Experiential marketing growing

For the third consecutive year Jack Morton Worldwide has conducted proprietary research in the US, UK, China and Australia with an objective to gauge consumer response and receptiveness to experiential marketing.

Experiential marketing — broadly defined as live events where audiences interact with a product or brand face to face — continues to grow, according to Jack Morton Worldwide. Experiential marketing is closely linked to customer experience strategies for marketers. Many factors fuel its growth, like the new realities of media consumption and avoidance, and the resulting need to find new ways to reach audiences directly, when and where they are most receptive, even welcoming.

Another reason for experiential marketing’s growth is marketers’ recognition that when it comes to impressions, quality matters as much as, if not more than, quantity. Quality of impressions is increasingly expressed as engagement, implying relevance, interactivity and a dialogue that extends over time and across touch points.

Preference vs. influence
Consumers do not prefer experiential marketing to other media (it ranks third, after TV and the Internet). But they do report that it is more influential. And for marketers influence — because it conveys action generated by marketing — is clearly more meaningful than preference.

Across demographics and geographies experiential marketing is cited as the “most engaging” means of interacting with a brand, with 82% of respondents agreeing that participating in a live event is more engaging than other forms of communication. Influence was rated according to three core goals of all marketing, experiential or otherwise.

Create understanding:
80% of respondents agree that participating in experiential marketing would give them more information than other media — thereby creating understanding and echoing the now millennia-old saying of Confucius, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

Generate action:
80% agreed they would be more likely to purchase after attending a live marketing event. Of those who had participated in experiential marketing in the past over 50% reported that they did take action—such as trying a sample (62%), visiting the brand’s Web site (52%) or requesting more information from the company (48%).

Inspire advocacy: Word-of-mouth
Word of mouth is a valuable effect of experiential marketing, and one with special resonance and authenticity given its peer-to-peer manner of delivery. 85% agreed that participating in a brand experience is something they would tell others about; 54% who attended a past event confirmed that they did tell others about it.

If you want to know more, download the survey here