What is experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing focuses on making the customer engage with the brand and experience it first hand. It focuses on creating an emotional link with the customers, one that will remain with them for as long as possible – even forever!
Many big brands known worldwide have adopted this method to engage with their audience.
Let’s have a look at some of them.

Coca Cola – 007

Coca Cola used their “Coke Zero” product to promote the Skyfall movie by associating the “Zero” to 007. An interactive Coca Cola distributor was placed in a train station, where travelers were invited to ‘unlock their inner 007’ by going on a mission. The train passengers who bought a drink from the vending machine were given the opportunity to win tickets for the James Bond movie, all they had to do is get to a train platform in 70 seconds. Obviously, reaching the platform wasn’t all so easy. Check out the video:

TNT

Another very well known experiential marketing advert that went viral around three years ago is the TNT “We know drama” promotion. A red button was placed on a relatively quiet square in a Flemish town with a sign saying ‘push to add drama’, inviting people to press the button. Once pressed, the quiet square would turn into a drama scene – promoting their slogan ‘your daily dose of drama on Telenet’. Here’s a grasp of what happened:

The Simpsons

Back in 2007, Century fox and 7-Eleven partnered up to promote the new Simpsons movie. 7-Eleven turned some of their shops into the Simpson’s famous shop Kwik-E-Marts, in which products from the actual series were available for purchase, such as: KrustyO’s Cereal, Buzz Cola, and also Squishee Frozen Drinks.

Ikea Big Sleepover

In 2011, the Ikea in Essex hosted a sleepover where 100 lucky winners had the opportunity to sleep at the store. This was the result of a Facebook fan group, with over 100,000 people, called ‘I wanna have a sleepover in Ikea’. The winners could choose their beds, sheets, and were also given manicure and massages. A sleep expert was also available to provide people with advices, and help the interested ones choose a new mattress.

One of the best ways for a brand to connect with their audience is to give them an experience they won’t forget. Thinking outside the box, as the examples above showed us, is the answer as to how to get such an experience. A positive experience will result in great reviews (the digital ‘word of mouth’), which is exactly what a brand needs to become successful.

The post X for eXperiential: what is experiential marketing? appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Vine

Through Vine, people create entertaining and most of the time funny seven-second-videos. Samsung uses Vine to promote their products with simple yet entertaining clips.

Snapchat

Thanks to Snapchat people are now allowed to share experiences almost immediately, and they can choose to do so publicly or privately. For a brand, Snapchat is the perfect tool to remind the audience about a service or product. For instance, if a company is about to launch something new, using Snapchat is the perfect way to remind the people about it.
Communicating and sharing has become easier thanks to videos, as we can now share things with friends and family in real-time. Distance is no longer seen as a boundary, and people are feeling more connected than before.
Growth in video-content and social media means that brands now have a new way to approach and interact with their audience.
Through the use of videos, brands can show the ‘behind the scenes’ of the company, along as sharing some humor and also informational content.
Red Bull uses video content on all their social media platforms. The idea behind their content is to produce ‘active’ video content to represent the energy you can get with their drink. As their motto is ‘it gives you wing’, they back this up with content that makes the user want to do things, such as extreme sports. With 44 million likes on Facebook, 4 million YouTube subscribers and over 110 thousands followers on Vine, Red Bull knows the importance of using video-content to engage more with fans, reach new targets, and build a connection with the audience.

We’re operating in a world where one good video can lead to a massive social following. – Mike Henry

The post V is for Video appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Basic points

#1 Create an account

The first thing to do is to create an account on YouTube for your company. For this, create an account on Google thus you will be able to have access to all Google Applications such as Gmail, YouTube, Google +. This part is not complicated you’ll just have to fill a form with your data.

#2 Create your Channel

Now that you signed in on YouTube with your Google login and password click on ‘My Channel’, a window appears, do not click Ok but click on “To use a business or other name”, there you can put the name you want,  but don’t  a name which is  too complicated since you want the customer to find you quickly.

Congratulations you are now on your YouTube dashboard!

#3 Upload your videos

So you’ve got a Google and YouTube account, now every time you’ll sign in on YouTube you’ll see an “upload” button on the top of the page just next to the search bar. Click on this button and select the file from your desktop.

