Today hippy ice-cream brand Ben & Jerry’s announced that it is renaming one of its flavours, from Oh! My! Apple Pie! to Apple-y Ever After, to support the UK proposal to legislate same sex marriage (hear, hear). This isn’t the first time Ben & Jerry’s have voiced their support for the gay community. Back in 2009, they renamed an ice-cream Hubby Bubby, formerly Chubby Hubby in celebration of the legalisation of gay marriage in its home state of Vermont.
Aside from the social merits of this bold move, you also have to applaud the use of their own assets (i.e. the name of their ice-cream) to reaffirm the brands free-thinking reputation. In a world of shrinking advertising budgets and media fragmentation, smart brands are exploiting their greatest assets to drive business. Food for thought.
The world’s greatest restaurant (not that I’ve been – hint hint) just got better. Heston’s “Fat Duck” culinary experience now begins long before the physical dining experience itself.
Once lucky diners have made a reservation, they are emailed an exclusive link to an animated journey that is designed to wet their appetites (created by The Neighbourhood).
“Our animated journey takes the diners through a series of evocative landscapes and visual cues that they will discover during their visit, encountering a series of reward mechanisms through imagined worlds, to arrive at the door of a sweetshop.
Once inside, the visual stimulus is removed leaving a curious world of sound guided by John Hurt’s narration as the shopkeeper. The narration and rich binaural audio soundscape allows guests to recall their own childhood sweetshop, imagining the sights, sounds and smells through a combination of stimuli and memory.”
“Taste” is just one of eight steps in Heston’s multi-sensory journey. The journey is designed to touch all the senses. This is in stark contrast to typical advertising which, for the most part, works by appealing to people’s eyes and ears only.
The notion of multi-sensory advertising (especially when it comes to food) has long fascinated me. Food is an incredibly emotional and sensory experience (for me anyway), and the opportunity for brands and advertisers to tap into this is huge (and under exploited). Rarely does advertising touch all the senses – but when used (correctly), has the power to be more meaningful, more memorable, more emotional.
Who better to bring this to life than Heston Blumenthal. His multi-sensory reservation experience is a smart way to deepen the emotional engagement with diners, and extend the relationship beyond the physical dining experience.
So after almost a year of working in a new discipline (experiential if you hadn’t guessed it from the title), have a learnt anything new? I bloody well hope so.
I have personally come to define experiential as this…
“Live marketing that connects people with brands in the real world”.
Yep that’s it. Simple, broad, but true.
One of the biggest mistakes when it comes to experiential marketing is thinking of it as a channel. It’s not. It’s a mindset. It’s all about experiencing the brand for real. When viewed as a mindset and not a channel, the opportunities really open up. There are no boundaries when it comes to experiential marketing, it can be or do anything – from product trial to brand building. Or with the likes of “experience brands” such as Nike and Red Bull, an essential part of your Brand DNA.
So is it expensive? I’m afraid so. Is it worth your while? Yes (done well). Even though experiential marketing can be a more expensive form of marketing per head, the real value (when you get it right) lies in the longer, deeper, real-life engagement with people. No other form of marketing can match.
Experiential is multi-sensory, which makes it more engaging, more emotional, more memorable. What better way for Thorntons to market chocolate than to touch all the senses – no other form of marketing would achieve the same sensory effect.
Experiential (often) requires active participation, and therefore there is a higher level of involvement with the brand. Nike Grid used experiential to shift perceptions of running among young people who felt running is lonely and boring – rather than just telling them, they created a real world game to prove it.
Experiential is personal. Consumers’ today are increasingly demanding a much more personal relationship with the brands they choose – experiential delivers a very personalised two-way dialogue with your target audience. “Swap for swag” allowed Coca-Cola to engage in a genuine dialogue with 0.5M festival goers to to educate them as to benefits of recycling and incentivising them with rewards – made out of recycled products. Rather than preaching to them…
Experiential marketing is authentic. In a world dominated by virtual and hypothetical situations, authentic real live experiences count for so much more (whereas other forms of advertising can lack realness and credibility). T-Mobile’s Life’s For Sharing campaign driven by real world events-based true experiences has sparked talkability and sharing, time and time again.
As awesome as experiential can be, it works best when it underpins other marketing efforts and vice versa (rather than in isolation), and when it adds value (rather than interrupt) to people’s lives, e.g. to entertain, to educate, to be of use.
A year on, I’m a little clearer. I hope you are too.
After two weeks of sun, sea, and sand, I’m back at work and ready to be inspired. Fortunately today, I am just that. Here are some effing great ads you’ve probably already seen as I’m two weeks out of touch. A long time in the world of advertising. I hear Pinterest is the new Facebook or sumink (the usual nonsense). Anywho…
Invisible Mercedes.
Not only is it invisible to the environment, it’s actually bloody invisible. Nuff said.
The Guardian “Three Little Pigs”.
A well known story re-told in the digital age. Inspired.
IKEA Berora.
A touch-screen friendly glove and awesome IKEA invention. Where do I buy??
As this dreary cold January comes to a close (finally), I came across these miniture gardens to brighten up our day. A beautiful blend of art and gardening.
The Pothole Gardener plants in potholes and weed-filled patches in East London (where else). A brilliantly simple way to add a little magic to something that is otherwise ordinary. Part art project, part labour of love, part experiment – it’s all designed to put smiles on our faces. And boy does it.
