Amplifying Experiential Turn audiences into advocates through the power of live experience
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The evolution of experience
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e all know the power of face-to-face, and its increasing importance in the marketing mix. It will also come as no surprise that there has been a huge shift in consumer behaviour both on and offline over the past five years. Marketers know that it’s becoming less about the product and more about the overall experience they can offer. Millennials are driving this experience culture, where they’re wanting to be at the heart of the action through Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO). And they must show their friends on social they were a part of it or what was the point in being there in the first place? Millennials’ spending habits, social presence and overall digital savviness differs to previous generations, plus, the generations coming through – those elusive Generation Zs – will never have known life without digital and social media.
Finally, the way consumers engage with the brands they love has also changed significantly. This means brands have had to up the ante to keep ahead of the curve and engage with their customers in ways like never before. Where traditional media fails to cut through, brands are looking to incorporate live and experiential into their marketing campaigns. Expectations are growing, and so is the industry. This Event white paper, brought to you in partnership with Verve, the Live Agency, will get to the heart of the live experience. We’ll look at how brands can build deeper, more meaningful relationships with customers, explore the key trends in live, digital and social, as well as help you amplify your offering by cultivating a social culture and integrating digital. We’ll also provide some useful tips for your next experiential activity.
Robotic brand-to-consumer relationships are a thing of the past
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echnology and digital gave power to the consumer and social gave them a voice. Brands are always under scrutiny – online reviewing is rife and one negative viral Twitter post can damage a brand’s reputation. Brands are searching for new ways to be authentic and build a deeper, more meaningful relationship with their customers. If they don’t, it’s only a matter of time before a bad reputation causes irreparable damage.
Customer experience is at the top of a lot of marketers’ priority list. Customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiation by 2020, according to a Walker study1. So, brands are under a lot of pressure to deliver.
1. Walker 2017. Customer 2020 – The future of B2B customer experience
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Social moments
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reating social moments not only builds lasting loyalty among fans, spectators and customers, it also creates content that can be amplified after the event and used again in the future. You can extend the excitement for those who were there, or provide FOMO to those who missed out (and may want to catch it next time) by bringing them closer
to the event – virtually. You’ll create an engaged online and an active, involved offline community. Social allows audiences to get closer to the action, closer to the brand – you have to build an emotional connection. People won’t just get involved or share branded content, though. What’s in it for them, after all? It has to be content worth sharing.
Create moments worth sharing... BEFORE THE EVENT ● Create a unique, single hashtag for the event. It should be short, memorable and not affiliated with any other events or trending topics (check beforehand). Ensure the hashtag is integrated into the fabric of the event – have it displayed everywhere and use it in every post in the build-up ● Get speakers or performers involved in promoting the event beforehand. Chances are, they have a huge following and that following may convert into attendees ● Post more frequently in the days leading up to the event, to build momentum to increase excitement and social presence ● Give people a sneaky peak of what’s in-store. You can do this through a backstage video tour, dressing room images, special interviews with speakers or performers, or a time lapse video of the set-up. Get creative! ● Run a competition to offer a free ticket or a prize to someone who likes and shares a piece of content
● Get an influencer on board early on. They can promote the event and help to build a following. So long as the content or the event is relevant and interesting to them, you might not even have to spend a dime ● Run a Twitter chat with the speakers. Simply select a 15-minute Twitter chat window and promote days in advance. During this quarter of an hour the audience can ask any question using the hashtag and the speaker has one minute to respond. You can moderate this through a master account.
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DURING THE EVENT ● Encourage check-ins on Facebook ● Create photo opportunities (a photobooth or collection of interesting props). Audiences shouldn’t be told to share – they should want to. Give them something worth sharing ● Keep on top of real-time social at the event. Designate one person to answer questions or follow feedback on Twitter, for example. If something’s not going well, you can improve while you go along ● Use technology to create better photo opportunities, such as 360-degree photoshoots, for example
● Do something surprising. It might sound obvious, but consider an unexpected celebrity appearance, a cannon of confetti to surprise your 1000th visitor or hire actors to do something out of the ordinary. Chances are, if it’s barmy enough it could appear on YouTube ● Stream the best bits live. Thanks to the rise in popularity of Facebook Live, it’s now even easier to reach audiences online during an event.
AFTER THE EVENT ● Tag attendees in your photos where possible to do so ● What were the best bits? Condense into a highlights video, picture story (with all of the pictures from the event) or a blog post. Use quotes from speakers or testimonials from attendees. Whatever you do, make it shareable ● A lot of the great content to come out of the event will be UGC (User Generated Content). Sharing or repurposing this content after the event will empower your attendees and make them feel better connected and more emotionally attached to it
● Ask for feedback and be sure to offer an incentive for their participation ● Create GIFs with all of the best action shots from the event. Can you make it into a storybook? Or a timestamped flipbook of the event: “At 5pm it looked like this… by 6pm it was all downhill for one fan... by 7pm the crowd was full… by 8pm there was free food for all... etc.”
