Experiential marketing invites an audience to interact with a business in a real-world situation. It uses participatory, hands-on, or tangible branding materials that allow a business to show what they offer and what they stand for. It’s all about direct engagement with your consumers and creatively interacting with them in a memorable way. Below are a few of our favorite examples of experiential marketing.
Refinery29: 29Rooms
For the past few years, Refinery29 has hosted their 29Rooms event. They tend to rent out a warehouse and fill it with different interactives. It consists of 29 individually branded rooms where attendees can experience something different in each. The rooms are designed and created with brand partners. They usually range from artists and musicians to companies such as Dyson and Dunkin’ Donuts. Each year there is a different theme, but the video below is from the year they did “Turn It Into Art.” They encouraged attendees to use the surroundings in each room to create something.
Rick & Morty: Rickmobile
To help promote the return of Adult Swim series Rick & Morty, Cartoon Network sent a car around the country. It was shaped like Rick, a main character on the show. They mainly targeted social media with the campaign, which helped the company get their campaign to go viral. Many began to follow where the Rickmobile was through a live destination page on the Adult Swim website.
When the Rickmobile hit major cities, many hunted it down to take pictures with it. Also, they were able to enter the Rickmobile to purchase products related to the show. They were able to successfully promote the show while also selling related products.
Build-a-Bear: Doc McStuffin’s Bear Hospital
To promote their new Doc McStuffins bear line, Build-a-Bear set up pop up “clinics” across the UK. Children could bring in their torn bears to staff who were dressed up as doctors to repair their bears. Even if they didn’t have a damaged bear, children could bring it in for a check up. This had staff pretend to give each bear a physical and invited the children to help.
Along with this, you could also buy new Build-a-Bears at pop up clinics. While waiting to be seen, children could play with all sorts of Build-a-Bear toys. Also, after each check up, the children were awarded a Doc McStuffins certificate and given a free “Doc is in the House” door hanger.
Source: Econsultancy
HBO: Escape Rooms at SXSW
HBO created a mega Escape the Room game at SXSW in 2017. The popular game which involves a group of people locked inside a room and must solve a set of clues to escape. With HBO’s take on the game, they combined three separate rooms into one huge mystery. Each of the three rooms were based off the set of a popular HBO show. The three they chose were Game of Thrones, Veep, and Silicon Valley. They engaged fans by letting them be part of the sets of their favorite shows. Also, it brought these fictional narratives to life.
Source: The Bizzabo Blog