The appeal of experiential marketing is that it invites an audience to engage with a brand in a creative and hands-on approach. Event attendees aren’t mere bystanders. They’re active participants who help shape the experience itself – through media, games, music or interactive displays.
In the current climate and amid growing global health and travel concerns, brands are hungry to rethink the way they plan experiential marketing activities. Recent weeks have seen the cancellations of major tech and media events, from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to South by Southwest in Austin. Many corporations are encouraging or even requiring employees to work from home or cancel upcoming nonessential travel.
While these changes are disruptive, they also offer an opportunity for companies to explore new experiential marketing approaches that have the potential to change the way business is done. When traditional live marketing activities – like trade shows, conferences and festivals – aren’t possible, what alternatives can we develop? When travel is curtailed, how can we re-imagine memorable brand experiences that inspire creativity via a 21st-century adaptation of live interaction?
As business influencers, we must learn to adapt to a marketing landscape that is often changing in real time. Different crises will come and go, but it’s a smart long-term strategy for all brands to develop agile marketing solutions. Here are five creations our experiential marketing agency is focusing on in 2020 – and a few ways your company can benefit from them.
Remote Demo Rooms: Where Real And Virtual Worlds Collide
Immersive digital technology is facilitating new ways of experiencing products. We are building regional remote demo rooms, either on a client’s corporate campus or at off-campus leased locations, that allow select visitors to come for in-person demonstrations. Products can be displayed as they would in a traditional trade show or can be shown via remote global broadcasts of a demonstration. Advancing technologies can create a digital experience that is even more impressive than what can be achieved on traditional trade show floors. If your company wants to connect with potential buyers in several different markets, customize remote demo rooms for each location, focusing on the features and benefits that are most important to that particular audience, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.
Advance Tech (AT) Live Broadcasts Are Real Life In 2020
Large, in-person conferences aren’t always feasible due to financial or logistical reasons; however, advances in streaming technologies open up new possibilities. We are conducting live online presentations from client campuses that are broadcast to locations around the world, including direct feeds to media and analysts. Some broadcasts let users scroll around the room in real time and in 3D. Additional options offer the user the ability to zoom in on a product on stage and interact with it virtually as a speaker talks about it.
If a big annual conference isn’t in the cards for your company, an AT live broadcast series can still provide an engaging platform to highlight company news, showcase products and cover emerging trends. To meet the needs of different time zones, schedule broadcasts for certain times throughout the day. If your company has offices in New York, Brussels and Singapore, for example, consider organizing three live presentations six to eight hours apart so all employees can participate.
3D Hologram Technology For Global Reach
New hologram technology now exists to make large-scale, live demonstrations a reality. We combine live broadcasting with 3D hologram experiences that can be conducted from and broadcast to anywhere in the world.
This technology allows our clients to market their brand’s product on a global scale with relative ease and low cost as if the product were actually in the room. Hologram technology can be used to remotely broadcast a 3D hologram of your CEO or a keynote speaker to all of your offices across the country. Or if you want to demonstrate the detail and function of a new product to a client in Paris, without actually traveling there in person, send the equipment to the client and give an interactive 3D hologram presentation from your own headquarters.
Out Of The Convention Center Box: Experiential Road Shows
Road shows are evolving to have a more global reach, without depleting corporate budgets or violating travel restrictions. We are developing experiential road shows for clients that are designed to exhibit their products in a unique format, while freeing up more internal employee time.
Experiential road shows can send your company’s physical products on the road to be managed by a third-party company’s local staff. They allow businesses to showcase products to potential clients in multiple cities around the world without sending any employees to travel. Instead, outline the details and selling points of each product with a partner that has local satellites around the globe and can operate on your behalf.
Business Gamers: Immersive Gaming Systems
Gaming systems have advanced dramatically and can now be used to help brands create immersive and affordable ways to showcase B2B and B2C products in a trade show or private environment. A gaming system makes it possible for your customers to engage with your product without being co-located. Users can navigate through a product demonstration in 3D utilizing specialized controllers that allow them to explore products and features in high definition. Multiplayer gaming functions, similar to those of today’s popular video games, allow marketing team members or engineers to join the game remotely and walk through the live experience with customers. Send the customized gaming system that is ready to plug and play to a potential customer, and set up a time for a live interactive demonstration or allow them to game on their own.
Experiential marketing is evolving to meet the demands of a new corporate landscape. Now is the time to employ engaging alternatives to large, in-person events to reach your marketing objectives, regardless of any challenges you may encounter. We will likely find that these technologies stay far past the immediate travel crises that we face today.