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Other top pointers
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on’t forget to cross-promote different social platforms (Tweet ‘view our blog post on Facebook’ for example)
● Reward loyalty and empower your audience by sharing or liking fan pictures (a little like goes a long way) ● Offer a special code unique to each of your social channels. This code might give a discount or freebie at the event and will allow you to record which channel performs the best with this type of marketing (e.g. 10 codes from Twitter but 18 from Facebook) ● If a brand activation, humanise the activation. Share on social the story behind the brand or behind the activation – give the brand an element of authenticity ● Don’t create content for content’s sake. What are you hoping to achieve with a post? Be timely but also be relevant
● Don’t share the exact same content across each social channel. Share the same story, but ensure you adapt content for each platform ● Don’t lose control. It’s easy to get carried away and over-populate social feeds with content, but carefully curate it and ensure your brand message bleeds throughout every post. Quality over quantity.
Just Eat Retreat Just Eat wanted to create a festival brand experience that brought to life the ease and convenience of their food delivery service. Enter the ‘Just Eat Retreat’ – an oasis of calm at a crazy music festival. Festival-goers could win free food delivered to them at the Retreat by tweeting or instagramming their best food moments of the festival. By giving an audience an incentive to share a social moment, Just Eat were able to get their brand message across channels, stretching to audiences beyond the festival.
Festival activation
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2016 was the year of live video
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ccording to Facebook, engagement is 10 times higher with live video. Audiences feel a deeper connection knowing it’s happening right now. They feel ‘in the moment’ with you. They feel special to be watching something as it’s happening. This is a great way to stream an event, and brings audiences closer to the action. While all you may need is a smartphone to get started, Facebook Live has evolved to allow for TV quality broadcasts complete with graphic overlays, multiple camera angles, and special effects. It’s worth considering what kind of set up you need to make sure the live broadcast portrays the brand in a quality way.
Four ways to use live video 1. A live quick-fire Q&A with an influencer, celebrity, speaker or the event founder 2. A live product demonstration: this is a great marketing tool for make-up brands, who can monopolise by sending links during or after for the products used or offer a discount directly to those watching. FMCG brands do particularly well using live video as well, with live cooking demonstrations 3. Live streaming of the event in its entirety or just the best bits 4. To stream a live product launch or big unveil.
Coca-Cola 360
3600 Selfie Stage
Coca-Cola required an innovative and creative element that linked their selfie stick assets give-away campaign, reflected their target market habits and lifestyle while being cool and relevant to young adults. We created Ireland’s first ever 360° Selfie Stage. This original idea gave young adults the opportunity to receive a one-of-a-kind selfie GIF that they could share on social media, providing them with a totally new experience. The result? Coca-Cola reached more than 295,326 young adults on social media.
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Trends on the rise... Virtual reality and experiential – a perfect match
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irtual reality is hitting the mainstream. We’ve seen it crop up at most events and activations over the past year, and it’s not just a phase. VR can be a closed environment, generally only viewed by the person wearing the headset. However, it can add another dimension to an event and take the audience on an out-of-this world journey or show them something extraordinary. VR works well in the automotive sector, where virtual test drives and track races can be brought to life. It doesn’t have to be a closed environment either. Introducing green screens to your set-up can introduce a mixed reality scenario, whereby both the person wearing the headset, and onlookers can take part in the experience.
VR to look out for...
CARDBOARD – Cheap cheerful, and easy to give away. £3 a pop in bulk for giveaways DAYDREAM – Will be a competitor to Gear VR. It’s cheap, and great to watch videos SAMSUNG GEAR VR – Built with Oculus. Great for linear journeys and showing video OCULUS and VIVE – The real meaty stuff and for great user interaction.
Augmented reality for social amplification
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ugmented reality is another trend that has done well, especially across social. SnapChat is dominating in the area at the moment, with their SnapChat filters being a real hit with users. And, brands are exploiting the social media platform through a branded lens which can be used locally (event-specific), or on a wider national or international scale such as Gatorade’s American Super Bowl lens or Cadbury’s ‘Obey Your Mouth’ lens. There is great potential for AR in controlled environments but also for a new concept: mixed reality, which allows onlookers to view and participate.
