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[This is a transcript of the free audio program, Experiential Marketing Today. The audio version of this content is available at: Episode 001: What is Experiential Marketing?]

Announcer: Welcome to "Experiential Marketing Today."

[intro music]

Todd Austin: Welcome to the first episode of "Experiential Marketing Today." This show is about the theory and practice of using experiences to engage audiences with the authentic nature of a brand and a company.

We believe that it may be the most powerful tool marketers have, but it's also something of a mystery. My name is Todd Austin. I'll be your host for this episode.

[musical interlude]

Todd: Episode one: "What is Experiential Marketing?" If you're not sure what we're talking about, then this episode is for you.

We're going to define what we mean by experiential marketing, so that we all have a common platform for launching into future episodes about how we can put it into practice.

It seems only fitting that we start a show called "Experiential Marketing Today" with a discussion about what it means to be an experiential marketer. The term "experiential marketing" is probably unfamiliar to a lot of people.

I know it's unfamiliar to many professional marketers, and even those who think they know what it means sometimes disagree about what that meaning is. So it's appropriate for us to start off by talking about that and getting on the same page together.

Over the next few minutes, we'll talk about the origins of the discipline, as well as what it means and how it's practiced. But, before we get into that, let's listen to the results of a little informal research project.

We sent one of our own, Ryan Smith, into a university business school to interview students about experiential marketing.

[computerized sound effects]

Ryan Smith: What is "experiential marketing"?

Man 1: It's marketing through experience. It could be using a product, or actually letting the consumer use the product for the experience and marketing through those aspects of it.

Woman 1: Experiential marketing is when you're testing different types of marketing to see which ones are most successful in a business.

Man 2: Experiential marketing is face-to-face contact with consumers, trying to market particular products to these individuals.

Woman 2: I think experiential marketing is marketing where they use experience outside and, maybe, possibly, experiments, in order to decide how they're going to market and decide if they're going to continue in that way.

Ryan: What is "experiential marketing"?

Man 3: When somebody has experience and applies that experience outside of book knowledge. It's something that's built in, that they just know how to do it.

Woman 3: I honestly have no idea what experiential marketing is, but if I had to guess, I would say it's just going out and trying to figure out things and marketing based on what you see and what you experience in life.

Ryan: What is "experiential marketing"?

Woman 4: It's where you have to experience different types of marketing to know what works.

[computerized sound effects]

Todd: Ryan joins us now to talk about this. Now, Ryan, I guess we should start by making it clear that this wasn't a matchbook, fly-by-night college, but it was actually a strong business school in a highly respected university.

So these responses, while, I guess, not scientific, are probably generally representative of what we might hear on most university campuses.

Ryan: Absolutely. And one thing I would like to add in here is, not only were they just college students, the general, vast variety of them were sophomore to senior level marketing majors.

Todd: So, did you get the sense that this was something they had heard about and just forgotten, or was this the first time they had heard this term?

Ryan: Well, after I asked the questions to them, the marketing students were generally able to, in their minds, come up with something close to what they would guess, but it always seemed to be a guess and not a "I know this information."

Todd: Now, these interviews sound to me like they were all with students. Is that right?

Ryan: Yes. The ones that I actually recorded were all with college students.

Todd: Did you get a chance to talk to any of the faculty?

Ryan: I did. At one point, I was walking by the vice president of the university. And it did not feel appropriate to record his answer, but I just kind of wanted to get a feel from him.

I asked him, "What would you say experiential marketing is?" And he said, "Well, I can't give you a definitional term." But he came very close.

Todd: Well, that's good.

Ryan: He said, "Marketing through experience." And he had a lot closer answer than any of the students did.

Todd: Well, Ryan, thanks for chatting with us.

Ryan: Well, thank you.

[musical interlude]

Todd: Joining us now is John Roberson. And John, let's make sure I get this right. Right now, you're president of Advent. You've been there for seven years. That's an experiential marketing consulting firm.

Prior to that, you had stints in brand management, licensed properties, database marketing, and chief operating officer of a home shopping network. Does that about cover it?

John Roberson: That's right. And we'd prefer to leave out the prison years.

Todd: I'm not sure I knew about that.

John: Yeah.

Todd: All right. Here is the $64,000 question. What is experiential marketing?

