Back in 2011, Coca-Cola launched its now-iconic “Share-a-Coke” campaign. The concept was brilliantly simple: swap out the classic Coca-Cola logo for real people’s names.
The result? A global phenomenon! People were scouring shelves to find bottles with their names or their friends’ names. Even better, they could customize bottles with their own names or messages, personalizing their experience further.
The impact was massive. After launching in North America in 2014, the campaign boosted sales by 2%, breaking a decade-long decline. It’s a perfect example of how experiential marketing can create emotional connections, drive engagement, and deliver big results.
The good thing is you don’t have to be as big as Coca-Cola to leverage experiential marketing. In this article, we’ll share simple experiential marketing campaign ideas drawn from real-life examples. Let’s kick things off with a quick overview of experiential marketing and its benefits for businesses.
What is Experiential Marketing?
Experiential marketing is a strategy that engages consumers through immersive and memorable experiences designed to create an emotional connection with a brand. It includes everything from hosting an online or in-person event to giving away free samples at a supermarket.
Unlike traditional advertising, which focuses on conveying messages through media like print, TV, or digital ads, experiential marketing invites consumers to participate actively in events or activities that showcase a brand’s values, products, or services.
Experiential marketing is not a new concept. Companies have been using it for a long time. In recent years, however, experiential marketing campaigns have grown more advanced. The advent of new technologies, like extended reality, alongside a growing demand for omnichannel offline and online marketing experiences has led to some extremely creative marketing efforts.
The Benefits of Experiential Marketing Campaigns
Nearly 80% of marketers use experiential marketing to promote products. It helps you:
1. Differentiate Your Brand
Competitors may offer similar products, but a standout experience—like a captivating product launch event or a hands-on demo—gives your audience a reason to choose your brand over others.
People remember how a brand makes them feel. By offering immersive and enjoyable experiences, your brand becomes associated with positive emotions, making it more memorable than competitors.
2. Increase Brand Awareness
Experiential marketing often attracts organic virality through word-of-mouth promotions, social mentions, and PR coverage. This helps your brand to reach more people beyond your immediate audience.
Take the 2012 Redbull Stratos campaign, for example. It was watched by over eight million people on YouTube — translating to a 7% increase in sales.
3. Improve Customer Loyalty
To earn your customers’ loyalty, you need to deliver more than great products or services. You need to forge an emotional connection with your target audience.
Experience marketing is a way to strengthen those emotional connections. It can help you show your customers that you share their values by drawing attention to the social movements and ideas you support. You can even make your customers feel special and appreciated with giveaways and samples, boosting your chances of greater loyalty.
4. Enhance Customer Satisfaction
Experiential marketing campaigns can boost customer satisfaction in several ways. First, they can educate customers and show them how to get the most out of the products you sell.
Secondly, they give you a chance to gather genuine data and insights from your customers that you might not find elsewhere. These insights into your customers’ goals, preferences, and priorities will help you develop better products, services, and customer service strategies.
Examples of Experiential Marketing Campaigns
Now that you understand the benefits of experiential marketing, let’s see how brands deploy experiential marketing tactics to drive awareness and loyalty.
1. Event Marketing: Peacock
Event marketing is one of the most common and flexible types of experiential marketing. Events are all about creating unique, memorable experiences, whether you’re celebrating a new product launch or hosting a conference about the latest trends in your industry.
Peacock, a video streaming service, hosted a physical event in 2022 at SXSW. They created an adult playground where people could play huge games of chess or mini golf. The experience inspired thousands of social media shares and gave Peacock a chance to promote their latest shows.
How to Use Live Events for Experiential Marketing
One idea for using live events in experiential marketing is to host a “Behind-the-Scenes Immersion” event where your brand offers customers an exclusive, interactive experience tied to your product or industry.
Let’s say you’re a coffee brand. Invite customers to an event that takes them through the coffee-making process, from sourcing beans to crafting the perfect cup. The event can have interactive stations where attendees can roast, grind, and brew their own coffee.
For engagement, consider:
- Setting up a photo booth with coffee-themed props.
- Providing live streaming for those who can’t attend, with behind-the-scenes views and Q&A sessions.
- Creating a unique hashtag (e.g., #BeanToBrewLive) to encourage attendees to share their experiences online. You can use Juicer’s hashtag aggregator to pull and display all the posts on your social media wall.
2. Pop-Up Shops and Installations: House of Vans
Pop-up events are another popular experiential marketing technique that has become increasingly popular in the modern age. They’re all about catching people off-guard with limited-time, exclusive experiences they wouldn’t expect to encounter in their day-to-day lives.
The limited-time nature of a pop-up installation makes it an exciting, exclusive experience for customers. This significantly increases your chances of customers talking about your company online or sharing images and thoughts in Instagram Stories and on other social channels.
