Experiential Marketing – The new Mantra for Brand Management

Does experiential Marketing make or break the future of Brands?

Experiential marketing is the next marketing methodology that can bridge the disconnect between consumers' increasing demand to engage marketers and brands on their own terms, and the slow-footed reluctance of traditional marketers to move away from mass-media marketing and the one-way, command-and-control ways of building brands they have been accustomed to for decades.

Traditional marketers continue to contend that mass media is still relevant to the consumer, especially when launching a new brand. But a brand doesn't need mass marketing in order to be born and grow. An experiential approach to launching a brand may be more effective and relevant than anything that television ads can offer.

Indian Brand managers need to take note of these experiential inititives. A strong brand can no longer shield a company from competition, nor can it ensure that customers stay loyal to it. Product differentiation is no longer a viable strategy for creating value in the mind of the consumer. Products are reverse-engineered almost as fast as they can be developed, making product enhancements a short-lived advantage. Products are also becoming congested with too many features, making it difficult for the consumer to distinguish one product from another. I believe this environment forces brand managers to find new ways to create and maintain a relationship between their product or service and the customer in a way that makes their brand more than just a fancy nameplate on the front of a product. Experiential marketing is the new way.

Clearly, brands are not as strong as brand managers and traditional marketers claim. In fact, the proliferation of brands is not a sign of strength, but one of inherent weakness. The larger the number of brands in a company's portfolio, the greater the overlap of brands on consumer segments, positioning, price and distribution channels. Many brands in a portfolio end up competing against each other rather than against those of the competition.

Perhaps this is why some leading companies are choosing to forgo brand extensions for something more experiential. As empowered consumers are increasingly demanding better products and services, and thereby disproving the notion of brand loyalty, brands are beginning to team up with each other to offer consumers a new type of brand that answers this demand. It is now no longer surprising to see two, three, or four separate brands combine their core competencies to launch a so-called "branded brand." Brand managers are becoming aware that the consumer is demanding a better experience with the brand. The same applies to experiential marketing. Quite often, an experiential marketing campaign will align a number of partnering brands to enhance the marketing experience. The experiences multiple brands combine to drive buzz about a brand, and the more experiential the marketing, the better the buzz.

Of course, a person's feelings about a company can be shaped by something as simple as word of mouth. Typically, though, it's the product of a series of direct and indirect experiences, each adding or subtracting from perceived status. In effect, a brand is the sum of the customer's experiences with the relevant product or company. It is transmitted in every interaction with the customer over the lifetime of the relationship.

So why would traditional marketers continue to support their brands with marketing interaction that the consumer no longer responds to? Consumers are more skeptical than ever about marketing and advertising, and often tune out marketing messages completely. This only serves to magnify the imperative for brand managers to find out and appreciate how the empowered consumer understands their brand, and how consumers are interacting with them differently than before. By engaging in experiential marketing campaigns, brand marketers are able to gain valuable insight into this realm by interacting directly with consumers outside of the mass-media landscape.

The primacy of the brand in marketing is over. Brand managers are losing control over them to an empowered and proactive consumer base. Instead of a consumer economy in which success is determined in large part by name, it's now being determined by performance. The element of product performance is a key component to experiential marketing campaigns today. “Try before you buy" stores, or the 24-hour test-drives being offered by car manufacturers around the world. The consumers themselves, through experiential elements, are now also driving brands. The marketing industry is being radically changed from a mass-media landscape to more individualized, fragmented and personal media choices. If brands are to survive in the near future, they need to appropriate experiential marketing tenets in order to deal with this transformation.

This requires more effort than the typical brand manager or traditional marketer is often willing to expend. It requires a rethinking of how to engage consumers personally and how to open dialogue with brands-a rethinking that hasn't been possible with the instinctive dependence on mass media that has characterized marketing and advertising since the late 1940s.

The new forces emerging in the marketplace place a focus on consumer experience as paramount to doing business. There is no such thing as advertising any more. Advertising has jumped the shark. Everything is marketing now. And marketing must be based on the consumer experience.

The business successes achieved by focusing on customer experience is exactly why experiential marketing is becoming increasingly important to any company's marketing mix. It may be a modest percentage now, but it will inexorably grow. Companies will soon be forced by the consumer to adopt experiential marketing tactics and strategies in order to reach them. Instead of relying solely on advertising, brands will seek out events where the consumer can physically interact with them. Marketing campaigns will need to deliver clear benefits to consumers, allowing causal marketing to take a more prominent role in a company's marketing plans. Consumer engagement and empowerment will become instrumental to driving sales.

Marketers will have to find niche markets for their brands, and mass-media advertising will not be able to help them. Instead, going grassroots with marketing programs will prove to be even more necessary than in the past. Communications planning will be taken to the next level. No longer will a network television buy be as effective as determining when and where the consumer is most receptive to marketing messages. Marketing will have to deliver context to its messages. This makes a methodology like product placement as something less than the panacea that traditional mass marketers hope it will be. Marketers can no longer afford a "one-size-fits-all" approach to mass media. Each campaign's creative will have to be tailored to accommodate the media vehicle-television, Internet, mobile telephony, word of mouth, face-to-face, etc. Take a look at the gaming industry and its experiments with advergaming. This may hold the clues to the immediate future of advertising where, again, contextual experience is king, because a mass buckshot approach without it is no longer viable.

More far reaching is what experiential marketing holds for the future of our everyday experiences with brands and services. Experiential marketing can make brands important again. Instead of marketers spending their time on new products, line extensions, or new-and-improved packaging, they should concentrate on their existing marketing strategies to see how they are engaging, benefiting and empowering their customers. If they do this, they may just invent a product or service that can actually change our lives. Think iPod.