Jason Marks: 5 Rules of Experiential
Jason Marks, executive creative director at Partners + Napier New York, talks to Campaign Brief about his 5 Rules of Experiential.
Ex Ogilvy New York, RG/A, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and once a creative director at MTV, Marks is an award-winning creative director who has not only made Google’s Hot List, but talks genuinely and passionately about creating meaningful, cultural brand experiences.
5 rules of experiential:
Mobile, mobile, mobile. The smartphone is not another screen, it is a remote control for your world. You can now overlay your full digital life on any physical environment. If your experiential concept does not include mobile, go back to the drawing board.
Win minds with actions. Experiential work has a big impact. A recent study has shown that getting a consumer to even do the smallest action has 8x the impact of traditional advertising. That is bang for your client’s buck.
Always add value. Did you make something easier? Cooler? Did you take something the consumer is already doing and make it better? Experience for experience’s sake can work, but to get loyalty and advocacy you need to bring something useful to the table.
Mass reach, isn’t out of reach. Experiential has always been limited to venue size and location but not anymore. Mobile brings immediate sharing to friends and family who aren’t there. And the cheap and easy penetration of live-streaming starts to make things like concerts and performances much more scalable at eyeballs per dollar.
The most powerful experiences are grounded in a brand truth. Don’t just do cool stuff if it isn’t based in a strong and bold brand message. You make that big impact with experiential, you want it to stick, and you want to use those shared values to being a relationship with the consumer. No dead ends, make sure you keep the conversation going post-event.
3 Comments
It may be true that when you get someone to do something it is 8 times more effective than traditional advertising.
But getting them to do that something is about 100 times harder.
Hence why ‘experiential’ is only effective in award entries.
The something that advertising should be getting someone to do is buying the product, not doing your something in the hope that if they participate, maybe when they are in the market, and if the price is right, and if the product is any good, and if they haven’t already found something they like better and is cheaper and they know the salesman at the other shop and their cousin bought from the other guy the other thing and maybe then they’ll buy the product you’re advertising through your ‘wow-that was-fun-and-mildly engaging-but it’s still advertising-so not like real fun-and why are they trying so hard to get me to buy it-maybe there’s something wrong with it’ product.
Advertise the brand in such a way that everyone feels as if they’re out of step if they don’t have one. That will sell. and the science of it is the art of it, and it’s probably not ‘experiential’, whatever that means.
I really long for the day when advertisers wake the fuck up and start using their creativity to do something other than “win minds” in order to “get them to do stuff” to inspire “brand loyalty”. Do you really think you’re making “cool”, “meaningful” experiences with “shared values” between the consumer and brand? Enough already.
I assume you’re aware of the problems humanity faces – water shortage, climate change, hunger, etc, etc, etc. Does it bother you that you’re using your creativity to get peop… err, as you like to say, “consumers” to do stuff for a brand that’s trying to sell them more shit they don’t need which inevitably contributes to the large collection of crap humans horde?
Here’s a challenge. If you’re in a position to get people to do stuff, why don’t you think of that as an opportunity to get people to do something in the name of the greater good rather than an opportunity to hook people, get them to do “the smallest action” and then “keep the conversation going post event”. Do you realize how much of people’s time you’re wasting starting and keeping a meaningless conversation going? If you’re going to start any conversation, make it worth while.
If you have no plans on doing anything good with your influence during the short time we’re here, then I urge you to take Bill Hicks’ advice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo