Crystal ball gazing 2010

Recession, economic slowdown and employee downsizing are passé. We are entering the 10th year in the new millennium; marketers need to understand and appreciate consumer’s needs and aspiration in a changed environment.
Understanding consumer articulations of category needs and expectations identify future trends with uncanny accuracy.
Let me open a dialog with visionaries, marketers, academia, friends, professionals and peers on the trends that decide the future success and failure of branding and marketing efforts. The trends indicated are from my learning’s and experiences. If you have a different view point please add on or contest enabling us to put together a road map.
Reason to buy
Excessive spending, even on sale items, will continue to be replaced by a reason-to-buy at all. This is trouble for brands with no authentic meaning, whether high-end or low.
“Value” is the buzz word
What makes goods and services valuable will increasingly be what’s wrapped up in the brand and what it stands for? Why Hero Honda instead of Yamaha?
Brand value determines Brand differentiation
The unique meaning of a brand will increase in importance as generic features continue to plague the brand landscape. Awareness as a meaningful market force has long been obsolete, experience and demonstration is current consumers demand and differentiation will be critical for success—meaning sales and profitability.
Brand should become part consumer’s lingo
Brand values can be established as a brand identity, but they must believably exist in the mind of the consumer. A brand can’t just say it stands for something and make it so. The consumer will decide, making it more important than ever for a brand to have measures of authenticity that will aid in brand differentiation and consumer engagement.
Consumer is hungry
Brands are barely keeping up with consumer expectations. Every day consumers adopt and devour the latest technologies and innovations, and only hunger for more. Smarter marketers will identify and capitalize on unmet expectations. Those brands that understand where the strongest expectations exist will be the brands that survive – and prosper.
Old wine in new bottle
In case your brand didn’t get the memo here it is: consumers are on to brands trying to play their emotions for profit. In the wake of the financial debacle of this past year, people are more aware then ever of the hollowness of bank ads that claim “we’re all in this together” when those same banks have rescinded their credit and turned their retirement plan into case studies. Celebrity values and brand values need to be in concert, like Aamir Khan and Teach India. That’s authenticity.
They won’t need to know you, to love you
As the buying space become even more online-driven and international (and uncontrolled by brands and corporations), front-end awareness will become less important. A brand with the right credibility and strong value offering can go viral in days, with awareness following, not leading, the conversation. After all, everybody knows Fiat, but nobody’s buying the cars.
Consumer retention is customer care
Conversation and community is all: ebay thrives based on consumer feedback. If consumers trust the community, they will extend trust to the brand. Not just word of mouth, but the right word of mouth within the community. This means the coming of a new era of customer care.
Thanks to community forums on the internet
Consumers are talking to each other before talking to the brand.Social Networking and exchange of information outside of the brand space will increase. Look for more websites using Facebook Connect to share information with the friends from those sites. More companies will become members of Linkedin. Twitter users will spend more money on the Internet than those who don’t tweet. Mouthshut, Bigadda is extending consumer interface.
Experience, Education, Engagement and Excitement is the order of the day
It’s the way today’s consumers do business.Marketers will come to accept that there are four engagement methods including Platform (TV, offline, online), Context (Program, webpage), Message (Ad or Communication), and Experience (Store/Event). But there is only one objective for the future: Brand Engagement. Marketers will continue to realize that attaining real brand engagement is impossible using out-dated attitudinal models.
Accommodating these trends will require a paradigm change on the parts of some companies. But whether a brand does something about it or not, the future is where it’s going to spend the rest of its life.How long that life is up to the brand, determined by how it responds to today’s reality.

Brand Experience Vs Customer Retention

Branding is all about getting into the customer’s mind and offering her a product/service that so dovetails into her needs that loyalty is a foregone conclusion. Real world dynamics, competition and me-too products and services however act as spoilers in the marketing space. Consumers too have become more brand-savvy and with increased brand expectations, it’s becoming tougher for marketers to deliver on their brand promise to potential and existing customers. So, what’s the way out for marketers?

Enter, Brand Experience
Experiential marketing can be defined as a marketing initiative that delivers consistent levels of brand information, comprehension and familiarity to consumers at each and every touch point. This ensures that there is no gap between the brand promise and the brand delivery. It offers an emotional connect between the brand and customers by providing truly “wow” experiences. Experiential marketing attempts to connect consumers with brands in personally relevant and memorable ways.

