[Eliminating] Random Acts of Marketing

This year’s Experiential Marketing Summit theme, on the surface, seemed to be about maximalism. “Events Are Everything”, a tagline that seemed right to say, and was likely felt by most. But I would wager to say after three days of programming that what would have been more accurate to say was “EXPERIENCES are everything”. And that actually just a very few somethings done with precision that sum total to become “everything”. 

The marketing world is embracing its (not new, but not yet fully imagined) potential in the experiential realm. Events happen. Experiences are felt. And feeling is what we’re going for. Are we ready to go all in on this yet as an industry? Are we ready to recommit using brand strategy to shape and guide our recommendations instead of letting logistics lead? Are we ready to hold ourselves accountable to creating something that imbues a feeling? That’s what we are talking about here and that was my personal main takeaway from this year’s EMS. 

Experiences crafted to meet audiences not only where they are but where brands want them to go are setting the pace for the industry (this is not new), but the narrative at this year’s EMS kept going back to insight-based STRATEGY, with the customer at its core. 

I’m going to take some liberties here, by amalgamating several recommendations I extrapolated from keynotes, talks, panels and conversations last week. This is what I’ll be taking back to my teams and what I’ll be evangelizing and building the team around in the months and years to come.

Core Tenants of Brand Strategy *

A deep understanding of and an agreement with clients on: 

1. WHAT the brand stands for? A brand must be consistent and clear over time in order to strike and maintain that chord, BUT it must also grow with its audience, so evolution has to be planned for and approached with care.

2. WHO is the brand trying to meet? “Target” is an overused word, so I’m using “meet” instead because want to take advantage of the intersection moment occurring in the meeting an audience/consumer/attendee/guest where they ARE so that they are open to receiving the brand where IT is and also be receptive to where the brand wants to take them. Where and how are they showing up in the world? Why is that? What do we need to know about them to best meet them and then how does the brand show up in that vein? 

3. HOW do you want them to feel when they encounter the brand? Be very deliberate about this and protect this intention from other agendas and motivations that might distract you from delivering on it.

*Credit goes to Alyson Griffin from State Farm for these three tenants, though modifications have been made in my interpretation and application of them to our business.

Every single element of the above can be tricky and elusive if your team and your partners (both client and agency side) are not 100% on board with their importance. But I insist they are imperative to the design and development of a (dare-I-say personal and) business-transforming experience and I’m doubling down on holding our team and clients accountable to staying the course here. 

Core tenants of brand strategy - established for every single program and/or account we touch - are the foundational elements that create experiences that ADD UP OVER TIME to create a rock solid brand that consumers have relationships with and stay loyal to. Otherwise, they are simply random acts of marketing.