Hanover Dan - Experiential marketing: secrets, strategies, and success stories from the worlds greatest brands

Cover image: Jamie Farrant/Getty Images
Cover design: Wiley

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright 2016 by Kerry Smith and Dan Hanover. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with the respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom.

For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Smith, Kerry, 1963- author. | Hanover, Dan, 1973- author.

Title: Experiential marketing : secrets, strategies, and success stories from
the world's greatest brands / Kerry Smith, Dan Hanover.

Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015050877 | ISBN 9781119145875 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119145899
(epub) | ISBN 9781119145882 (epdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Target marketing. | Branding (Marketing)

Classification: LCC HF5415.127 .S65 2016 | DDC 658.8dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050877

For the brands that push the envelopeand the marketers who never settle.

Your latest marketing campaign cost more than the last, yet reached half as many people.

Your celebrity endorsement deal has yet to generate any measurable returns.

Your online marketing campaign yielded no significant web traffic increase, and your brands social media engagements declined.

Youre being out-marketed by competitors who are spending a fraction of your budget, yet are capturing a larger share of the market.

What are you going to do?

Before you tell us, were going to ask that you forget everything you know about marketing for a moment. Why you do it, how you were taught to use it, and what it accomplishes.

And then ask yourself one question: Are you open to a new approacha way to break through the noise and connect with your target audience wherever they are, engage them in a way that generates tangible relationships, and convert them into customers?

If you are, then this book is for you.

Humans are social animals.

The need to gather and share stories dates back to the dawn of man, when our ancestors met around the fire to share in the kill and documented hunts on cave walls. Over thousands of years of political and social upheaval, natural and man-made disasters, and technological achievements that have shaped and reshaped our world, the need to share has remained constantand it defines us as a species. But while our need to share stories has not changed over the millennia, the methods by which we share them have.

As a marketer, the need to cut through noise and tell your story has never been more importantor more difficult. In todays tune-out culture, where the interruptive marketing strategies of yesterday have been rendered almost useless by consumers who can now tune you out, brands need more than a catchy jingle, an amusing TV spot, or a big budget to be noticed. Being flashy, sexy, or loud no longer equates to a return on investment. Marketers have no one to blame but themselves for their current predicament. For decades, brands worshipped at the altar of mass reachusing GRPs, CPMs, and other quantitative metrics for delivering the most messages at the least cost, and in the process bombarding consumers with irrelevant messages at the wrong time. That approach doesnt create engagement; it creates exasperation. Its no wonder that, when given the opportunity to skip or block mass media, consumers do it in droves. And if traditional media clutter isnt challenging enough, todays customers are bypassing established media altogether and consuming content, sharing, and communicating via entirely new social and mobile platforms... which make them even harder to reach.

Brands have two choices: (1) continue to play cat-and-mouse with customers, trying to keep up with where theyre going and adapting messaging to the medium du jour. We call this the push option, which requires you spend money to chase your consumers to their next favorite medium and then figure out how to interrupt them with your message. Or (2) take another pathone that taps into the core of our human DNA and virtually forces target audiences to stop, take notice, and participate. We call this the pull approach, and it is the central tenet of experiential marketing, a powerful strategy used more and more by leading brands to create true customer engagement that delivers measurable results.

In its simplest form, experiential marketing is nothing more than a highly evolved form of corporate storytelling. But while the premise appears simplecombine a brand message, elements of interactivity, a targeted audience, and deliver it in a live setting to create a defined outcomesuccessful experiences are both art and science. Embracing experiential marketing requires a new way of thinking about marketing, creativity, and the role of media in the overall mix.

This may sound a bit uncomfortable for many marketers, because it requires changing some very established ways of thinking and branding methods. But those who have transitioned to an experiential marketing mindset are finding that any pains of change are outweighed by the benefits of more powerful marketing, more engaged customers, and better returns on marketing investments.

This book is the culmination of more than a decade spent working with some of the biggest brands in the world, interviewing hundreds of marketers, and documenting thousands of experiential marketing programs. Throughout our years covering the leaders of the experiential marketing movement, weve isolated and identified key success factors that successful experience brands share. None began their journeys as highly evolved experiential marketers, but many can now claim expert status after years of trial and error. We are about to provide you with the collective insights and wisdom from the marketers who blazed the trail so you can proceed down this exciting new path.