Further, experiential marketing gives customers an opportunity to engage and interact with brands, products, and services in sensory ways. Personal experiences help people connect with a brand and make intelligent and informed purchasing decisions. The term "Experiential Marketing" refers to actual customer experiences with the brand/product/service that drive sales and enhance brand image and awareness. It's the difference between telling people about features of a product or service and letting them experience the benefits for themselves. When done right, it's the most powerful tool to win brand loyalty.

A Smile, a smell, a touch, a taste, a thoughtful gesture, all add to the buying experience. Positive experiences need to become institutionalized within the system so that all touch points deliver the brand essence. In short, it is a tool that helps influence a buying decision.

The Art of Customer Retention
Once the buying decision has been made and a customer has been acquired, a different process begins: relationship maintenance. Customer retention techniques can help ensure that the customer stays loyal to the brand and is not lured away by competitors. Modern companies realize that it's far more expensive to find new customers than keep existing ones, and therefore it has become absolutely mandatory to invest in existing customer relationships and ensure that they keep growing in a mutually-beneficial manner.
Customer retention involves the use of knowledge discovery methods in order to ensure actions that existing customers’ needs are met and they remain loyal to the brand.

Understanding Customer Retention
Customer Retention is not Customer Satisfaction. Indicators of customer retention include customers' actions, repeat business, purchase of ancillary services, recommendations to others, willingness to pay premium price and frequency of purchase. These factors can be easily quantified and measured by the rupee value of each action. Customer retention strategy supports customer experience.
The customer retention rate refers to the number of customers lost over a period of time. It is normally calculated by the percentage of lost customers versus existing customers over a quarterly or annual period, without tallying new customer acquisitions.
Employee loyalty and engagement has a direct relationship to customer behaviour. Employees are capable of directly contributing to both customer disappointment and customer delight. It is essential that companies have a research and analysis method that links staff performance to customer behaviour, so that they can hire, train, recognize and reward employees for how their contribution towards customer value.

How to Build a Customer Retention strategy?
Customer loyalty is all about driving perceived value, whether that is rational (functional, quality, cost, etc.), emotional (trust, service, communication, information, brand equity, etc.) or a combination of these two dimensions. To build a strong Customer Retention strategy, it’s important to identify what leverages top-end customer commitment and advocacy behaviour, and then build customer experience around it. Unfortunately as of date both internationally and domestically there is no standard schedule that confirms the periodicity of the communication that improves and builds brand loyalty. It’s observed that customers reported an interest in receiving communication from brands as long as they could see personal value in each message.

When it comes to building a customer loyalty strategy, we recommend businesses to use these six questions as a guide:

1. What are the expectations of our customers and what it will take to exceed them?
2. What differentiates your brand in the eyes of our customers?
3. To what extent can we grow the business with existing customers?
4. How do interactions with customers affect their satisfaction and buying behaviour?
5. Are there any customer segments that require different treatment?
6. How loyal is the customer base and how can it be improved?

How to Implement Customer Retention program?
A road map for implementing a Customer Retention Program should include

• Appropriate research for identifying the benefits.
• Testing them for prospective customer interest and effectiveness.
• Following up with further research once implemented to make certain that the Customer Retention program is working.

Let’s examine a real life discussion between a Brand Manager, Marketing Director and Manager - After Sales Service.

Brand Manager – Am calling off the new Brand Experience initiative for our refrigerators range that we have rolled in 15 cities as of yesterday.

Marketing Director – It’s too early; the EM agency needs some more time to settle…give them another 3 to 4 days. Don’t be anxious.

Brand Manager – But Ravinder; it’s an investment down the drain. In fact the feed back from all the Area Sales Managers is that the Agency is doing an excellent job. In fact the team has thorough knowledge, is proactive and well disciplined.

Marketing Director – Then what’s the problem! Sit; let me get some coffee organized.

Brand Manager - Boss the customers are downright abusive; they are calling us a non-user friendly corporation with no business ethics.

Marketing Director – That’s a serious accusation. Is this the feedback you have from all the ASM’s? (Brand Manager nods his head in acceptance) That’s really shocking! Tell me more.

Brand Manager - Given the poor track record of our companies After Sales Service to current customers, both potential and current customers are not appreciating our Brand Experience efforts for the new range of refrigerators. Unfortunately we have just acquired them; but there is no investment in maintenance of existing customers.

