work sells both products surrounded by experiences and experiences doubling as products. And brands want in on it.

“Yes, brands are definitely starting to invest more in experiential projects, and you’re seeing more competition from highly creative smaller agencies,” says Debbie Kaplan, evp of experiential marketing at WPP’s Geometry Global. “Ad and PR agencies are all jumping on the bandwagon.”

“Two or three years ago, clients saw it as an incremental spend,” Wong reveals. “Now they’re moving dollars previously slated for media or broadcast into experiential.”

One might attribute this change to basic human nature. Consumers can easily skip, mute or block TV and digital ads, but attending an event or absorbing an experience is a decision. In many cases, it also constitutes a purchase—even if the currency is time or the sort of behavioral and demographic data marketers crave.

“I’m not here to say that traditional channels are dead, but 89 percent of ad content is ignored by the consumer,” says AgencyEA co-founder Fergus Rooney, whose Chicago firm has seen clients increase their experiential spend by 10 to 14 percent year over year. In explaining the shift, Wong cites the “value of sharing an experience with somebody, which you can’t really do when you’re watching an ad,” as well as the wide range of content that springs from each event.

Giant Spoon project manager Patrick Jong puts things a bit more succinctly: “No one is tweeting or posting about a billboard.”

At Comic-Con in San Diego, the Blade Runner 2049 Experience presented by Johnnie Walker had fans chasing VR replicants.

In almost every case, that’s true—but MullenLowe Open global CEO Anthony Hopper also sees experiential complementing conventional creative rather than displacing it. “The line between traditional and experiential is becoming blurred,” he notes. “More often than not, our events can be turned into ads and broadcast through either digital platforms or TV.”

Rooney, who got his start in catering, now handles projects that range from planning the annual MillerCoors Distributor Convention to setting up a temporary tattoo booth for Clif Bar at the Pitchfork Music Festival. The integrated team at MullenLowe livestreamed a five-man Royal Caribbean cruise to Times Square tourists via Periscope. And for the past eight years, George P. Johnson has managed Dreamforce, a three-day tech spree in which 175,000 would-be thought leaders descend on San Francisco, bringing traffic to a halt while bonding over the not-so-dark arts of IT and email marketing. Past attractions have ranged from a Tesla raffle and a street covered in astroturf to a life-sized bust of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made of Legos.

You’re invited to a VIP-only private party

The pivot from party planning to brand experience design didn’t happen overnight. Los Angeles-based lifestyle marketing agency Cashmere organizes star-studded activations for brands like Adidas, Universal Pictures and Uber Eats, along with promos for longtime client Snoop Dogg. But the group started with what evp and chief creative officer Ryan Ford calls “street teams” hired to design and distribute flyers promoting area hip-hop shows.

“It’s experiential marketing on a very small level,” Ford says. “You have to know where these people you’re trying to target are hanging out, and you can design the flyer in a way so that they will still look at it even when it’s on the sidewalk.” All marketers can relate to this endless search for impressions.

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This story first appeared in the Oct. 2, 2017, issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Patrick Coffee

@PatrickCoffee

Patrick Coffee is a senior editor for Adweek.