Dan Hall from iD on experiential marketing

Hello and welcome to another blog from the iD Team. This week’s instalment comes from Lizzie Morrison, one of our Account Manager’s in the iD In-store division. Take it away, Lizzie…

Would you ask your dentist to advise you on the best kettle to buy for your new house? Of course you wouldn’t, it doesn’t fall within their skill set. It’s a fact that when it comes to buying decisions we wouldn’t expect anything less than an expert opinion, especially at point of purchase.

Whilst brands now understand that human engagement is vital to both educate and influence their consumers, like anything it’s the quality of the interaction that counts more than simply placing a pretty face at a stand.

I experienced something similar at a recent home exhibition whilst casually observing an innovative new product for one of the world’s leading electrical brands. I waited at their stand for quite some time without even so much as a hello; so I decided to approach one of the ‘brand ambassadors’ myself. Frustratingly I was immediately handed over to another member of the team as my chosen brand ambassador didn’t seem to know anything about the product she was representing.

As a consumer I found the experience less than pleasant and immediately wanted to leave the stand. I struggled to understand how she was even selected for the job. Surely a demonstrators’ profile should represent the brand and mirror their target audience in order for people to engage and buy into a product – especially an expensive one with complex technical features.

Creating the right consumer experience is vital to a brands success – which doesn’t always have to mean a big budget interactive experience. Just one bad experience with a brand ambassador can consequently damage a reputation in a matter of minutes. Brands need to consider the importance of investing time and budget into the recruitment and training of the staff that represent them.

For us here at iD selecting and training the right brand ambassadors and demonstrators for our clients is one of the most important aspects of our job. Our specialist sales training workshops allow iD’s ambassadors to feel confident and approachable when talking to consumers. This then ultimately gives the customer confidence in the advice they are receiving and assurance that they really are buying the right product, whether it’s the perfect shade of lipstick or the best sound system for their taste in music.

It’s simple; if a brand ambassador doesn’t understand the unique selling points of the brand or product they are representing then the consumer definitely won’t!

Hello!

I thought I’d share a blog from one of the recent additions to the burgeoning iD Planning department. Thierry Sequeira has joined to head up our Creative Technology team and here are his views on how technology can bring magic to the world of experiential.

Thierry – over to you…

As a kid it seemed that every experience was magical.

Magic can come in many forms and even now as an adult I still search out theories and experiences that create the same feeling of wonder and intrigue that I felt as a kid. Visual illusions, new ways of communicating and new technologies, anything that allows us to experience something new automatically awakens our curiosity.

Working as a Creative Technologist at iD, I find technologies and creative concepts that recreate that “magical” experience for consumers in our experiential campaigns. My role is to ensure that at the heart of each campaign there is an experience that taps into the mind-set of consumers and generates a feeling of wonder, ultimately creating brand advocacy.

Trends in human behaviour show that once we understand how something works, the magic disappears and we are no longer intrigued. It seems there are very few technologies that remain magical once the veil is lifted. The holy grail of a truly magical experience is one that resonates with consumers.

One of my favourite examples of a simple technology that has stood the test of time and still creates intrigue and magic is Pinart. A bed of pins that takes the shape of whatever object you put under it. Everyone has spent a few hours playing with one of these creating 3D models of their hand!

So what is it that is so fascinating about this particular toy? It’s not a game, it’s not like it requires any real skills and you don’t gain any sense of achievement from it as you can’t win!

There are a few answers to this question and each of the below characteristics are vital for us to consider when sourcing new technology and creative concepts for experiential campaigns.

1. It behaves and responds differently to anything else you use or see in your everyday life even though it’s been around for 30 years!

2. It transforms reality by converting the object under it into a 3D version of the original.

3. You get immediate feedback from your actions. As the world becomes more and more focused around digital content, this is vital to any experience.

4. It engages more than one sense in a very unique way going from the feeling of the pins against your fingers to the sound they make when they hit the glass.

We have to consider these points on a daily basis to ensure our clients provide the most engaging experience for their consumers.

The good news is that Technology is becoming more and more accessible and is easier to integrate into live events. We finally have all the tools that we need to deliver unexpected experiences at our fingertips. Now that’s what I call Magic!

Thanks for your time!

Thierry

www.idexperiential.co.uk/

When was the last time you saw or heard a piece of brand communication; be it advertising, packaging or a website, and really took in the information?  Took it in and remembered it.

My guess would be… you can’t remember?  That’s because as adults we’re not motivated to remember this kind of non-life-essential information.  We just don’t have the cognitive space to store information that isn’t of vital importance to getting us through the day.

Routines are boring. Doing the same thing day after day is turning our once beautiful minds into dull, unimaginative mush – this is a scientific fact, it was on the telly. Anyway, they say variety is the spice of life and they’re probably right, yet in order to pay for all our many vices, we gots to get PAID!  We must go to an office, we must sit in the same chair, type on the same keyboard and stare drooling at the same computer screen, day after day until we’ve earned enough money to sit at home in an armchair so we can stare drooling at the Discovery Channel wishing we’d taken our souls up on that midlife crisis and gone traveling, never to return.

This might be a tad morbid, actually, I’ve just read it back, it definitely is but hang in there ‘cause here comes the up beat bit. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY! We can make our working lives as limitlessly interesting as we like! We, the wonderful, exciting people of the ‘big company client & creative marketing agency’ world have it in our power to make our 9 – 6:30’s as interesting, varied and dynamic as we like!

We’re the fun, creative ones in our companies that are supposed to be getting up to all sorts of antics as part of our roles.  We’re supposed to be out there freeing our minds of the shackles of business parks and shuttle buses to dream up exciting new creative ways to encourage consumers to love our brands like we do – we have absolutely no reason to be chained to our desks.  We can be liberated!

Wouldn’t you rather have your next meeting in a hot air balloon than a hot boardroom?

The next client that invites me to present our creds will definitely find themselves in a whicker basket floating far far away from the mundane.  Life is a series of experiences after all, might as well make them interesting.

Please feel free to follow this example and make the world a more experiential place!  And not to mention help pick the UK hot air balloon industry up off its knees.

Thanks for listening,

Dan Hall

Business Development Director
iD Experiential
danh@iDinfo.com

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