The Olympic Games are a marketers dream – the audiences are humongous and there is passion in abundance. In the words of Nelson Mandela (yeah I’m quoting Nelson)… “the Olympics has the power to change the world. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does”. The 2008 Beijing Olympics generated a decent amount of buzz in the social media world. There is no doubt that social media will play an even greater role in the London 2012 Olympics experience, game-changing you might say. It will be exciting to observe the first “fully digital” Olympic Games in history.
1. Behind the scenes reporting
Fervent athletes at London 2012 have been given the green light to use their Twitter accounts during the games. There are rules of course – the International Olympic Committee has warned athletes tweeting for commercial purposes or using “vulgar or obscene words or images” (no pissing Paula), and only from the first person. However, athletes are “actively encouraged to take part in social media”, which even includes photos and videos (that’s rich media to you). There is no doubt in my mind that we will hugely benefit from having a direct line of communication to an amazing group of diverse people, all with unique opinions and experiences to share with the world.
2. Yoot engagement
Integrating social media into the heart of London 2012 has the power to bring it to a critical mass audience and increase its popularity – particularly among the younger digital generation (the yoot). Let’s face it – love it or hate it, it will be unavoidable in social media when it all kicks off. Could social media make the greatest difference simply by getting the yoot – first-timers – to engage with the games and their community? A far cry from this year’s riots. Olympic silver medallist and former world champion Roger Black, has said “London 2012 is a great chance to get kids and young athletes involved in technology as they enjoy sport”.
3. Sharing
The sharing aspect of social media will make it easier than ever to pass along talk-worthy Olympic content and stories to your friends, family, and the world. Who knows what it will be – highlights, lowlights, spoofs, whatever, but I’m expecting everyone to jump all over this one. Plus BT plans to increase the number of Wi-Fi hotspots in the capital to 500,000 in time for the Games, which will make sharing stuff in real-time even better.
4. Unpredictability
With an Olympics that everyone has been able to see coming for years, organisers and sponsors have had plenty of time to get their social media “ducks in line”. However, if they didn’t already know, that users of social media are anything but ducks; if you try to direct them to think in one way, they’ll go another. And then some. There is no telling what will go right or wrong, but we can be sure as hell that social will be at the heart of it all – fanning the flames and spreading the word. This is the really exciting part, and we don’t even know what it is yet.
Campaign’s War of the Words took place 8th December 2011 in Kings Cross. It’s a conference, but like…not a dull one. It’s a war between the best of the under 30’s from planning, creative, brands, and media. Which is why I was surprised to be invited to speak (representing the next generation of misfit planners). I’m not usually one for competitive public speaking, but I’m not one to turn down an opportunity either, so I obliged.
(I’m the girl)
We had just 15 minutes each to pitch our idea (to reverse the decline in favourability toward advertising) to a daunting crowd, with the winners of each round being voted on by the crowd – via cool electronic keypads (epic). To top things off, there were three lovely (if not slightly intimidating) judges to scrutinise our ideas. It was like X Factor for marketers. Justin Gibbons was our Dermot, and a great one at that. I was probably more like Jedward.
Any who, my arguement was that the advertising industry are too self-orientated, too self-obsessed. We’re all like “me me me” and we don’t even realise it. According to the Trust Equation (by Galford and Drapeau), this is the most important factor in trust, and it takes away from your trustworthiness…
Trust = Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy /
Self-Orientation
I believe that the advertising industry operates within its own make-believe bubble. And we tend to look within the advertising bubble (ad blogs, previous awards winners, etc) for inspiration for new ideas, when really that is the last place you should be looking. One of the biggest problems with living in this bubble is believing that people care a lot about your brand. When in reality, they do not. Fact.
Quite simply, we need to lower our Self-Orientation by thinking of the advertising bubble less, and the real world more. It’s not about thinking less of yourself. It’s about thinking of yourself less, and others more. If you use your eyes to look out and not to be looked into (Stephen Fry’s wise words), then people will trust you in return, and unexpected opportunities will open up.
My ideas to lower our Self-Orientation (in short):
1. Hire misfits (Avoid gravitating towards people like yourself and hiring clones, instead, hire people from outside the advertising bubble with fresh ideas who challenge you.)
2. Get “out and about” (Spend less time at your desk during working hours, and more time experiencing new things and talking to the people you’re trying to influence – not other advertising folk. Simple, but it’s rarely done).
3. Abolish the Case Study Video (While they are “nice” at times, they are the epitome of Self-Orientation – they’re advertising about advertising for advertising’s sake. This is a plea to the awards people: we MUST get rid.)
And to bring to life point 3 (and the general ridiculousness of advertising’s Self-Orientation), I played the Pink Ponies case study – a satirical take on the case study video. Friggin’ awesome.
This years winners included myself (planning), my pal Be Pringle (creative), the smart Ashish Pathak (brands), and the charming Oliver Deane (media). The ultimate winner of the day was Tony Jiang, who was the winner of Huff Po’s open mic section for the under 25’s. A very fitting end to an incredible day.
You can check out the highlights and interviews with the winners over at Campaign here.
Smart blogger relations idea from Edelman PR. Don’t send just one product, send two with the postage pre-paid on the other to make it easy to send it on to a friend. Dead simple but effective. That is all.
Introducing the latest TV ad from T-Mobile. And no, it’s not a flash mob. But it is another stellar ad.
“You Fix” is a new type of tariff that let’s you fix your monthly bill (then top up once you’ve used up your allowance). Because nobody likes nasty surprises. This is a new sort of ad for T-Mobile – not only does it do a brilliant brand job, the focus is on a fantastic no nonsense product that offers great value for customers.
Watch this space for more advertising goodness from T-Mobile and You Fix 😉
Nicola Davies 