Other trends to look out for…
Triggering perfectly timed messages with RFID RFID works by picking up when a person who RFID enabled walks past a sensor – great for races to send encouraging messages to loved ones as they pass a screen. It could work at large events and festivals with custom messages for friends or branded messages that know where the festival-goer has just come from, e.g. “John Smith, we hope you enjoyed watching Radiohead, why don’t you pop into the Just Eat Retreat for a bite to eat?” AI (Artificial Intelligence) robots might take over… AI is deemed to be the new ‘it’ piece of event tech for experiential marketing. It’s already used every day, through our use of computers (Good Search, for example) but we will see it integrate with the real world and live experiences more often in the future.
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The rise of the integrated agency
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ith the landscape constantly evolving, so is the traditional agency model. Now, we’re seeing more-and-more full live experience agencies cropping up to compete with the growing demand from clients to create integrated marketing campaigns that harness digital and social in the live experience. A full live experience agency is about more than traditional and basic event management or creative ideas: they offer the full package, from strategy to communications and social.
Launch event
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erve believe in the power of live experiences to win hearts and minds. In an age where traditional media struggles to achieve cut through with consumers, live face-to-face experience has become an increasingly powerful part of the marketing mix. It’s a consumer touchpoint that can justifiably claim to be more disruptive with deeper engagement than any other. From sponsorship activation to brand events and experiential field marketing, a positive live experience is an incredible opportunity for a consumer to share and become a brand advocate amongst their peers. It’s our job to make sure the path from offline experience to online advocacy is as simple and intuitive as possible.
Guinness Brewhouse launch Verve were tasked with a launch event for Guinness’ new Brewery that brings to life the heritage of the site in a creative way. Using the high-tech, brewery interior as a blank canvas, 3D projection mapping, lighting and special effects were used to take the audience on a journey through 255 years of Guinness history in a six-minute show. Eight shows ran at 15-minute intervals over three days. The audience included the Prime Minister of Ireland and the global head of Diageo.
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Sponsorship/ experiential
Carlsberg – Join the Greats The brief was to create a localised Irish campaign around Carlsberg’s sponsorship of the English Premier League. Football fans competed for a chance to play on a football pitch created on top of a shopping centre in front of football legends – the big prize was that they would play a half-time match during an all-expenses paid trip to Liverpool. They were able to play with footballing legends Robbie Fowler, Jason McAteer and Didi Hamann. The coverage was a great success and it created a lot of great content for TV, PR and social channels.
Launch event
Hophouse 13 brand launch (Diageo) Verve were tasked with launching a new crafted lager from Guinness in a very short period of time across the country. They worked closely with the Diageo team to develop a completely new way to launch beer. They brought customers from across Ireland to the St. James’s Gate brewery for an interactive brand experience, which included brewing tours and beer tasting workshops. The launch of Brewhouse 13 has become one of the most successful beer launches in the past 10 years, with nationwide sign up by publicans within weeks of the launch.
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Guinness rugby sponsorship
Pop-up bars
Verve worked closely with Guinness on the activation of their Rugby Sponsorship portfolio in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland Rugby. Passionate about creating memorable brand experience for fans, Verve created big pop-up bars to showcase the brand in a relevant way but to also increase excitement. Activations ranged from a huge Guinness Surge Bar at Twickenham with trophy and legend appearances inside to create a unique environment, along with Guinness waitresses to ensure quick quality pints, a huge Guinness inflatable pint bar at Murrayfield and a number of Guinness mobile units with pagodas to drive volume sales. At the Principality Stadium, Verve created an immersive fanzone with appearances from Ieuan Evans and a Welsh choir to create atmosphere and increase dwell time. Results have been outstanding, with dramatic increases in Guinness volumes at every ground.
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It’s an exciting time for experiential
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R, VR, Live social broadcasting, and strong social media strategies can really boost the value of your events and live experiences. It’s a quickly evolving space where brands can really create memorable, shareable moments for their potential consumers. The most important part is picking the right moments, technology, and social channels to engage your audience with, and as with all live events that involve a technology element, it either works the first time every time, or the experience and consumer engagement is lost. With the right combination of planning, testing, and innovation though, live experiences with digital and social at their heart, can create amazing branded experiences and memorable moments.
from print design to human interaction with brand ambassadors counts towards creating a positive experience for a potential consumer. A live experience is the real life incarnation of how a brand acts, speaks, and engages with consumer. At Verve we consider every detail of the consumer journey and what each interaction will look like to ensure people leave with an experience that leaves a positive memory towards the brands we work with. A positive brand experience has the power to influence consumers at the point of purchase. Verve produce a weekly blog that focuses on the event, experiential and digital and social industry. Follow it over on verveliveagency.co.uk/blog
It’s absolutely vital that consumers willingly opt into a live experience and that it’s something that doesn’t feel forced, inauthentic or contrived. Every touchpoint
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