Breathing life into brand activity

Earlier I walked past Broadgate Circus near Liverpool Street and yet again witnessed (not experienced) another piece of lifeless brand activity.

 

It took me five minutes to work out which brand it was and never quite realised the brand messages they were trying to convey. Can this possibly deliver a good return on investment or portray the right image of the brand to the market?

 

Experiential is not about events, it’s about a one-to-one interaction with the audience that starts long term conversations that result in meaningful relationships for both, yet brands time and time again create sporadic, quirky executions that deliver nothing more than a nice set of pictures and a day out of the office for the marketing manager.

 

Any brand event should form part of the overall marketing campaign and should all tie in to one central proposition that delivers the brand messages and main objectives of the campaign. The event should also be used as a value exchange between brand and consumer to build useable CRM systems that can turn empathy into sales.

 

Great examples are music events; how many times do you go to a brand-created music event and walk away with nothing more than the tunes in your head?

 

The music industry is struggling; they rely on brand involvement, but this involvement is no more than a tagging exercise – banners and logos on flyers. If a brand is to stand apart from this and create a brand campaign rather than a sponsorship activity, they need to create content-rich events that deliver unique and engaging experiences that are enhanced by the talent, not reliant upon them.

 

This is evermore imperative now in the cluttered world of entertainment, where ‘bog standard’ events don’t cut through; they may get people through the door but the impact should be much greater. The event should be aspirational so demand is high and should also allow the brand to collect data and communicate with the consumers on an ongoing basis. By creating an identity for the campaign and their subsequent events, the credibility, awareness and empathy that are built up stay with the brand and can help build the campaign year on year.

 

Brands shouldn’t act arrogantly either, they don’t know everything and neither do their agencies. Gone are the days of consumers being reliant on brands, record labels and television channels to inform them of what to consume; consumers make the decisions and lead the trends more than ever, so we should work with the key opinion formers to co-create relevant events for the wider audience.

 

This is the thinking behind the ‘Hidden Depths’ campaign we created for San Miguel. Using the product truths and target market, we created an identity and content that both reflected the brand and resonated with the audience.

 

Working closely with artists and their fanbases, we developed a campaign that provided unique experiences through a series of brand events, online presence and continued communication. This built up a following for the brand / brand campaign rather than one particular artist or event - a CRM system driven and wanted by the audience.

 

The Becks Fusions campaign is another great example, with massive talent such as Chemical Brothers and Massive Attack combining with cutting edge art and visual installations to create multiple focal points all related to the campaign and not one particular artist. The brand represents them in the right way, they act as a promoter but ensure it is their message coming across and post event, consumers still refer to the brand / campaign, rather than the artists.

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