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Guest Column: Prateek Kumar, CEO & MD, NeoNiche Integrated Solutions Pvt. Ltd tells us more about how experiential marketing can enhance customer perception and strengthen brand essence
South African billionaire Elon Musk says “Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But a brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product”. I tend to agree with Elon. Brands are people too. And just as human behaviour leaves a lot of scope for judgements from fellow humans, brands too are subjected to constantly varying perceptions and judgements. Like people who are conspicuous in their absence, these brands are easily forgotten if they are just one in the crowd of many.
Every brand comes with an intent to stand for certain qualities that need to be highlighted, Experiential Marketing is helpful in enhancing customer perception of the brand towards the qualities of the brand that we wish to project, rather than it being perceived due to uncontrolled exposure. Organisations are using experiential marketing so they can create a strong customer-brand connection and highlight desirable values that capture the brand’s essence and drive loyalty, word-of-mouth and the persona of the brand in a direction that we champion. While there is not much empirical research on the impact of Experiential Marketing, in my professional expertise in Experiential Marketing, I have understood that consumers are looking for unique and distinct qualities that will act as a key differentiator which we wish to highlight as the core perceived essence of the brand.
While traditionally the product value to the brand perception journey has been laced with product packaging strategies and pricing games, the emerging trend for competitive advantage is to put experiential marketing on the top of the game. In my opinion, consumers are now looking for an extra dose of personality that stimulates sensations and evokes emotions, rather than something that barely meets the need.
Research unravels that in experiential interpretation, the interaction between a subject (the consumer) and an object (a product, an event, a person, an idea) within a given context originates the consumption experience, and the companies benefit from this set of interactions. With the advent of social media and digital advertising, media outreach has become easy and affordable, however, every brand is looking for an extra edge to move beyond. Experiential Marketing provides that extra edge of personalisation and ensures a rounded experience.
Even in the experiential marketing sphere, we have constantly innovated over time. Traditional singular experiential marketing tools are a passé, the space now is for integrated marketing communication with a healthy mix of all media elements to drive consumer perception. Constant reinforcement of brand values through integrated approaches to experiential marketing that forms a healthy mix of digital media, print, social media and public relations, not just to complement but to enhance the desired brand value that we wish to project.
With the passage of time, our ideas are evolving into a more collaborative sphere and experiential marketing is at the helm of it. We are designing a web of experiences through experiential marketing. We need to deploy a healthy marketing mix with experiential marketing… truly, in the experiential elements space, the future is together.