Experience the Message

BRAND NEW WORLD SPEECH: MONTREAL

Max Lenderman – Axe, Jones Soda, Xbox et Pepsi : vivre une expérience pour promouvoir la marque from Infopresse on Vimeo.

 

THE POP-UP EXPERIENCE

Readers of my blog and books know that I am enamored (sometimes overly so) by great executions that provide ample consumer delight, engagement and results.

So it's no surprise that I would be writing again about the concept of pop-up retailtainment and/or branding. And lo-and-behold, Ad Age -- the bible of the 30-second panacea -- has a front (home) page article on the emerging growth of pop-up as a brand building tactic.

Brushfire Marketing, which worked with the New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism on the Jersey Shore Store, said the temporary shop garnered nearly $1 million in earned media. The agency said the store led to 46 broadcast segments and 21 print and online placements. On average, 1,000 visitors passed through the store each week and 500 pieces of collateral were handed out daily.

Yet the budget for the store, which was open from just before Memorial Day through Aug. 9, was "very small," said John Leonardi, president-CEO of Brushfire Marketing. It cost about $20,000 per month to rent the 2,500-square-foot space on Broadway between 11th and 12th streets in Manhattan, and that, he said, was the bulk of the budget.

"It's one-on-one marketing," Mr. Leonardi said. "In a recession, when marketers are looking for alternatives, they need to ask how can they do something different, something maybe less expensive, something that's not a long-term investment."

For more on pop-ups on ETM, go here or here. Or read a deeper dive here.

APPLE DAY CARE

So I get this in my email, and I think to myself: is this cool or pandering. It takes me about 10 seconds to decide that it's cool: Apple wants to show my kids a good time. And I think to myself: maybe Apple knows something about raising kids that I don't know. Hell, I'm still learning Garage Band. So yeah, Apple, maybe I will send my kids into your store. Thanks for the offer.

And then the big thought occurs: Imagine if this email came from Microsoft. Creepy, right? My kids at a Microsoft camp? No fucking way.

And there, my friends, is the difference between the two brands. There is the notion of brand trust and respect. The idea that an experience with a brand can extend far beyond a transaction. The concept that a brand based on experiential engagement with its customers can roll out an extension like a summer camp for kids called Apple Camp -- well folks, that's just the difference between a brand of the future and a brand of the present.

HOW TO WALK THE WALK

I love the attitude of this story and the brand. I love how ballsy it is.

Red Bull, with some assistance from Oakley, has just built a secret half-pipe on the backside of Silverton Mountain in Colorado for snowboarder Shaun White’s training purposes. The area can only be accessed by snowmobile or helicopter and is said to be closed off to the public. The price tag was $500,000, and it looks like it was worth every penny.

You see, that's how a brand leader acts. It does so without hesitation, without a need for justification and without the fear of middle-management blow-back. This is how you grow brand love. Any kid who has dreams of stardom -- especially as a snowboarder or skater -- will now dream of that stardom in the context of Red Bull and how the brand acts towards its stars and brand ambassadors.

Kudos, Red Bull. You are teaching us so much.

THE FEEL-GOOD EXPERIENCE

Not that this should be a surprise to anyone who is engaged in this world: a new study from Cone Inc. indicates that 79% of consumers say they are likely to switch to another brand if it is associated with a good cause, and 38% say they have purchased a product linked to a cause in the last 12 months.

Millennials are the demographic group most motivated to do good deeds with their purchases: 88% of its 18-to-24 demographic say they are likely to switch from one brand to another if it supports a cause, and 51% have bought a product linked to a cause in the last 12 months.

Here's the big kicker: the 2008 Cone Cause Evolution Study suggests that linking products to causes can generate double-digit sales gains. Not bad for the fell-good sell.

Sales of a toothpaste brand that had been linked to a cause went up 28% compared to a control group; sales of a cause-related shampoo increased 74%. Brands that had been advertised as cause-related also generated much higher recall than those that hadn't.

Wake up, folks. Smell the new world. And remember that there is much more to do.

