Joss Davidge, Business Director, BEcause

A great brand experience will work across multiple platforms integrating experiential, digital and social media to create something special that people will want to talk about and share.  The key to an effective multi-channel campaign is in understanding the possibilities and limitations of each platform.

There are certain rules of conversation marketing that apply universally, but there are also aspects to online conversations that cannot be recreated in the real-world and vice versa.  In Part I of our two part blog we explore how digital and social media can amplify a real-world experience in ways that offline activation alone won’t deliver.

1. Enhanced targeting

Social media has enabled people to build expansive communities based around their passions and lifestyles.  Search and monitoring tools make it easy to pinpoint topics of conversation (including brand-specific ones) and connect with people based on their interests.  Similarly the granular level of user data on offer through the Facebook ad platform allows for highly targeted advertising and recruitment to brand pages of only the most relevant consumers.

2. Buzz-building and recruitment

Seeding ‘teaser’ content and conversation across online channels will help build anticipation for an event, developing a buzz that can be tracked and channelled in way that offline conversation can’t. Digital tools such as e-tickets and mobile short codes will help drive recruitment and data capture, with social apps like Facebook events enabling consumers to instantly extend the invitation to their friend networks.  In addition to traditional digital channels like email, social media now offers even more scope for brands to stay in regular touch with consumers in the lead up to an event, maintaining interest and improving footfall on the day.

3. Extended reach

A brand experience can now reach hundreds or thousands more online without being restricted by geographical or regional boundaries.  The cleverest campaigns will invite consumers to take part in an experience without necessarily requiring physical attendance.  Social media also enables those who physically attend to interact with online participants, creating a shared experience that extends far beyond the location, but is still driven by real-world content.

4. Content sharing

Exciting and immersive real-world experiences provide the perfect fuel for content-hungry social networks.  Thanks to the popularity of smart-phones and social apps, word-of-mouth can now spread across these networks at lightening pace.

5. Campaign longevity

What goes online will most likely stay online and, if popular, consumer content will continue to spark conversation around the brand long after the initial event has passed.  Recruiting participants to the brand’s social profiles will then enable sustained and long-term interaction with fan communities, meaning less reliance on awareness campaigns to reach target audiences in the future.

Digital and social media platforms allow a brand experience to reach and engage with far more consumers, overcoming the geographical limitations of a real-world event.  But although online conversation has the potential to be far-reaching, there are still benefits to face-to-face interaction with consumers that online activation won’t replace.   Check back in September for Part II – ‘5 elements of a brand experience that work better in the real world’.

At the moment displays are generally playful and enchanting.  They capture shoppers’ attention for several minutes, and no doubt spark hundreds of conversations.  This really is an interesting way to transform the value of a shop window and align it with our modern, tech hungry leanings.

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Evans has been a director of BEcause since 2009.  She takes over day to day management of the agency from BEcause founder Sharon Richey, who moves into a new role developing business partnerships and global opportunities.

BEcause enjoyed a spectacular end to 2010, winning six competitive pitches in six weeks for top fashion, food, drink and clothing brands.  The agency was also singled out as one of Marketing’s best experiential marketing agencies in its annual Agency of the Year accolades.

Bakery brand Warburtons is one new client of BEcause.  The agency has been appointed to help promote the brand’s core range and new gluten-free products throughout 2011.

As a result of all its recent new business success, BEcause is now actively recruiting for a number of senior account management, digital and creative roles to support its expansion.

Karen Evans, managing director of BEcause, comments:

“We’ve developed our creative and digital skills significantly over the last year, and it’s great to see our strategy really paying off.  Our aim is simple – to create engaging brand experiences that get people talking about brands in both the physical and digital worlds.   Demand for this kind of ‘conversational marketing’ via a rich mix of experiential and social media continues to grow, and we’re expecting to grow our revenues by around 40% this year.”

Prior to joining BEcause, Karen was founding partner of Woo and managing director of Closer, the experiential arm of Billington Cartmell, which she set up in 2001.

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To see the all the 12 billboards and the creative teams behind them, check out A Small Job (The Event Marketing Boutique’s blog) here.

Source: Marketing Week

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Having found this last week I have to say I am amazed. The “Sea Dragon” technology can not only sort your pictures and let you view thousands of them at once, it can also analyse them for constants and tag photos together. If you check out the youtube demo above, especially the example mentioning Notre Dame Cathedral. Basically summed up, the software has trawled through social sites on the net (for example Flickr), found all of the images of Notre Dame, rendered them together and then from this created a 3d model from this. Hopefully this could be the beginning of the end for hours spent tagging photos on facebook at the very least. Perhaps further forward this could be used in a more commercial way however, imagine at a click being able to find every picture online with a Coca-Cola advert in it. A standard facebook picture could become a clickable link to an online website, with rich media for a viewer to get right at information on the brand straight from the image.

As part of a 100 year celebration campaign for Marmite this Autumn, that has included a pop up shop/Toast Bar in central London among other items, lovers (rather than haters) of Marmite are encouraged to the site to submit evidence of their love for the brand. The quirky cult-like page adds an amusing edge to just how far some brand lovers will go to show their adoration for the spread, from dittys and poems to artistic paintings.

The site is a very amusing read, fellow lovers can browse through agreeing enthusiastically with the entries, while haters can still get their fill by having a good  laugh at the absurdity of some of the devotees. Personally we think it is a great way to get consumers on board as true brand advocates, and a really fun way to display how passionate they are to the world. I  thoroughly recommend you take a read at The Marmarti home page!

Source:  B&T News