Many of the best pop-up events even go viral, like the House of Vans campaign. The famous footwear company Vans launched a pop-up installation in London, complete with unique artwork and a skate park, to attract the attention of its specific target audience. It was a great way to strengthen emotional connections with customers and boost brand awareness for Vans.
How to Use Pop-Up Events for Experiential Marketing
Pop-up events work best in high-traffic locations that attract your ideal audience. Consider unexpected venues like rooftops, art galleries, or busy street corners. A prime location amplifies foot traffic and social media buzz. For example, a beauty brand could set up a pop-up in a popular park, offering free mini makeovers and skin consultations, drawing in people who are out enjoying the day.
Also, encourage attendees to share their experiences by creating Instagram-worthy moments, using branded hashtags, and offering incentives like contests or giveaways. You can display these on your Instagram social wall — driving reach and engagement.
3. In-Store Experiences: Apple
You don’t necessarily need to host a large event or set up a temporary store to capture the attention of customers with experiential marketing. You can also take advantage of the opportunity to deliver unique experiences to your customers through your own retail space or premises.
Hosting in-store events, like workshops, or product demonstrations, is a great way to create more content you can share on your social media feed, or through your website with an aggregation tool. It gives you a chance to show customers how you’re serving people like them and helping them get the most out of your products and services.
Apple is a great example of a company that uses experiential in-store events to its advantage. In addition to hosting limited-time events around product releases, the company also regularly schedules workshops and training sessions that teach people how to use its latest tools. This helps customers get more value out of Apple products and distinguishes the company as a clear thought leader.
How to Use In-Store Events for Experiential Marketing
Offer hands-on demonstrations where customers can see, touch, and try your products. This builds trust and helps customers feel more confident in their purchase decisions.
For example, a kitchen appliance brand could host a cooking demo, showing how its products make preparing meals easier and tastier.
4. Collaborative Experiences: Lululemon
Another way to experiment with experiential marketing campaigns is to partner with another company or entity. Brands can partner with celebrities, thought leaders and even ethical or non-profit groups to create a shared experience for customers with the same interests.
This is a great way to demonstrate your company’s values to your audience and reduce the cost associated with creating larger, flashier events. Plus, working together with another company or multiple people expands your brand reach. It gives you an opportunity to tap into the followers of various entities on social media and increase press coverage.
For example, every year, Lululemon hosts its flagship “Sweatlife” event, working with dozens of different exhibitors and thought leaders to create a unique experience for attendees. Collaborating with other brands helps Lululemon boost awareness of its event and attract the attention of various customers with distinct priorities and interests.
How to Use Partnerships for Experiential Marketing
The most important thing is to choose a partner whose brand values align with yours. Then design an event or campaign that highlights the strengths of both brands while creating a cohesive and immersive experience for attendees.
For example, a travel company and a luggage brand can co-host a travel planning workshop where customers can explore destinations while testing premium luggage options.
5. Guerilla Marketing Campaigns: 3M
Finally, guerilla marketing campaigns are another excellent example of an “experience marketing” strategy that generates incredible results. Although they require companies to take some risks and think outside the box, they’re a fantastic way to catch customers off guard and improve your chances of going “viral” with a marketing tactic.
Guerrilla campaigns are designed to spark interactivity by offering unique experiences in unexpected spaces. A standout example is 3M’s famous campaign, where they locked $3 million behind two panes of their “break-proof” glass and dared passers-by to try breaking it.
The great thing about this campaign is that it validated how strong the company’s product was without asking customers to “buy” anything. It also generated a huge amount of online attention, with plenty of customers sharing videos and images of their attempts to get their hands on the money.
How to Use Guerilla Campaigns for Experiential Marketing
Use humor or shock value to capture the audience’s attention and spark curiosity. For example, let’s say you’re a beauty brand. You can set up a pop-up installation with a large mirror display in a high-traffic area (like a mall or busy plaza).
The “mirror” uses augmented reality (AR) to show participants how their skin might look after prolonged exposure to environmental damage if left unprotected—wrinkles, sunspots, dryness, and other effects appear in real-time.
Discover the Power of Experience Marketing
Experiential marketing campaigns are a great way to shake things up in your advertising strategy. They help you to capture the attention of your target audience in new and unique ways and generate endless word-of-mouth marketing opportunities.
With tools like Juicer.io, you can take your experiential marketing strategy to the next level. With Juicer, you can create social media walls for events and in-store experiences that encourage customers to interact with your brand. You can also create shoppable social feeds for your website and encourage customers to buy products while they’re at an event.
You can even boost your company’s credibility and earn the trust of your audience by sharing the content generated by customers who attend your events on your social wall.
Sign up for a Juicer.io account to leverage the many benefits of experiential marketing.