John: Todd, as you know — you and I have both read a lot about this topic — there are a lot of people trying to define experiential marketing. They talk about things like multi-sensory marketing. And indeed, it is that.

But if you really think about it, even a television ad is multi-sensory.

Todd: Right.

John: You're hearing it. You're seeing it. So let me offer a metaphor that may help us define experiential marketing. Experiential marketing is placing yourself, as an audience member, into the marketing — being a part of the marketing, where the marketing holds great relevance for you and great memory for you.

So my analogy is: it's the difference between watching a kiss on the big screen and being kissed. The difference is, when you're kissed on your lips, it has great meaning, it has great involvement, it has great engagement, it has great memory for you. Whereas watching a kiss on the big screen is very different.

Todd: So, there's this angle of participation that sounds like a critical concept for experiential marketing.

John: Correct. Participation is certainly part of it, but it's also that that kiss has meaning for me. It has relevance for me.

Todd: OK.

John: Another analogy that may help is the difference between watching the birth of a child on a video and it being the birth of your first child. The meaning and the memory and the engagement that that has for you goes really deep, because you're involved in it. It means something to you. Watching the birth of a child on television doesn't necessarily have any relevance or meaning for you.

Todd: I've read a lot about Disney and experiences, and people use Disney as an example in experiential marketing a lot. Why is that? What does Disney do that's so special, that's such a great example to us?

John: Well, one of the things that they do is they know how to execute a program in great detail.

So, when they are taking one of their licensed properties, one of their cartoon characters, their animation characters, and they execute a thematic ride, they are doing that in very vivid detail. But they are doing it in a way that's true, it's credible, and it's very much a part of the nature of who that character set is.

So, when you ride the Peter Pan ride, it's so much about the experience and the detail of being involved in that story, and you're a player in that story. That's what makes it relevant for you and a memory for you.

Todd: And that attention to detail extends to things that other amusement parks don't seem to pay attention to, like the cable strung across the walkway or the things you can see as you're on the ride.

John: That's right. I mean, if you or I were go to a carnival fun house or a haunted house, that mechanical feel of rolling through the fun house, and a twist and a turn and the fake ghost popping out. That holds no relevance for us. It's very low on detail. It's very low on involvement.

But again, Disney knows how to put us in the story. We're characters in the story.

And so, good brand marketers are using experiential marketing to put their audience in the story, to place them in a context that holds great meaning and relevance for them.

Todd: OK. Let's talk for a minute about where experiential marketing comes from. How long has this been around?

John: Well, some scholars are saying that it is as old as that miracle cure salesman that came into town on the back of a stage and stood up on his trunk and espoused the properties of his new miracle cure or elixir. And he may have done that through demonstrating exercises of great strength, or he may have shown the strength of his hair or something like that.

Now, a lot of folks equate that guy, that person, to the snake oil salesman. And indeed, he may have been. But what he was doing was very much trying to involve his audience in that experience.

Todd: OK.

John: It was more than a demonstration. He was actually getting them to tug on his beard that was oh-so-strong, right? He was getting them to try something after drinking the elixir. So it could be that experiential marketing goes back that far.

Now, I think you've read another description of how experiential marketing is tied to society and our affluence. Why don't you talk about that?

Todd: Right. A lot of people tie this term of "experience marketing" to a book written by Pine and Gilmore in the late '90s, called, "The Experience Economy."

That book wasn't really about marketing. It was more about society.

They made the point that we're in a postmodern world, and a postmodern world with folks with lots of money. The combination of those things has changed the way that we process information and make decisions.

Twenty years ago, our task as marketers was, "Let's make a logical appeal. Let's show features and benefits. Let's show how one product is better than another." Pine and Gilmore, I think, convincingly demonstrate that that doesn't work well today.

Now, in postmodern society, we are looking for these authentic experiences. When we do a birthday party for our children, we're not doing like our grandparents may have done in the '50s, where they had the commodities on-hand. They hand-made a cake.

We're not doing like our parents may have done in the '70s, where they bought a Betty Crocker mix and baked a cake. We're not even doing like parents did in the '80s, where they bought a cake at the local grocery store.

Instead, we are buying an experience for our children, like at an inflatables party or a gymnastics party. The amount we're willing to spend is much greater than those prior generations. But we do it because we want that experience.

