Experiential Marketing & Customer Engagement

In yesterday's post I discussed the most simple definition of Experience Marketing. The underlying necessity for knowing your customer and using that knowledge to create an experience that will be worthy to them and ultimately provide you with the engagement you are seeking for your brand or product.

Here are some examples of great experiential pieces. They were successful because at their core they spoke to customers on a behavioral level, and the experience was deeply rooted in what the brand and product had to offer.


The Mercedes Benz Tweet Fleet
Mercedes Benz wanted to promote their park assist feature in their cars. The app helps you find parking spaces in your area, and navigates you to the spot. Knowing people's frustration with finding a parking spot in an urban environment, especially around the holiday's was the main impetus for this great campaign. Mecedes Benz created the Tweet Fleet, and their experiential campaign was born. The company had cars driving around Stuttgart, Germany tweeting empty spaces with geo-tags so that followers were alerted to the space and it's location via the navigation system.

Not only was Mercedes Benz one of the most popular brands through out all platforms of Social Media in Germany for the duration of the campaign, it was in the Top 3 of talked about brands. A win-win for customers, who considered the Tweet Fleet Park Assist campaign a game, but for the brand who received accolades, and a lot of unsolicited press. Great buzz always works!

Also check out my Four Fun Interactive Campaigns post from last week. The T-Mobile Live Angry Birds promotion was a clear success and a personal favorite. T-Mobile, wanting to promote themselves in Barcelona, created a live Angry Birds game in a public space. It's not a far stretch to associate T-Mobile with virtual and gaming fun. They capitalized on the incredibly fun and popular game, and customers who engaged had fun. Fun they will associate not only with the game, but with T-Mobile. Check out the video and see the looks on everyone's faces. There is a community feel that just made this campaign perfect!

Have your own example of a great Experiential piece? Share it with me and let's talk about it!

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Check out the Experiential Marketing Forum for more on Experience Marketing.

[Cover image courtesy of sylvainpaillard.com]

The T-Mobile Welcome Home

T-Mobile launched a new flashmob ad campaign in October. The campaign had 300 performers at Terminal 5 in Heathrow International Airport. The singers and vocal orchestra performed a string of songs by Etta James, Mel Torme, Mark Morrison, Iggy Pop, George Michael and Aretha Franklin while people walked through the arrivals gate. The Welcome Back mob was filmed by 18 different hidden cameras and captured the reactions of everyone witnessing the event. After the event, the 3 minute film was shown on over 80 digital channels in the UK, launched on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter as the new T-Mobile ad. The launch is expected to reach more than 2 million households with 9 million viewers.

See the video here:

Personally, I love people watching in the arrivals area of airports. Its a great place to see warmth, love and happiness coming together as people greet their loved ones. This ad campaign capitalizes on that while staging visibility for the T-Mobile brand.

Credits: The Welcome Home campaign was developed at Saatchi & Saatchi London by creative director Paul Silburn, creatives Rick Dodds and Steve Howell.