While 91% believe it's important for companies to let consumers know how they are helping in any given cause, only 58% believe they get enough details. And 50% believe that the government should actually regulate the claims.

Source: MediaPost. Story here.

CAUSAL CAPITALISM FOR THE KIDDIES

The rise of beneficent marketing is upon us. The next generation of consumers will determine their brand loyalties and levels of brand engagement through an internal filter that makes cause marketing and corporate philanthropy an integral part.

A forward thinking company called Edo Interactive has introduced the facecard, for teens older than 13. Here's a brief description of the simple functionality:

The facecard is a prepaid and reloadable card that can be used by young people 13 and over anywhere MasterCard is accepted. Parents can electronically add allowances or emergency funds to the card and have them available within 15 minutes; cardholders can access them in stores and ATMs worldwide. Because they are debit cards, facecards can only be used for transactions up to their current balance, which users can monitor from anywhere online. There are no activation or monthly maintenance charges for using facecard, but fees are applied for international purchases, using an ATM, inactive accounts and negative balance incidents, among others. A series of videos on YouTube illustrates how facecard can be used.

I love how a series on YouTube is the preferred way to learn about financial responsibility. But there's more to the card, and herein lies its experiential nature:

facecard functions as a sort of social network, allowing users to create profiles, set their preferences and find each other online. Facecard holders can use the site to send funds to each other's facecards to repay loans or give gifts, for example. Through a "prewards" program with partner companies, meanwhile, the facecard also lets advertisers reward cardholders for their loyalty in a highly targeted fashion by periodically adding funds to their card for use at particular stores. Users can indicate in their profiles what types of prewards they'd be interested in. Earlier this summer facecard partnered with Tennessee's Bonnaroo music festival to donate USD 10,000 to Stop Global Warming. And as part of the card's nationwide launch, representatives from the Nashville-based company will reportedly be visiting 50 college campuses on Saturday, August 30th—the first Saturday of NCAA football action—with information on financial literacy.

Given that the United States alone is home to some 82 million teens and young adults--with annual spending of almost USD 350 billion, edō says—targeting this group (and helping advertisers do the same) makes good sense. One to bring to other parts of the world?

Isn't this cool? Sure, there are plenty of credit cards that allow users to donate money or reward points to charities of their choice. But this is different. This is community giving. And more amazingly, here's a debit card that really gives back!

Welcome to the future, folks. If this idea ever takes root, we can have a whole new generation of social and socially-conscious megaconsumers -- the beneficent prosumer.

Thanks to Springwise for the tip.

EXPERIENTIAL TRAVEL AT THE NEXT LEVEL

We all know of the new trend in travel is to make it more experiential. Instead of lying on the beach like a marooned mammal, we are going on wine tours or climbing peaks. We are making the experience into the centerpiece of the vacation.

So how awesome is this idea for a travel tour?

Imagine what might be like to rediscover blindfolded the borough of Alfama: the narrow streets, the smell of grilled sardines, the sound of a Fado that can be heard from afar and so many others sensorial adventures…

Walks on foot in the Alfama Borough in which the participants have their eyes blindfolded and are guided by a blind guide from ACAPO (Association for the Visually Impaired) who shares his sensorial experiences.

Not only is this a fantastic experiential (re: sensorial) way to be a tourist and "see" things for the first time, it is also a beneficial experience that takes an altruistic slant to its raison d'etre:

- to provide a sensorial experience which aims to gather new knowledge of the surrounding space through the stimuli of the senses of smell, tact, taste and hearing and absense of vision.

- to bring awareness to the universe of the visually impaired, not as a limitation but instead in a positive and stimulating note in which the blind himself invite us to step into his own world of codes and references.

Awesome. Simply awesome.

SHOWERING WITH MAYO

Today's Adweek has an interesting piece about how consumers are using products differently than their intended use for their own "experiential" needs. In other words, they have found experiences that are not contrived by the marketers that push the product.

