Brands have more channels and avenues of influence to reach their audience than ever before. But with more channels comes more complexity – throughout the strategy, planning, execution and measurement of every campaign.
At Aesthetic, we know how important it is to get the most value out of your marketing investment. Here, we’ll show you how building brand experience into your strategy can make your ATL and BTL campaigns work harder, increase the credibility of your messages, improve brand sentiment, and drive purchase intent.
Why brand experience?
Brand experience (or BX) is all about creating meaningful, emotional connections with your audience, to influence desired behaviours such as purchase or advocacy.
Think about the touchpoints at your disposal, such as;
- digital channels
- out of home
- customer service
- products and services
- sponsorships
- advertisements
- events and activations
Brand experience considers the ecosystem all of these touchpoints, and how to enhance your brand’s messages through experiences that activate your audience’s senses and taps into their emotions. By building relationships with your audience at this level, your messages are more likely to enter their long-term memory and influence their behaviour.
Every experience is different and has to be tailored to the business requirements, but a rule worth taking into consideration is that integrated campaigns are 57% more effective than any developed or delivered in silos.
Integrated marketing campaigns that work
Leading marketers understand that integrated strategies, which cleverly apply consistent messaging across all marketing channels are more powerful than a siloed approach (with different campaigns across each channel). Less known is that consumers also prefer this approach —72% of consumers favour integrated marketing campaigns.
Marc Woodland, Managing Director of Future Content, says that integrative campaign strategies are the best way to develop brand trust, reduce brand confusion, and improve the efficiency of your campaigns.
This approach can also make marketing spend more efficient and increase ROI, which will be good news for the 39% of marketers who state that proving marketing ROI is their top marketing challenge.
Marketing teams strike gold when the strategy is right, the campaign speaks perfectly to the target audience, and an integrated approach is carefully executed —when it all comes together the effects of those campaigns can continue to ripple for years, sometimes becoming a part of a brand’s story. The following two case studies celebrate integrated campaigns, which included experiential in their strategies, and made history!
1. Converse Rated One Star
With a new take on their iconic 1974 One Star sneaker, Converse created a holistic integrated campaign called ‘Rated One Star’ across the UK. To bring their counterculture heritage to life, the brand enlisted global influencers and artists for a combined OOH, guerrilla, video, and experiential campaign. ‘Rated One Star’ messaging took over buses, Digital Escalator Panels, Westfield LEDs, flyposting and billboard takeovers across key sites.
The highlight of the campaign was the ‘One Star Hotel’: an interactive, two-day Instagram wonderland in Shoreditch. The five-floor pop-up had plenty of activities in themed rooms, including a live fashion show, mah-jong, in screen-printing workshops, film screenings, and 24-hour dance parties. Instagrammable interiors and entertainment aside, visitors could also purchase exclusive, artist-customised editions of the One Star.
Attendees loved the 90’s nostalgia, immersive activities, and celebrity involvement at the One Star Hotel. Over 5,300 people attended the experience with an average dwell time of 40 minutes, with strong social media results of 1.7 million livestream views, 40,000 new Instagram followers, and 226 million media impressions. The activation elevated the ‘Rated One Star’ integrated campaign to a new level, with the experience directly contributing to $50,000 on-site retail sales.
2. Audi E-Tron
Taking on electric vehicle giant Tesla was no easy task for Audi. Their first fully electric SUV, the e-tron, had to position the brand as a legitimate competitor to Tesla, which had a ten-year head start on Audi. The e-tron public release involved a Super Bowl spot, pop-up vehicle displays, world press premier, digital advertising, and billboards – all with the theme of challenging Tesla.
These efforts hadn’t given the general public opportunity to interact with the new vehicle, so Audi added an experiential element to the campaign. To achieve the goal of increasing share of voice within the luxury car conversation, the brand built the Charging Station Unleashed directly opposite the Tesla San Francisco office. For four days, the public could enjoy free vehicle charging, interactive installations and convenience-store snacks reimagined by Michelin Star chef Stuart Brioza. Consumers could “pay” for the snacks with social currency: that is, by posting a video, photo, or tweet about the event on their social feeds.
The activation was a huge success. Share of voice increased from 27% pre-event to 43% during the week of the event. Over 2,1000 attendees enjoyed the activation, and 320,000 online engagements and 1.2 million social views raised awareness of the product.
Putting it all together
Successful integrated campaigns can be challenging – there are a lot of balls in the air! Plus, brand experience is unlike many ATL or digital campaigns where impressions are counted in milliseconds. Beyond a clever campaign idea, you’ve got to step into the shoes of your audience to understand what drives them – to get people to opt into and actively engage with your messaging.
Here in Australia, Aesthetic has been leading the charge in integrative, brand experience marketing since 2007. Our award-winning brand experience team takes a holistic approach to help you achieve your business objectives.
Get in touch – we’d love to help you make the connection between your strategic business goals and the creative solutions that will connect with your audience.
Let’s talk.
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