Marketing Director – Let’s call in the Manager - After Sales Service over for this meeting.

Brand Manager – Sure; but Boss let’s stop the Customer Activation program for a month; make the necessary efforts to streamline After Sales Service.

Marketing Director – That’s a good idea. Please communicate to the Sales Director and all the ASMs regarding this decision.

Manager – After Sales Service joins the meeting.

Marketing Director – Hey Ram, our poor track record in attending to customers complaints has landed us in trouble. Our Customer Retention Program is today affecting our Customer Activation efforts for our new range of refrigerators that we have started yesterday across 15 cities.

Manager - After Sales Service - You're confusing Customer Retention and Customer Activation.

Marketing Director – I disagree, the two are connected. Past experience in terms of Customer Care is going to influence the brand decision. The customers are most reluctant to buy our range of refrigerators... However good your trial generation is, if the past experience is bad you'll never buy into that brand. To say that one doesn’t affect the other is myopic.

Brand Manager - In my opinion there is a need for greater connect between different functions of the Corporation, enabling enhancement of brand experience; ensuring better returns for the marketer.
Marketing Director – In the past the customer would just bad mouth about his experience with our brands to 10-20 friends. Now thanks to the internet anybody wanting to buy a product and doing internet research reads about the bad experience…..So how do you handle it... great Customer Activation is not going to go very far in countering this, if our Customer Service Department is not put in order.

Key Learning’s

1. Brand that gives Customer Satisfaction through Customer Retention will benefit with positive Customer Activation; whereas the Brand that doesn’t deliver satisfaction leads to negative customer activation.
2. The problem is in segregating these two aspects. From the consumers’ point of view there is an overlap... and it doesn’t matter how you define Customer Activation or Customer Retention. What matters is the overall experience that the brand gives to the customer? Is it positive, negative or neutral?
3. Most marketers may not agree with the problem. In fact marketers are looking at the brand deliverance from their point of view... but to succeed in today's environment, and with today's customer you have to put yourself in the consumers’ shoes...
4. Great Customer Activation but poor After Sales Service will result in negative word of mouth impacting the brand image. In short, there has to be a cohesive way of looking at brand experience holistically.
5. Today marketers have all the data they need about the consumers; all it needs is combining those databases and using them to create more benefit for customers. This would enable experiential marketing that can truly live up to its name for not just new trials/consumers, but for all existing customers.

We need to work towards a principle of ‘Good to Great’.
Customers today is all about CARE, Retention and instant gratification, and there’s nothing like brand loyalty. “Every customer that walks in is an opportunity, and every customer that walks out without evaluating the offer, is an opportunity wasted”.

Experiential Marketing – The new science of involving and engaging Consumers

Experiential Marketing gives customer an opportunity to engage and interact with the brand product and services. Experiencing product helps people to get direct connect to the brand and help consumer to make intelligent and informed purchasing decision.Experiential Marketing drives traffic; create awareness among the right user and helps the brand in increasing the sales.

It makes lots of difference telling people about the features of the product or services and letting them experience the benefits for themselves helps the brand to reach a loyal consumers segment.

In today’s scenario if we look at the number of channels increasing rapidly, 47% of the consumers switch the channel when the ad comes, 17 % of them who saw the ad recall the brand name. 64 % of the consumers are saying experiential is an effective tool for a brand and memorable.

Experiential Marketing as a tool

Consumer get chance to interact with the brand rather than just getting ‘told, about the brand by television.Consumers believe that the experiential marketing is more personal form of advertising.The one who is representing your brand should be trained thoroughly about the features of your brand. The promotional staff should be friendly and interactive. They should encourage customer to try the product, which they would not normally purchase.

Experiential marketing is emerging as an essential element of the marketing mix. The secret of success is integration. Companies often spend millions perfecting their marketing message with a heavyweight media campaign only to execute live activity that is not reflective of the brand’s consistent communication with buyers.

Consumer Believes

• Traditional media is no longer impactful
• Consumers want trial and interaction before purchasing
• They want to be educated about the product
• They remember experiential campaigns that stimulate interest, emotion and excitementIn addition, tell others about their experience about the brand.( word of mouth spreads)

Can influence become part of your marketing strategy?

"That's the million dollar question,".