For instance:

Preparation H is generally not something you'd dab on while waiting in line outside a Manhattan dance club, but according to recent media coverage, that's exactly what some men are doing. They're using the hemorrhoids cream, however, well north of where it's intended: on their torsos and arms to appear more muscular.

Of course, Preparation H hacks are flipping out...and not embracing a great experiential (and marketing) opportunity:

"We don't approve or endorse any off-label uses of our products, including Preparation H," says Millicent Brooks, a representative at Prep H parent company, Wyeth Consumer Healthcare. "We have certain quality-control standards at Wyeth, where unless it has been thoroughly tested, we wouldn't endorse the use or promote it."

For years, consumers in Third World countries have been using western products for things not necessarily intended for them. It is widely known that Coca-Cola is a great tummy ache remedy. Some laundry detergents act as good mosquito repellents, and Vaseline can be an ointment for practically everything. In eastern Europe, models frequently wash their hair with mayonnaise.

Read the piece. It's worth it. Especially the case study of how Bounce turned a weakness (in college, it is known as a great air freshener when smoking weed if you exhale into the sheets stuffed in a toilet paper roll...did I reveal too much?) into a strength with a consumer engagement promotion and campaign.

MARKETING WITH MEANING

I just ran across a new blog called Marketing With Meaning. The very fact that the URL was available in 2008 tells us a little bit about the importance of creating marketing that benefits the consumer, that adds beneficence to the world and that creates existential authenticity to our commercial lives. Here's the blog's elevator pitch. Is it any surprise I love it? I feel that I should have written it. (Well, I actually did. An entire chapter in Experience the Message.) But I digress.....

People don’t like advertising. For decades we have annoyed them with more than 3,000 ad interruptions per day. We have offended them with ads for erectile dysfunction drugs during the Sunday afternoon football game. And we continue to “monetize their eyeballs” with ads on airline trays and gas pumps. Everything works well when people are forced to absorb our messages.

But our model of interruption and annoyance is ending, especially due to digital technology. Digital increasingly gives people the freedom to ignore our messages. At a time when media options are exploding, time with ad-supported media is actually down 6.3 percent in the past five years. People are watching DVDs instead of broadcast TV, listening to iPods instead of radios, and playing Madden NFL 08 instead of watching Monday Night Football. New, emboldened consumers are going further by using the Internet to flame advertisers, and they are petitioning governments to limit advertisers’ reach.

The result: Our jobs are in jeopardy. The average CMO tenure is less than two years, and the average agency tenure is less than four years. We also are losing the best and brightest minds that businesses need to win in the marketplace. Advertisers continue to fall somewhere down near politicians and car salesmen in terms of professional respect. We must do better.

But there is good news. From this crucible of pressure, a new model is starting to form. In a world where consumers can choose to avoid our interruptions, in order to survive and thrive, we must create marketing they actually choose to engage with. We call it Marketing with Meaning.

Converging trends, sharp minds, and experimenting brands all are aligning around this new model. Industry leaders such as Jim Stengel are calling for a “shift from ‘telling and selling’ to building relationships.” Brands such as Nike, Dove, Burger King, and even The Partnership for a Drug-Free America all have discovered how a shift to meaningful marketing can boost profits, while making the world a better place.

No one has yet pulled together a complete theory and model of meaningful marketing—until now. In the months ahead we will share insights and examples of meaningful marketing. We are going to give away our secrets and teach you how to create meaningful marketing for yourself and for your clients. We want to change the entire world, not just our little corner of it. This is our own way of creating meaningful marketing that we believe will help us attract a few clients and new hires along the journey. Thanks for joining us!

SHOPPER MARKETING AND THE DEATH OF MAGAZINES

Lately, I've been engrossed lately in the upcoming book, which purposely skirts the issue of experiential marketing in order to create a more generalist perspective. At the office, I've been swamped with finding creatively tactical solutions to some big-ass brands, but the work is less experiential thinking and more PR-driven experience-based promotions, stunts and digital marketing campaigns.

So, I've been out of the conceptual game for a bit. But I've just read a couple of things that have me pondering experiential applications a little bit more deeply today.

