The past couple of years have seen people out and about in the fresh air, walking and exploring, more than ever. However, we’re all so used to the local landscape around us that coming across something new can, quite literally, stop people in their tracks. Passersby get to feel like they’ve personally discovered something fun and inspiring on their jaunt, and it provides brands with a rare opportunity to have a personalised interaction with a consumer when they have time to dwell and engage. When focusing on localised spaces, it also offers a chance for brands to collaborate with local councils, businesses and creatives to provide an experience that is not only physically local to a consumer, but is supporting their community too - something that we know is of growing importance to consumers.
Ok, ok, so the British weather isn’t always the most reliable, we know that, but we’re a hardy bunch. After the best part of two years indoors, starved of real world interactions, the experiential marketing industry saw unprecedented levels of activity in the back end of 2021 as consumers were chomping at the bit to get back to a sense of normality, come rain or shine (and given it was winter, we think it’s safe to say the former outweighed the latter!). Bars and restaurants installed covers and outside heaters, outdoor markets flourished in popularity, and experiential activations followed suit. This time around, we are fully prepared whatever the weather.
Events like the KFC House of Hartland pop-up hotel showed us there is a market for brand-sponsored ticketed events. Now, not only do these allow numbers and entry times to be controlled, thus creating more control over social distancing and vaccination checks but, according to research by Imagination, you’ll also have better results with a ticketed experience. More organic recommendations, more invested consumers, more online mentions and, overall, those in attendance put a higher value on the experience and, as such, on investing in the brand in future.
Obviously not all events or experiential activations are on a scale that lend themselves to a paid-ticket entry mechanism, but the notion of staggering entry/arrival times can work at varying scales, from using premium ticketing software such as Eventbrite, which works for both paid and free events, to simply having someone at an activation monitoring numbers and controlling the queue. Ticketing can also be a great way to capture email addresses for future brand engagement or follow-up offers for those that attend in person.
The concept of expanding reach through digital and social media is nothing new. We’ve all seen enough blurry recordings of live gigs or artfully curated photos of food in fancy restaurants plastered across social media to last a lifetime. But historically, that amplification came mostly from ‘earned reach’ - organic sharing of user-generated content. So what happens when the organic reach is locked up indoors? This is where the idea comes in that experiential stunts and activations created in the real world are purely to be viewed in the digital space. We like to think of it as the Guinness World Record approach, as world records require some form of physical activation to take place, but they’re often seen in the flesh by relatively few people and their purpose is to make it into the book/onto the website.
The EDNAEDNA co-founders (in their pre-EDNAEDNA roles) were lucky enough to help produce a fantastic example of this type of activation in the advertising space for the launch of Marmite Dynamite. The physical activation was only in-situ on a quiet street in Woolwich for half a day in order to capture content but it exploded online, creating huge amounts of buzz, generating over 194 million impressions and over £650k worth of earned media, resulting in sales 5 x higher than previous limited-edition Marmite products.
The rise of internet shopping and the demise of the humble high street was already in full swing prior to the pandemic, but Covid pushed it off the proverbial cliff edge with stats now suggesting that more than 1 in 7 high street shops now stand empty. This means the high street needs to offer something more; it needs to ‘up’ the ante. Brands with physical stores need to create unique brand experiences that people cannot get from scrolling through a website.
We’re not saying that pop-ups are redundant or brands shouldn’t take advantage of temporary activations too, as they’re a great way to launch new product lines or create a specific engagement opportunity (and there are plenty of empty units on the high street to pop these in!). What we’re saying is that brands often pour a lot of creativity and budget into a temporary experiential activation but neglect to treat their everyday customer experience in the same way.
Glossier is a brand that has conquered the art of both the pop-up and everyday retail experience, first launching a floral masterpiece of a pop-up store back in 2019. The in-house design team chose the theme because of its Floral Street location, and Glossier recently followed this up with a full-time grand townhouse location in Covent Garden, designed to complement the history of the area and the building with a modern, minimalist Glossier spin.
When the pandemic hit and lockdowns were imposed, weddings could have only a handful of guests, festivals were cancelled altogether and gyms had to shut up shop for an indeterminate period of time. But companies were quick to adapt and take advantage of audiences being indoors with, let's face it, endless time on their hands. From the ashes of people's social lives rose Joe Wicks’ online daily PE class, Liam Gallagher’s ‘Down by the river Thames’ live-streamed gig and a slurry of online escape rooms and murder mysteries to ensure that forced fun with your colleagues could still take place when working from home! Enter the rise of the ‘armchair experience’.
As experience makers, we dream of having a fully immersive, highly stylised location for activations. But as space invaders, we believe that any environment harnesses the ability to play host to engagement opportunities between brands and their audience, even your own living room. However, we think many brands missed a trick…
Let’s say you’re a West End show, and although the theatres are closed, you’re selling tickets to a live streamed version. Why not sell a full theatre experience? Offer a full dinner and drinks package (partnering with one of the many restaurants that adapted to lockdown by creating home delivery or options), complete with props, a scent diffuser and even a suggested playlist. You post this out prior to the live-stream and allow people to build their own theatre experience that replicates the sights, smells and sounds of the real thing. This transforms an everyday habit of sitting in front of the TV into something unique, engaging, memorable and shareable!