With the rise of individual voices and the eroding effectiveness of mass marketing techniques, it's no wonder that so many marketing and communications disciplines are enamored with cracking the code on influence.

Specifically, influence among people.
So let me address the core question: What is influence? According to Oxford, influence has a number of related definitions: 1. The power or ability to affect someone's beliefs or actions. 2. A person or thing with such ability or power. 3 The power arising out of status, contacts, or wealth. 4 The power to produce a physical change.

For better or worse, I've seen marketing and communications professionals tackle all these definitions of influence from a variety of angles in recent months. Here are just a few, which range from elementary and practical, to academic:

Influence Identification: Can it be identified? Can it be measured? Can it be harnessed? Has nature determined any given person more influential than another? Or are there specific variables that ultimately determine influence, such as popularity, reach, expertise, trust, willingness to speak, history, or association?

Group Influence: What are the influence dynamics of groups? How do they differ from individuals? Are cohesive groups really more influential over their members? What brings them together and inspires them to act? How are people influenced by the cognitions and attitudes of others in their social group?

Emotional Impact on Influence: How do emotions affect the ability of one to influence or be influenced? Are happy people more likely to influence, while sad people are more likely to be influenced? How much is primal and in our subconscious?

Contextual Impact: How much does context or familiarity matter for influence to occur? As Jeff Jarvis noted at Edelman's recent roundtable on online influence, it wasn't necessarily his influence that sparked Dell Hell. It was the fact that his experience struck a chord with the pain of thousands of other customers across the Internet. Which then begs the question: Does influence behave differently online versus offline?

Influence of Algorithms: How do algorithms -- particularly in Web services - influence people? Does Google influence by defining what people see and where to focus attention? Do search-based "meme trackers" like Techmeme or BuzzTracker have inordinate influence versus other information sources? What about social-voting sites like Digg or Del.icio.us? Do algorithms cultivate the influence of individual people?

Influence Application: Can influence really inform marketing communications strategy to achieve higher performance? Does it make better sense to segment and market to those who are most influential, or those who are most easily influenced? Or is it a mix of both? Can we influence the influencers, or are we limited to simply observing and reacting to their actions and ripples?

Are these even the right question when applying influence to marketing strategy?

With all the attention around influence, and many unanswered questions, what we need most is more practical testing, tied to specific marketing objectives and applications. The marketer's Holy Grail of influence is the ability to recognize patterns and optimize outcomes -- whether for advertising, media-planning, public relations, word-of-mouth marketing, etc.

Without question, influence often rides on nothing more than spontaneity.

However, deeper understanding will lead to bets and actions with more favorable odds.

Can influence be part of our marketing strategy?

Integrate, Engage and Impact Consumers…..

Maarketing is an art and a science but in the rough-and-tumble of developing strategies, growing market shares and reaching out to consumers, what is often forgotten is that successful marketing needs a connect with consumers at the emotional level. Marketing is about emotional bonding with consumers. And that’s where Experiential Marketing can play a significant role.

As marketers, we live in a time of enormous change. The consumers we want to reach are empowered with more product choices, more sources of information and more ways of receiving— and resisting—marketing messages than ever before.

We can decide that these new realities make our jobs as marketers a lot harder— or we can figure out how to do our jobs as marketers better.

There are two ways we can do our jobs better. First, in an age when the consumer is in control, we can ask consumers how they want to be reached and engaged. Second, we can innovate new marketing solutions that reflect these preferences. It is in this spirit that many leading marketers are investing growing sums in live experiences and events that reach consumers directly, when and where they are most receptive. It also enables marketers to avoid the high costs of mass media advertising.

A random dip-stick study about the impact of experiential marketing reveals that marketers can tune into their consumers needs in a manner that is more consumer-friendly. Some of the findings are highlighted below.

In a comparative scenario, 50% of all respondents said Experiential Marketing was more likely to cause them to consider and marketing was their preferred method of hearing about the product overall. Purchase influence was even greater in response to other product scenarios: it’s observed that, 50% men and 63% of women agree Experiential Marketing was more likely to lead to actual purchase of a personal care product. For many demographics, live events are also the preferred medium of communication. Across demographics, 66% feel that Experiential Marketing helps shape their opinion of brands and products; 70% state that participating in experiential marketing would increase purchase consideration; and 57% accept it would result in quicker purchase.

