Experiential Marketing

Chapter Ten Converting to an Experience Brand

Congratulations. You’ve made it this far—and if you’re ready to commit to adopting an experiential strategy for your company or your brand, then some important, and potentially uncomfortable, decisions lie ahead. For it’s not enough to understand the theories and mimic some of the great campaign examples you’ve read about. In order to reap the rewards of experiential marketing—stronger relationships, better marketing ROI, and increased business impact—then you must prepare your organization to embrace the strategy by taking seven very specific steps.

STEP 1. Identify Your Fronts

The first step is to narrow your marketing focus around the key “fronts” that you will use as platforms from which to build partnerships and programs. Your fronts should align your brand with the interests, passions, and demographics of your customers. For a luxury auto brand like Lexus, for example, their fronts are Affluent Sports, Eco-Luxury Living, Enthusiasts, and Epicurean, and it’s around these fronts that the company concentrates its experiential efforts by seeking established events like food and wine festivals that are relevant to their customer base, where they can create a significant presence, and where that presence is authentic to the brand.

But in order to be truly experiential, your brand cannot just “be there.” Your presence must improve the event, improve perception of the event, and improve the perception of your brand or company by ...