Advent Blog

Attendance is down.  Almost 150 years after the battle, Gettysburg is fight­ing back with expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing tactics.

For every Southern boy four­teen years old, not once but when­ever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July after­noon in 1863, the brigades are in posi­tion behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loos­ened to break out and Pickett him­self with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand prob­a­bly and his sword in the other look­ing up the hill wait­ing for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the bal­ance, it hasn’t hap­pened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that posi­tion and those cir­cum­stances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with des­per­ate and unbe­liev­able vic­tory the des­per­ate gam­ble, the cast made two years ago…

–William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

With vividly rich lan­guage, Faulkner out­lines the allure of Gettysburg.  He paints an intensely lucid pic­ture of a deeply emo­tional, tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ence of the type that a soul­fully impov­er­ished soci­ety craves.  The details are impos­si­bly real.  Pickets “long oiled ringlets” gleam from the page.  And the story-the story of Gettysburg drips with deed, hope, and gal­lantry.  It oozes with vis­ceral sus­pense at the brink of the war’s ful­crum and bleeds with hope­less devo­tion to the roman­tic ide­al­ism of a cause yet lost.  This pas­sage details a boy’s abil­ity to be com­pletely, emo­tion­ally, and bod­ily rapt in a moment.  However, most of us are not four­teen year old Southern boys and too rarely does our imag­i­na­tion serve as the vehi­cle to take us to such places.

Elliot Gruber, vice pres­i­dent of the non­profit Gettysburg Foundation under­stands the seduc­tion and he under­stand what con­sumers want.  “Most peo­ple aren’t vis­it­ing to learn,” he says.  “They want to have an expe­ri­ence, to be immersed in some­thing” (Read the arti­cle by Evan West).  Though vis­it­ing a bat­tle­field is in itself a markedly expe­ri­en­tial endeavor, the park and sur­round­ing com­mu­nity has been faced with the ugly vis­age of declin­ing inter­est, sag­ging atten­dance, and decreased rev­enue.  The thick ranks of con­sumers who used visit Gettysburg have been depleted by heavy bar­rage of artillery from mar­keters who com­pete for their atten­tion with eye-catching glitzy hype.  But now, one hun­dred and forty-five years later, Gettysburg is fight­ing back with sleek new dis­plays, multi-media exhibits, and inspired storytelling.

Our imag­i­na­tions are vehi­cles that carry us beyond the moon and beyond the bound­aries of time.  But these vehi­cles need fuel.  The Gettysburg National Military Park has torn a page from the expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing text book to add some nitro to the imag­i­na­tions and emo­tions of vis­i­tors in an attempt to boost atten­dance and length of stay.  With the help of a brand new $103 mil­lion vis­i­tor cen­ter that opened its doors on April 14, 2008 they hope to engage the evolv­ing tastes of tech savvy, media drenched con­sumers (visit the offi­cial site).

Good expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing focuses heav­ily on ‘story.’  Every brand, com­pany, prod­uct, and ser­vice has a story to tell and Gettysburg is lever­ag­ing the power of its own incred­i­ble story.  At Gettysburg it is not cases full of hun­dreds of old can­teens that inter­est or inspire people-it is the story of one can­teen.  Who was the man that lifted it to his lips?  What hap­pened to him?  How did the can­teen end up here?  President of Advent mar­ket­ing firm, John Roberson says, “In this world of text mes­sag­ing, face­book­ing, and TV peo­ple crave real­ity.  They want what is real and authen­tic.”  Combining an engag­ing story with the very real expe­ri­ence of see­ing and hold­ing a can­teen that was car­ried by a Civil War sol­dier is an incred­i­ble way to con­nect with con­sumers and bring his­tory to life.  There is no sub­sti­tute for authenticity.

The park has spared no ingre­di­ents cook­ing up a fine expe­ri­en­tial dish for hun­gry con­sumers.  Multimedia and tech­nol­ogy have been lever­aged into mak­ing the park more attrac­tive.  They’ve made good use of star power.  You might rec­og­nize voice-overs by Morgan Freeman and Sam Waterston.  They have replaced heavy con­tent laden exhibits with music and visu­ally stim­u­lat­ing exhibits.  Visitors view, eye-to-eye, life size man­nequins in period dress.   And when your stom­ach starts grum­bling a fine fare of “cast-iron chicken pot pie” and “Grandma Sarah’s corn bread” awaits you in the Refreshment Saloon.  All these ingre­di­ents seek to immerse vis­i­tors and pro­vide them with an expe­ri­ence that tran­scends the dusty pages of his­tory books and engages them in an intensely emo­tional, mean­ing­ful, and mem­o­rable way.

One hun­dred and forty-five years ago our nation was engaged in a great civil war, test­ing whether our nation, so con­ceived and so ded­i­cated, could endure.  It has.  And today, on a great battle-field of that war, the Gettysburg National Military Park is using expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing tech­niques to increase traf­fic and appre­ci­a­tion for the site.  Admittedly, the new $103 mil­lion dol­lar vis­i­tor cen­ter can­not dedicate-cannot consecrate-cannot hallow-this ground.  The brave men, dead yet liv­ing in our mem­o­ries, who strug­gled there, have con­se­crated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.  Yet through inno­v­a­tive tech­niques the park has ded­i­cated itself to the task of ensur­ing that the world never for­get what they did there and to the task of the liv­ing, to be ded­i­cated to the unfin­ished work and increased devo­tion to the virtues for which they gave the last full mea­sure of devotion.

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Experiential Marketing and Star Power

Advent leads from the fore­front of the cut­ting edge mod­ern mar­ket­ing indus­try by fuel­ing brands with the explo­sive power of expe­ri­ences.  Advent cre­ates an emo­tional bond with audi­ences by lever­ag­ing the unri­valed effec­tive­ness of expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing through tar­geted events, engag­ing exhibits, and branded spaces.  High impact and high touch strate­gies mark Advent’s cre­ative advan­tage and have helped rapidly expand­ing brands com­mu­ni­cate mes­sages that gain imme­di­ate and last­ing res­o­nance with con­sumers.  For more, please visit www.adventresults.com.

Tags: exhibits, Experiential Marketing, immersive marketing