Backchannelmedia

Marketing

By Robertson, Hugh

Marketing Society

The fragmentation of traditional media and the consequent loss of a direct route to the consumer has generated the need for brands to differentiate themselves in more innovative, creative and dynamic ways. This shift has coincided with control moving markedly from the brand to the consumer and individuals managing their own relationships with products and brands. As Rupert Murdoch recently told the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers: 'Power is movi ng away from those who own and manage [the] media to a new and demanding generation of consumers.'Tellingly, he added: The challenge for us... is how to engage with this new audience.'

These same developments have given rise to experiential marketing developing a legitimate posit ion as a stand-alone marketing discipline. The big quest ion is whether it has matured beyond being a purely tactical medium to become a strategic driver of market ing campaigns in its own right.

That can only be answered by examining and defining what experiential marketing is. What it isn't is a cold, impersonal tree sample ottered in a supermarket aisle that is forgotten as soon as the shopper reaches the checkout. It is a live interaction created to communicate a brand's values and personality in order to provide a memorable emotional connection that ultimately leads to product purchase.

Experiential marketing's proven ability to engage a target audience means that more clients are turning to an experiential partner as their lead agency on strategic campaigns. But unless it can show it has the tools and methodologies to plan and evaluate campaigns, experiential marketingcannot be considered a truly strategic discipline.

It may be a surprise, therefore, to learn that many leading experiential marketing firms have been refining their craft for well over a decade. While experiential originated from a desire to reach an increasingly sophisticated consumer base by breaking the very rules and conventions on which field marketing methodology was built, it has developed its own set of robust planning and evaluation metrics.

Not only do these methodologies stand up to rigorous scrutiny, they fit seamlessly into existing planning protocol, allowing experiential to sit within any integrated campaign. So it is somewhat ironic that the greatest hurdle for experiential to achieve strategic legitimacy is the reluctance of traditional media buyers to engage with the live domain. However, this is a situation that will not remain for long, as more marketers embrace the discipline.

Hugh Robertson, RPM

Hugh Robertson is managing director of RPM and a member of The Marketing Society

Copyright Haymarket Business Publications Ltd. Jul 5, 2006

(c) 2006 Marketing. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.