Marketers should be confident that experiential initiatives could yield strong response across demographics. However, response is significantly stronger among women (who make and wield significantly greater influence on purchase decisions across categories) and among the 10 to 18 year-old consumers (who are extremely important to future growth of a brand.)

Consumers want marketing to be informative, relevant—and experiential
What messages are most important for marketers to communicate to consumers across gender, age and ethnicity groups?

Here’s what consumers are telling marketers:
1) “give me information”;
2) “explain what the product/brand stands for”; and
3) “relate to me through my interests and concerns”

Interestingly, almost all groups also agree on how brands can best communicate these messages: by giving them a chance to see and experience products and brands for themselves, either at an event or in a store. Almost half of all consumers say that direct, one-on-one interaction such as that provided by experiential marketing is more effective than TV, radio, print, the Internet, mail or hearing from someone they know to give them the information they want, explain what the product or brand stands for and demonstrate its relevance.

Across product categories, consumers want to be engaged
In 11 out of 14 categories, consumers indicate an overwhelming preference for learning about products either by seeing and trying them for themselves at an event or in a store or by hearing about the products from someone they know. Personal engagement is at the heart of the issue. Men and women respond to experiential marketing efforts in the categories of food and beverages, music and entertainment and computers. Women are more receptive to experiences related to personal and household products and healthcare, and men more receptive to experiences related to electronic games, cars and banking and financial services.

Impact increases when consumers are in a shopping state of mind
The rise of new retail formats is enabling marketers to better connect with consumers. Interactive and theatrical displays, retail innovations are at the forefront of the experiential economy. Not surprisingly, consumers demonstrate greater receptiveness to experiential marketing when they are already primed to be in a shopping state of mind. 68% of men and 74% of women named retail settings (stores and shopping malls) as their number one location for being engaged by experiential marketing. The majority of men and women would be willing to spend more time there (15 minutes). In a scenario relating to a cell phone product, 76% of men and 80% of women said they would most prefer a live marketing event were they to encounter it “opportunistically”.

Experiential Marketing is enhanced by and builds word-of-mouth
Experiential Marketing is strongly linked to “word-of-mouth,” a trusted form of marketing among consumers in an age when so many communications are virtual and impersonal. Word-of-mouth is the most effective source of event awareness, with nearly two-thirds of consumers (63% men, 64% women) indicating they would be most likely to participate in an event after hearing about it from someone they know; in contrast, less than a third say that hearing about an event from media would have a similar effect.

More importantly, almost 75% of consumers indicate that after participating in an event they would tell others about the experience, a response that is even higher among women and teens. Indeed, of the consumers who had participated in a live event marketing experience in the past, almost 8 out of 10 report they told others about the experience.

Consumers connect lifestyle to Experiential Marketing
Associating products and brands with positive lifestyle touch points is an effective way the impact of marketing messages. Indeed, 70% of all consumers say they would be much more likely to try a product or brand after participating in a live event marketing experience associated with something they enjoy. The challenge for marketers is to identify appropriate lifestyle touch points for their targets.

Past participation in Experiential Marketing fueled consideration/purchase
It is observed that; teenagers are the most enthusiastic about Experiential Marketing. While nearly 47% of consumers agree that positive Experiential Marketing exercise led to significant increases in purchase consideration, this figure rose to 72% among 10 – 18 year olds. A significantly high percentage of women too – nearly 39% - reported that their positive experience led to actual, post-event purchase of the product or brand. What’s more, 8 in 10 said they told others about the experience.

Experiential marketing enhances overall marketing effectiveness
Further, investing in experiential marketing clearly enhances response to other marketing media. 75% of consumers agree that participating in experiential marketing for a brand or product would make them more receptive to its advertising; 68% say experiential marketing would make them more receptive to a brand’s overall marketing efforts.

Lesson for marketers: “Experience to Influence”
The ultimate lesson for marketers—to borrow a phrase from the title of an influential essay by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore 3—is that “experience to influence”

Across demographics and product categories, consumers view experiences that engage them directly as their preferred means of learning about brands and understanding how brands are relevant to their lifestyles. They see experiences as more likely to influence consideration and purchase. And many even see experiences as a preferred marketing medium across the board. As consumers themselves are saying, there are ample opportunities to reach and engage them through marketing experiences. For marketers, the rapidly expanding experiential landscape provides a rich ground for growing stronger brands, products and consumer relationships.

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.