John: So the birthday is now much more than a cake comprised of very basic and commoditized ingredients. The birthday is now an experience that creates this larger than life memory or event, and the cake is one element.

Todd: That's right.

John: Big difference.

Todd: Let's talk for a second about why someone should care about experiential marketing. One side could say, "Is this just a gimmick? Is it a trend? Is it a fad? Why can't we just keep on going like we've gone?"

John: Well, I'm going to offer as evidence — and you tease me about this, folks around here at the office tease me about this — my inbox is jammed with email.

Todd: Right.

John: But it's really reflective of what a lot of folks are experiencing. We've both read in business publications of people unplugging their email and killing an account and starting over.

Todd: Right.

John: The point is that we have so much stimuli coming at us. Now, overlay that with email solicitations, telephone solicitations, direct mail solicitations. We're getting solicitations on our Blackberry and Palm. We're getting instant messages from folks that we care about.

Folks are pioneering ways to instant message you. "Mad Money," from CNBC, instant messages me now after every episode. Add to that the fact that we may have listened to satellite radio on the way to a location. There's this incredible flood of stimuli.

So, what we're seeing is this huge shift — it's not a trend; I believe it's a shift — in the way people are marketing, so that they can find folks with whom they can create this level of engagement, because brands have always been about an emotion and an emotional hook because that emotional connection to a brand is what enables someone to make a choice.

That doesn't just apply to business-to-business brands; it applies to business-to-consumer brands as well. And so, what I think we're seeing is this shift in the economy, to where people are trying to find more effective ways to market.

Todd: We've both seen that the traditional ways we've done marketing in the past are becoming less influential on us. I'm not as likely to take action based on an ad in a publication or on TV.

But if I have an experience with something myself, or if someone that I know has an experience and then they tell me about it, that carries a lot of weight with me. That makes me want to try it myself.

John: I agree with that. And technology is both the bane of our existence and also the enabler of filtering.

We have all these ads that are happening on television, if you ever get the chance to watch television. But we also have TiVo, and we can fast-forward through ads, right?

Todd: Right.

John: We have spam filters, and we can fast-forward through… So we have technology, but we also have technology that is saying, "How can I limit the amount of advertising that's getting to you?" So it's almost as though the technology is working against itself.

Todd: Let's talk for a few minutes about some concrete examples of experiential marketing and practice, because it's one thing to talk about the theory, but it could be helpful to give some examples.

John: OK. I'll talk about Altoids and the launch of their chocolate-covered mints. You talk about coffee.

Todd: OK.

John: They seem to go together, right?

Todd: OK.

John: You need a mint after coffee. But we'll start with the mints.

So, to launch its chocolate mints, Altoids created a handful — let's say a half a dozen — popup stores across the country, in various key markets. But it wasn't just, "Let's hand out samples of our product." That would seem so packaged-good company-like.

Todd: Right.

John: And Altoids, as you know, the very nature of its brand is it's retro, but it's irreverent. It's got this edge to it. All their advertising has had that. It's this timeless, edgy brand, right?

So what they did is they created these pop-up stores to create this experience to draw people in. And so, on Valentine's Day, they proposed launching these pop-up stores in six different markets.

They created a chocolatier, a store that you could walk into. You could try the chocolate Altoids. You could also have a cup of coffee.

And while you were there you could also shop and be immersed in the Altoids brand. So the wallpaper was very Victorian and retro, but if you looked very closely it was also very provocative and very edgy.

And there were postcards that one could send to their favorite valentine, but rather than it being a Hallmark-type greeting, it was a much more sarcastic and irreverent greeting.

And so this was all part of the Altoids brand. It was all tied to the Altoids experience. Now the irony was that the pop-up stores didn't exist in that city block two weeks earlier, and after the experience — it only lasted one week — it didn't exist two weeks after.

But what they were trying to do was find influencers, fault leaders, to come in, be exposed to the chocolateer experience, try the product, and of course then tell their friends. Because their emotional connection to that experience — they were in the experience.

Todd: That "tell your friends" part of it may be important for us to talk about too, before I talk about the coffee example. Because I think one negative thought people may have in experiential marketing is, "Well how can you possibly reach all the people with experiential marketing that you can reach with a television ad?"

