In the game of experiential marketing, it isn’t always easy to tell just how many points a marketing company scores with its target audience.
Objectives, and the criteria applied to measure the impact of events, vary widely with the type of event. And sometimes the clients don’t have any clear expectations going in or coming out.
“Ultimately, success criteria are based on client objectives. Lots of times, they don’t know what they want or what to expect,” says Jeff Gooding, senior vice president of marketing for Revolution.
Sometimes setting a goal of simply creating that intangible “buzz” about something may be a client’s way of not messing with metrics — or it may, indeed, be the objective.
Revolution ran an awareness campaign for ESPN when it carried live matches from the Euro 2008 soccer tournament. Revolution street teams worked in ethnic neighborhoods — German, Italian, French, Polish, Greek — in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, where interest in the tournament between national European teams ran highest.
They put up posters, drew chalk signs on sidewalks, posted tournament schedules in different languages, and held 30 viewing parties during the competition. Revolution estimates that it reached a total of 20 million soccer fans through its integrated campaign.
“We kept the messaging fresh. We let them know when their team was going to play. We spoke to the communities in their own languages in their own neighborhoods,” Gooding recounts.
In a related program, Revolution mobilized in four markets in June for the debut of EA Sports’ UEFA Euro 2008 video game. Approximately 10,000 people sampled the game in public parks, bars and retail locations.
“The goal was to get thousands of people playing the game,” Gooding says. “The ultimate measure of success was how many people tried the game and then bought the game.”
Executing the strategy in retail gaming outlets was the surest way to measure the impact, but Revolution could still gauge results within the markets where it ran the promotion.
By employing outdoor media, as in Revolution’s effort to pump up the European soccer tourney among aficionados, an agency does basically roll the dice.
“Outdoor media is a leap of faith. You have to believe that people are going to see the message,” says Beth Gottlieb, Massive Media’s national program director.
Massive favors Segways — those one-man, two-wheel vehicles — carrying 4-foot by 5-foot print ads as “shields” or, better yet, flat-screen plasma displays with video.
“In the case of Segways, the medium is almost the message,” Gottlieb says. “They’re a huge hit, particularly in dusk hours.”
They were particularly effective in one campaign Massive waged for a New York bank trying to make consumers aware it had changed its name. But beyond the visual impression of the 15 Segways Massive used, there was a tangible count of 100,000 cards distributed by 40 street team members accompanying the vehicles.
Some cards instantly redeemed cash prizes of $15, $25 and $40, and sparked 72,000 click-throughs to the bank’s Web site in a single day. While hopeful Web surfers entered a sweepstakes number from the card to see if they’d won, pop-up screens provided prompts about bank services.
“That is the best way to track a live program,” Gottlieb says. “There’s no other way to do it unless you include some premium or collateral that enables you to track it.”
It doesn’t get more literal than a campaign Grand Central Marketing mounted for Warner Bros. in the form of a pop-up specialty store in Beverly Hills selling assorted Tweety Bird dolls and Tweety-branded objects. The agency engaged designers to create new objects for the toon boutique with a planned shelf life of six weeks.
“It was an exclusive Beverly Hills Tweety boutique,” says Grand Central Marketing CEO Matthew Glass. “There were a number of marketing reasons to do it. We were able to measure the sales.”
In a more recent campaign, the agency set up themed barbershop stalls on the sidewalk in New York City’s Times Square to build buzz about Bravo’s “Shear Genius” reality cable TV series. The number of people who stopped for a trim was the least important item on Grand Central Marketing’s impact list, well below the number of eyeballs engaged, which was also not the primary point.
“It was purely a press event. So the effectiveness was in the national reach of the media,” Glass explains.
The campaign got pickup from “Access Hollywood” and “Extra.” Print coverage included the New York Daily News, the New York Post, OK! Magazine and wire photographers.
But often, the qualitative element is the key to success.
At the annual AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am Tournament on the PGA Tour, the Marketing Arm sets up a 60-foot by 40-foot tent intended to convey a comfortable clubhouse atmosphere where various AT&T services are demonstrated. Visitors can check a real-time leaderboard or try out different golf-themed applications on AT&T wireless handsets, and register to receive giveaways by providing e-mail addresses.
They can also participate in a golf swing analysis, and receive the results via e-mail. The e-mail addresses are a vital factor in obtaining post-tournament brand impressions from among all the prospective customers AT&T surveys in the market.
“We’ll be able to get a participant versus non-participant scores,” says Jenna Kampfsthulte, promotions director for the Marketing Arm. “We’re always looking for participants to rate AT&T more highly.”
The Marketing Arm handles AT&T venues at the annual Lollapalooza concert tour in August, and Austin City Limits, held Sept. 26-28 in Austin, TX. In concert locales, the approach is a bit more passive, tracking what visitors to the AT&T booth may have bought and offering giveaways in exchange for e-mail information.
“You don’t want to be too aggressive with people at a concert venue who may just be taking a breather for the air conditioning,” Kampfsthulte says. “We look for ways to engage the consumer so we can collect data and continue to interact with them.”
For more articles on experiential marketing, go to http://promomagazine.com/eventmarketing/
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