Five Reasons
why you should consider experiential
within your marketing plan
LIVE UNION
As an experiential agency, you’d expect us to be evangelical about the
role of live, and we won’t disappoint! The world has changed and more
and more brands are placing ‘you-had-to-be-there’ experiences at the
heart of their marketing. Here are five reasons why.

Reason One Human Desire
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Simon Jenkins uses the expression ‘the magnetism of human
congregation’ to describe the basic human need to come together as a
group. This is expressing itself more keenly than ever before.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattborowick/3207635903/
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The boom in live happenings is evident in everything from
Obama’s inauguration, to the ten fold growth in music festivals
in the last ten years.

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Not to mention our hunger to experience TV formats face-to-face.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stignygaard/12630269/sizes/l/
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In the digital age where all other media can be downloaded, shared and
consumed, any time any place, consumers are flocking to non-
repeatable, one off, live experiences.

Reason Two
Harness Mass Behaviour
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Consumers respond to brands that ‘do’ rather than just ‘say’. Today’s
most successful brands get people talking and interacting around them,
live experiences are a great way to achieve this. Here are two examples
that we like.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidortez/2815645115/
Nike’s Human Race engages a global audience with their passion for
running and cleverly integrates ways for people to spread the word –
such as sharing training routes and challenging people in different
locations to races.

Method use live experiences to dramatize their product story. Pop-up
stores appear in US cities running a ‘toxic turn in’ programme, where
people can exchange their chemical based cleaning products for non-
toxic Method products. They use the theatre of staff in chemical
protection suits disposing of their rivals’ products, to generate
conversation and energy around the brand.

Reason Three Light a Fire
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People talk about the importance of building a big fire at the heart of your
marketing and then using all the tools at your disposal to fan the flames.

LIVE
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightmatter/95598535/
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Live spectacles offer that opportunity, and the tools, be they digital social
media ones or more traditional, are particularly adroit at fanning the
flames of live.

LIVE
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This creates exciting new ways for people to engage with the live
experience and amplifies the content to a far larger audience.

Reason Four Move the Needle
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For brands that have some heavy lifting to do, and most do somewhere,
be it changing consumer perceptions or engaging a new audience, live
events have proven powers beyond other channels.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandsteve/2726382063/
Whatever the reason for wanting to get closer to your audience, great
live experiences, create long lasting memories and change behaviours.

Reason Five Demonstrate Value
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The integration of digital channels offers new ways to measure the effect
of live experiences.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lim_lik_wei/3307476159/sizes/l/
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Enabling us to demonstrate the power of live as it amplifies beyond the
face-to-face audience.

The Live Lab
LIVE UNION
Many brands are, for the first time, thinking about using live experiences
within their marketing. In order to help them think about what live could
do for them; how it could integrate with their other marketing and to
understand more about developing live properties, we run a workshop
called a Live Lab.
We help the brand frame a particular challenge that live could help with
and then create a Live Lab, run by ourselves, that brings together internal
and partner agency people to evolve and explore the role that live could
play.

Define a particular challenge around the use of
live experiences
Briefing Inspiration
Market Strategy
The Live Lab
Audience Practical
Competitors Measurement
Internal Staff
Agency partners
Interesting thinkers
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Depending upon the challenge, the output can be specific live ideas or
more strategic thinking around the role that live might play – either way
it is always a fun and useful process to go through.

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We hope this presentation has been useful. If you’d like to learn a bit
more about our experience and our combination of in-house strategic
and production skills, please do get in touch.
steve.eakins@liveunion.co.uk
http://www.liveunion.co.uk