Social Machinery

Experiential marketing is defined as the art of creating an experience where the result is an emotional connection to a brand, product or idea. It gives customers an opportunity to engage and interact with brands, products, and services in sensory ways.  This emotional experiences help people connect to a brand and increase the product awareness during the sales process. In short, It’s the difference between telling people about your product  or letting them experience the benefits for themselves. 

Experiential marketing  is a powerful tool out there to win brand equity. Is a term very close to guerrilla marketing but more related to make consumers part of the advertising effort.

Here you will find 10 cool examples of experiential marketing applied around the globe.

1. Fitness First – Amsterdam

Excellent action developed by n=5 in Amsterdam for fitness first international chain of health clubs. In order to remind us our lack of physical activity, they installed a scale at the bus stop bench. Just seat down at the bus stop and your weigh will appear on the billboard. Just a perfect way to ruin your day and start thinking about some abdominal and jogging.

2. Scotch-Brite Super Absorbent – Thailand

Fantasti installation  in public water fountains across Thailand, developed by young & rubicam for 3M. They attached a super absorbent scotch-Brite sponge to water taps that are found all over the city. Whenever the tap was used, the consumer saw an effective demonstration of it’s super absorbency.

3. Red Cross Melt Man campaign – Argentina

Imagine a man melting in his own puddle. For sure is something that will grab your attention. Well, Leo Burnett Argentina created this amazing display as part of Red Cross of Argentina efforts to raise awareness about climate change. Located in Buenos Aires’ Plaza Francia, the melting  man passes out information calling public to use public transportation, and to reduce, reuse, recycle energy eco-friendly equipment

4. Maxcoffee -Japan

OK, this one is extremely wired and is obviously coming from Japan. Maxcoffee, is an energetic soft drink similar to Coca-Cola.

Maxcoffee chose to redesign the toilets of a number of ski resorts in the Japan. The restrooms ubicles were fully wrapped to give the impression of a ski jumper’s view. The person could look down at their skis and see the steep ski jump ahead. Also, the toilet paper holder carried thave the marketing message for this campaign: “Seriously kick-ass intensely sweet for the real coffee super zinging unstoppable Max! Taste-explosion!” The message also featured maxcoffe’s website, where visitors could view videos of extreme sports and get more information.

5. Amnesty international – Germany

Jung von matt created an mind blowing-interactive outdoor for Amnesty international that tracked eye movement at a bus stops. The message of the ad read: “It happens when nobody is watching”. An eye-tracking technology notice when someone was looking at the billboard and delivered an image of a happy couple . When that person looked to another side,  the image transformed into a scene of violence, with the man beating up the woman. A short delay in the image swap enabled the person viewing the billboard to get a glimpse of the violence, but if they looked back, the camera would detect their eye movement and then deliver the happy couple again. People were encouraged to visit Amnesty website.

6. “The Practice” TV Show- United States

 To introduce the TV show “The Practice” a two-way mirror effect was created in the restrooms of movie theatres. The mirror effect simulates the false windows at police interrogation room. The agency behind this interesting display is Marcel from Paris

7. Colgate “Don’t Forget” – Thailand 

Is normal that companies like Colgate to give away small product samples  to remind target consumers, especially kids, to take better care of their teeth after eating sweets. As you can imagine,  this traditional method doesn’t drive strong results on this type of segment. They decided instead of giving out product samples they will give all kind of nice sweets like ice creams and cotton candy. The stick carrying the ice cream and cotton candy carries a hidden message. Once kids are done the message printed on the tip of the stick shaped like a toothbrush reveals “Don’t Forget” with the Colgate logo. An innovative way to remind youngsters to brush their teeth. This creative ad was developed by  Y&R Thailand.

8. Johny Andrean beauty salon – Indonesia

 Fortune advertising agency came with a very strange way to create awareness about  Johnny Andrean’s hair-strengthening product launch. They wanted to create a low budget marketing campaign but with high-impact result. They substitute passenger handle in public transportation to demonstrate how strong your hair is by using their new product.

9. Victoria bug zoo – Canada

Victoria bug zoo created this special outdoor display made out of Crystal, simulating the effect of the eye of an insect. Very experiential. The agency behind was Rethink.

10. Nike – United States

In order to remind people that physical fitness is a way of life, Nike created this fantastic campaign with Publicis advertising agency. They changed public transportation handles with this “exercise” handle. Maybe for some people the campaign resulted difficult to understand, but I believe that Nike’s message was specifically addressing their loyal fans customer segment.