The past couple of years have seen people out and about in the fresh air, walking and exploring, more than ever. However, we’re all so used to the local landscape around us that coming across something new can, quite literally, stop people in their tracks. Passersby get to feel like they’ve personally discovered something fun and inspiring on their jaunt, and it provides brands with a rare opportunity to have a personalised interaction with a consumer when they have time to dwell and engage. When focusing on localised spaces, it also offers a chance for brands to collaborate with local councils, businesses and creatives to provide an experience that is not only physically local to a consumer, but is supporting their community too - something that we know is of growing importance to consumers.
Ok, ok, so the British weather isn’t always the most reliable, we know that, but we’re a hardy bunch. After the best part of two years indoors, starved of real world interactions, the experiential marketing industry saw unprecedented levels of activity in the back end of 2021 as consumers were chomping at the bit to get back to a sense of normality, come rain or shine (and given it was winter, we think it’s safe to say the former outweighed the latter!). Bars and restaurants installed covers and outside heaters, outdoor markets flourished in popularity, and experiential activations followed suit. This time around, we are fully prepared whatever the weather.
Events like the KFC House of Hartland pop-up hotel showed us there is a market for brand-sponsored ticketed events. Now, not only do these allow numbers and entry times to be controlled, thus creating more control over social distancing and vaccination checks but, according to research by Imagination, you’ll also have better results with a ticketed experience. More organic recommendations, more invested consumers, more online mentions and, overall, those in attendance put a higher value on the experience and, as such, on investing in the brand in future.
Obviously not all events or experiential activations are on a scale that lend themselves to a paid-ticket entry mechanism, but the notion of staggering entry/arrival times can work at varying scales, from using premium ticketing software such as Eventbrite, which works for both paid and free events, to simply having someone at an activation monitoring numbers and controlling the queue. Ticketing can also be a great way to capture email addresses for future brand engagement or follow-up offers for those that attend in person.
The concept of expanding reach through digital and social media is nothing new. We’ve all seen enough blurry recordings of live gigs or artfully curated photos of food in fancy restaurants plastered across social media to last a lifetime. But historically, that amplification came mostly from ‘earned reach’ - organic sharing of user-generated content. So what happens when the organic reach is locked up indoors? This is where the idea comes in that experiential stunts and activations created in the real world are purely to be viewed in the digital space. We like to think of it as the Guinness World Record approach, as world records require some form of physical activation to take place, but they’re often seen in the flesh by relatively few people and their purpose is to make it into the book/onto the website.
The EDNAEDNA co-founders (in their pre-EDNAEDNA roles) were lucky enough to help produce a fantastic example of this type of activation in the advertising space for the launch of Marmite Dynamite. The physical activation was only in-situ on a quiet street in Woolwich for half a day in order to capture content but it exploded online, creating huge amounts of buzz, generating over 194 million impressions and over £650k worth of earned media, resulting in sales 5 x higher than previous limited-edition Marmite products.
The rise of internet shopping and the demise of the humble high street was already in full swing prior to the pandemic, but Covid pushed it off the proverbial cliff edge with stats now suggesting that more than 1 in 7 high street shops now stand empty. This means the high street needs to offer something more; it needs to ‘up’ the ante. Brands with physical stores need to create unique brand experiences that people cannot get from scrolling through a website.
We’re not saying that pop-ups are redundant or brands shouldn’t take advantage of temporary activations too, as they’re a great way to launch new product lines or create a specific engagement opportunity (and there are plenty of empty units on the high street to pop these in!). What we’re saying is that brands often pour a lot of creativity and budget into a temporary experiential activation but neglect to treat their everyday customer experience in the same way.
Glossier is a brand that has conquered the art of both the pop-up and everyday retail experience, first launching a floral masterpiece of a pop-up store back in 2019. The in-house design team chose the theme because of its Floral Street location, and Glossier recently followed this up with a full-time grand townhouse location in Covent Garden, designed to complement the history of the area and the building with a modern, minimalist Glossier spin.
When the pandemic hit and lockdowns were imposed, weddings could have only a handful of guests, festivals were cancelled altogether and gyms had to shut up shop for an indeterminate period of time. But companies were quick to adapt and take advantage of audiences being indoors with, let's face it, endless time on their hands. From the ashes of people's social lives rose Joe Wicks’ online daily PE class, Liam Gallagher’s ‘Down by the river Thames’ live-streamed gig and a slurry of online escape rooms and murder mysteries to ensure that forced fun with your colleagues could still take place when working from home! Enter the rise of the ‘armchair experience’.
As experience makers, we dream of having a fully immersive, highly stylised location for activations. But as space invaders, we believe that any environment harnesses the ability to play host to engagement opportunities between brands and their audience, even your own living room. However, we think many brands missed a trick…
Let’s say you’re a West End show, and although the theatres are closed, you’re selling tickets to a live streamed version. Why not sell a full theatre experience? Offer a full dinner and drinks package (partnering with one of the many restaurants that adapted to lockdown by creating home delivery or options), complete with props, a scent diffuser and even a suggested playlist. You post this out prior to the live-stream and allow people to build their own theatre experience that replicates the sights, smells and sounds of the real thing. This transforms an everyday habit of sitting in front of the TV into something unique, engaging, memorable and shareable!