John: I would say that in addition to them telling people, it's a little surreal to tell your friends, "Now, two weeks ago a chocolate store didn't exist here, but a week ago…trust me, I went to one here." That's storybook-like in itself.

Add to that though, the fact that they're telling their friends about this surreal experience where they got free samples of the mints. And they got a free cup of coffee.

And then what happens Todd, is the press is making a story out of the experience. Because the press then is talking about this chocolate store and the lines are wrapped around the block. Because do people really give away things for free anymore? And what's inside there that's so provocative?

So sometimes the experience is very much about creating that buzz. But this is not just buzz for the sake of buzz. It's not a carnival tactic. It's something that's very authentic to the nature of this brand.

Todd: Starbucks, who of course has the money to do pop-up stores too, chose to do something on a much smaller scale which, I think, gives hope to folks with shallower pockets than Altoids and Starbucks.

Around the holidays they ran a street experiential campaign, where they had cars running around major metropolitan areas with Starbucks cups on a magnet attached to the top of the car. They were waiting for people to stop them and flag them down and say, "Hey! You left your coffee on top of your car!"

Todd: So it looked like a coffee cup had been left by a taxi customer on top of the taxi.

John: Exactly. So when someone would stop them and be a good samaritan, they would reward that person with coupons for them and a friend. And of course that generated word of mouth because it was so clever, but it also led to some press coverage like you mentioned.

Todd: Right, because these coffee cups were riding around all over town on top of taxis, and the thought of rewarding a good samaritan, someone that would take the time to warn you that the cup of coffee…

John: Around the holiday season.

Todd: Yeah, yeah. It all fits very authentic to the brand.

John: Yes.

Todd: Let's talk now about how someone can get started in this. We've talked about big campaigns and small. What's the best way for a company that's not in experiential marketing now to get started?

John: First of all; it's not just for Fortune 100 companies or Fortune 500 companies. Anybody can do experiential marketing.

If the elixir salesman of old could do it, we can do it now. The question is, what are we doing from existing marketing strategies that can be enhanced and, if it were enhanced, where could we improve our return on the investment by creating an experience?

A marketing initiative that takes our audience even more deeply into their association with our brand. To create something that's very memorable, it's very relevant.

It may be that you look at your front lobby. We've done a number of clients' front lobbies. We've worked with them to improve their front lobby in a way that's more engaging to folks who are coming to visit and do due diligence before doing business with them.

And so maybe you look at that front lobby and say, "Is that an experience that we can draw someone into and make it very memorable and persuasive for them?"

You look at your trade show strategy. Maybe you already are going to an existing flight or event schedule of trade shows, and you say, "Is there a way that we can improve our effectiveness by being more memorable?"

And that doesn't just take place on the show floor. It may take place in association with that trade show at the same time off the show floor. It may take place in the aisle. There are all different kinds of ways to improve that strategy.

Or it may be an event that you hold with your existing users or customers or distributors. Or your own sales force, so that your message is received in a much more engaging and relevant way and so that your audience is very much a part of that experience.

Todd: So, to sum up what you're saying there, a key way to start is just to look at what you're already doing and see how you can change it.

John: See how you can change it and see how you can improve it again. We use two analogies there, two anecdotes in Starbucks and Altoids. Both of them have great marketing. But they took that strategy further by creating these experiences that drew that audience in and created this memory.

[music]

We've described experiential marketing using metaphor and example. Here's the definition that we use. Experiential marketing connects audiences with the authentic nature of a brand through participation in personally relevant, credible and memorable encounters.

Whereas traditional marketing is focused on mass communication using rational, left-brain directed persuasion, experiential marketing focuses on making a personalized connection using emotional, right-brain directed involvement.

Well, that wraps up our first show. We hope you walk away with a better understanding of what experiential marketing is.

If you have questions or comments we welcome those. You can send those to us at: feedback@experientialmarketingtoday.com.

You can also visit our website which is www.experientialmarketingtoday.com. There you'll find show notes for today's shows which will include links to any of the resources we've mentioned as well as a full transcript of the show.

On the next episode we'll pick up where we left off, and we'll talk about how you can transform your trade show marketing and do an experiential tool.

Thank you again for joining us, we'll see you next time.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Experiential Marketing Today.

[music]