The first is an article from The Hub about shopper marketing. The author writes that:

Retailers and brand marketers are suffering from a disconnect about the very meaning of the term, “Shopper Marketing.” Yes, we all agree that it’s about in-store and the “first moment of truth.” But many have yet to realize that it’s the retailer—not the brand marketer—who is in charge.

Too many brand marketers are making the mistake of adopting the definition of Shopper Marketing offered by Deloitte & Touche: “All marketing stimuli developed based on a deep understanding of shopper behavior designed to build brand equity, engage the shopper and lead him/her to purchase” (emphasis mine).

This is a flawed definition because it disregards the retailer as the key decision-maker. It also ignores the retailer’s key objective, which is to provide shopper solutions and drive sales by category, not by brand. Retailers aren’t thinking about your brand’s equity; they care only about their shoppers and providing them with solutions—in health care, pet care, household, meals, entertainment. You name it.

The reality is, Shopper Marketing, done correctly, isn’t even about marketing in the conventional sense. Traditionally, marketing is mainly about communicating messages to consumers—mostly advertising of one kind or another.

At retail, the goal is not just to communicate to—it is to offer solutions for—shoppers. That’s what helps shoppers have a more satisfying shopping experience. Interrupting them with ads usually has just the opposite effect because it tends to slow them down instead of help them out.

So, the objective of Shopper Marketing really is not about traditional marketing at all. It is about delivering shopper solutions. And that’s a very different objective. We need to stop treating shoppers as if they are consumers in search of brands. They are not. They are shoppers in search of solutions.

The article goes on to state that a new approach to -- or a different understanding of -- shopper marketing is needed. In fact, without saying it, the author is making a point for experiential solutions. It's a good read on the idea that brands working together and bundling products for solutions is a key driver of growth for retailers.

The second article that caught my eye was this one from the NYT. According to the article, a perennially-struggling magazine like Guitar World hit pay-dirt with an experiential idea that could prove to be its next business model for survival. Here's the article:

Sometimes success means seeing in advance, with absolute clarity, where you should go. And sometimes it’s more like, “Whoa, dude, check it out.”

The instructional DVD-and-booklet packages published by Guitar World magazine fall into the latter group. The publisher, Anthony J. Danzi, describes them as a low-expectations play — put the material on magazine racks along with the magazine, and see what happens.

What happened was that the DVD packages sold better at the newsstand than issues of the magazine itself, turning into an important income source for Guitar World and its owner, Future PLC of Britain. “It’s still kind of astounding to us,” he said.

A few weeks ago, Guitar World started selling the packages through its Web site, making available the old ones that have disappeared from newsstands.

Since the first one appeared in late 2005, Guitar World has a new DVD and booklet about once every three months, each with a specific theme — how to play acoustic rock, how to play Christmas songs, how to play Jimi Hendrix songs, how to play shred (speed metal, if you must ask). Despite a $9.99 price, they have sold 80,000 to 90,000 for each edition, Mr. Danzi said, while the monthly magazine, which goes for $7.99, averages newsstand sales around 80,000.

He credits Brad Tolinski, the editor in chief, with the idea. Guitar World already had a distribution network, video recording studios and relationships with professional guitarists, and each issue of the magazine contains a video CD focusing on a particular artist.

The profit margin on each additional copy sold of the instructional package is significantly higher than for each additional copy of the magazine, he said. “The DVD costs more than the video CD to produce, but it doesn’t have the high production costs of the magazine,” he added.

What makes the idea’s success all the more surprising is that on a newsstand, it looks like just a magazine. The DVD is not noticeable at first glance, and the letters “DVD” appear in fairly small type.

“The limitations of the newsstand kind of dictate to us what physical form it has to take, and we thought the packaging might hold us back,” Mr. Danzi said. “You can go out in the marketplace and there’s a gazillion guitar instructional products, in music stores and book stores. You don’t really think about the newsstand as a place people would go for this.”

Who ever said that print media is dead?!?!