With the Ability to ‘Touch’ Taken Away, What will Become of Experiential Marketing?

The world has changed dramatically in the last one year. We have all had to learn new terms and concepts: isolation, antibodies, shelter in place, social distancing, and more. In particular, when it comes to large-scale, in-person live meet-ups, 2020 was the year of the great halt and pivot. But with vaccine distribution speeding up, our yearning to return to social interaction and live events is also growing. People are making travel plans, music festival line-ups are being announced, and statisticians predict that we're about to enter a second "rumbling '20s," in which people will party harder than ever to make up for the lost time.

As stores closed to combat the spread of Covid-19, e-commerce sales skyrocketed. Consumers stayed at home for months, scrolling through products and driving up e-commerce sales. However, with significant investments in physical real estate, some retailers are poised to entice customers back into their stores. Businesses are plotting strategies to engage consumers offline again, now that pandemic restrictions are anticipated to relax in the coming months.

Even though the digital world is fantastic, everyone is suffering from content-zoom weariness. Experiential marketing is an important aspect of keeping businesses relevant, current, and appealing. However, there is a realisation that not everything will be the same as companies and agencies roll up their sleeves to go back to experiential campaigns.

The brands are tip-toeing:

Experiential shopping, which was already an influential distinguishing tool prior to the pandemic, will become a significantly larger factor in determining retail's winners and losers in 2021 and beyond. While marketers want to offer in-person experiences as quickly as possible, no one wants to be the first to do so. Considering safety is the first priority presently, no one wants to be the cause of a super-spreader incident and hence the brands are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Experiential marketing will gain traction:

Real life experiences have a far greater influence on our senses than abstract notions. Experiences are the one thing that everyone has been missing throughout the pandemic. Everyone wants to get things done. Literally anything.  Magazine advertising and Instagram photos, and videos aren't going to please the consumer in the same way they used to. What better way to catch someone's attention than by giving them something to do? A cause to dress up, a cause to go out of the house! We believe that after being under some type of lockdown for over a year, more firms will seek out ways to get their products into the hands of the people they want to pitch to and encourage them to test before they purchase.

Micro-focusing:

For outdoor events to be successful, brands will need to focus more than ever on adjusting to the regulations of each local city or community. This kind of micro-focusing will provide more success than attempts to attract the largest audience or go viral, especially since larger events will be more difficult to pull off. To successfully pivot, brands will need to focus on a specific audience, venue, and experience that is tailored to a particular group of consumers. In the long run, creating devoted brand fanatics is more lucrative than attracting new customers.

The fact that a company provides an exceptional experience to its customers is what determines its success. Marketing is fundamentally about communication, the capacity to clearly communicate a message at the right time. It is no surprise that event experiential marketing is becoming one of the most important marketing techniques for the industry's continued success. Experiential marketing is a type of live event marketing that keeps the audience engaged with the brand in a way that no other type of marketing can. By boosting the senses, experiential marketing tactics can improve brand retrieval and recognition. This marketing strategy not only solidifies a product's identity, but it also establishes a connection between the ambience at a product's point of sale and purchasing behaviour. The industry is using this cutting-edge approach to provide customers with enthralling brand experiences. Experiential marketing clips will aid in the creation of an effective brand recall value. Until we're all wearing VR headsets and haptic gloves, virtual events will not be able to replace in-person events.

The author is a publicist

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