#4 Make users find you

While it’s uploading, provide information about your video since it’s always better when viewers know where it comes from and what the topic is about. The title has to be appealing and clear to make viewers find it easily. Indeed the title represents between 80% and 90% of your visibility.
The description is also important as it will let you talk about the video. No need to make it long as normally everything is on the video but you can give some details about the company and adding your website link can be beneficial. A very important point is the tags, make sure they are suitable to your video, since this will help your clients to find you more easily. You can also choose to publish the video straight away or schedule it for later.

#5 Obey the law

This point is a little bit obvious but it’s quite important to mention. If you’re uploading a video that you found on other website don’t forget to add the copy right. Even if YouTube is kind of cool with it, as a company you have to obey this point just because a penalty is never good for your image!

Strategic points

 #6 Stand out from the competition

As a professional, you obviously know that you have to monitor your competitors, knowing their offers, products and behaviour. It also applies to YouTube. Have a look to what your competition is doing and simply try to make it different. Making a video is the opportunity to get off the beaten track. You can be less formal and make a topic funnier. And remember it is always worse to bore a customer than shock him/her a little bit.

#7 Be active and representative

Go through your YouTube channel every day, checking what kind of feedback you’re getting from people, replying to comments where necessary, and planning your next post. Keep your content relevant, making sure that it fits in with your business’ field. Run a google search and see what’s new in your market. You have to make customers want to see more and make them look forward for the next video!

#8 Extend your knowledge

Even if you are working on on-line marketing or as a community manager and you know a massive quantity of visibility strategies, do not hesitate to learn more and more. You can easily find good tutorials on How To get More Views On YouTube for example. We learn something every day and professional advice is always welcome.

#9 Share it!

‘Share’ is the main word of this century, of course you will share your video on YouTube mainly, but you can also add a link on your website, blog etc. The more you share it the more it will be watched. The goal is for the viewers to share it again as a virtuous circle.

#10 Quantify and interpret your success

Sometimes you can’t quantify the impact of your activity on your audience according to the media you’re using but on YouTube you’ll have exactly the numbers of views. Then ask yourself, ‘which kind of video is more successful and gets the more views over my different content?’ If you see that a special kind of video is not appealing, stop doing it, you’ll waste your energy. Take benefit from your successful productions and try to use the style for other videos.

The post YouTube marketing: Get more visibility in only 10 steps appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Adidas

Probably my favourite World Cup ad yet – simple, combines the new and old superstars of the sport but puts them in a situation that 99% of football fans can relate to. Adidas also created an advert for the Brazuca, the World Cup’s official ball. I love that they used a Kinks song and the shots from the point of view of the ball. Still, I found it rather uninspiring in comparison to some of the other ads around at the moment.

Beats

Beats went all out with their campaign, with a mini-movie that tries to tie in the top people from the sport with fans in Brazil. While I must admit that they did a marvellous job with the video, their attempt is trying too hard to be a Nike ad from a few years ago. And I dislike the whole thing of players arriving at a match with those massive headphones, it just highlights the individualism that seems to be ruining the sport nowadays.

Nike

And Nike, well, Nike are out there making the adverts that Nike should be making. I challenge you to watch this ad and not feel as if you want the World Cup to start tomorrow (oh, wait). It also wins bonus points for being reminiscent of the greatest football ad ever made (as judged by me). And because Nike can’t just have one advertising concept, there is an ad with the players themselves, not CG versions of them, even though it plays on them being someone else anyway.

Kia

Kia seem to have finally understood that having an athlete on top of a mountain is not the best way to sell cars. You need someone who looks good (check), a good concept (check) and great execution (check). This series of adverts might actually make inroads in the US, which is becoming more football(soccer)-savvy in recent years.

DirecTV

We might not be familiar with the brand over here, but DirecTV produced a brilliant TV Ad to promote its coverage of Brasil 2014. It was directed by Oliver Stone and features Oliver Stone himself, David Luiz, Sergio Aguero and Radamel Falcao.

Pepsi

Pepsi’s ad is probably what Beats’ commercial should have tried to be. It integrated music, football and the sugary drink perfectly. It included stars without them feeling as if they were out of place (with the exception of Messi, I think he always looks super uncomfortable in ads). The music builds up beautifully and the location feels super-authentic.

And some others…

Google is preparing for the World Cup by building a minisite that shows some of the greatest street art in Brazil. Sony advertised their Xperia with an ad that feels about as authentic as a remake of Casablanca featuring Tom Cruise would be.

The post Brasil 2014: Advertising around the beautiful game appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.