A pretty impressive line-up of speakers from Cadbury, MKTG and Live Nation were present at the latest ESA breakfast. The room was packed to hear about some of the latest experiential partnerships brought to life and how those experiences were being measured.
We have been aware for some time that advances in technology have been driving the experience economy. An economy that is year on year increasing in size. While ad spends decrease, ONS is measuring a significant increase in those spending on experiences. From Jan 2018 to Dec 2018, ONS measured a 10% increase each month.
The desire to be “rich in currency”, has been replaced (with the help of social channels) with a richness in experience. There is a greater demand for brands to create something that improves convenience or the experience that their consumer may feel. Spotify adapted/created their product as a result of good intel that ownership was not a key requirement of their audience anymore. Netflix the same. Experience is often thought of as quite specific to a physical experience in a specific moment in time, but actually it’s far broader than that when you think of it as a consumer experience. It is more behavioural. The key insight I took from this morning was from the Insight Director at MKTG: That experiential partnership campaigns are being created to extend or shift consumer behaviours, find new audience segments and shift the way a brand is perceived. As the PR director of Live Nation said: “It’s easy to connect to people but very hard to connect with people”.
Co-op’s Festival Experiential Partnership
As part of a partnership with Live Nation, Co-op built a 6,000 square foot store at four Live Nation festivals – Download, Latitude, Reading and Leeds – which proved to be hugely popular with festival-goers. They were able to buy all the essential items on-site, rather than having to carry them in and could top up with fresh food and drink throughout the weekend. Customers were often to be found dancing in the aisles at 2 am as the in-store DJ kept the party going.
Co-op solved a problem, made life easier for customers and improved the consumers’ perception of them as a brand!
Jim Campling, President of UK Marketing Partnerships, Live Nation said: “Co-op has seen tremendous success connecting with fans at our live music events by providing value and convenience authentically, and when the fans need it most. By expanding our partnership to include two more festivals, Co-op has the opportunity to leverage the power of live at an even greater scale.”
How can we translate this into other deals!
Conceptually it is simple, for agencies who are in the sponsorship industry, it means that if you are able to identify a brand that has a strategic fit with a rights holder, and you create an experiential partnership based on assets centred around improving the experience of the dual customer, you have a winning formula. We’ve also previously talked about creating events for brand interactions. This is something that Reg&Co are specialists at; We are strategic and creative thinkers that can build partnerships that are strategically thought about and professionally delivered.
