This document provides guidance on experiential marketing campaigns. It discusses key considerations for planning an effective experiential campaign, including location selection, staffing, stand design, evaluation, and people management. Specific tips include balancing reach and interactivity, setting realistic targets, prioritizing durability and reusability in stand design, and ensuring staff represent the target market. The overall message is that experiential marketing requires careful planning across many factors to create positive brand interactions and meet evaluation objectives.

1. the experiential source...
An insight into
experiential

2. Although Fountain has a wealth of experiential knowledge, this insight
is not here to tell you how great we are or list our experiential case
studies
We have simply put down some of our thoughts to help you should you
be planning a campaign
An effective experiential campaign demands a lot of care and
consideration in its planning. We hope this brief insight helps
If you have a specific question or query, please send us an email and
we will endeavour to help out

3. Nothing if you do
sampling correctly
Experiential =
interaction
+
participation
+
relationship
+
bringing the brand to life
{
What is the difference
between sampling and
experiential?

4. Where?
Well anywhere within reason and with the correct permissions.
But here are a few of our favourites:
Train stations - How you interact as they arrive off the
trains is very different to how you should
interact when they are getting on them
High Streets - Only if there is not a mall nearby or it is
for a specific event - if unavoidable use
Hit Squads
Shopping malls - We love them. Indoor, dry, power,
secure. But be careful - weekly footfall
figures can be very focused over a
couple of key days of the week
Airports - Great for premium products but be
careful when planning air side activity,
access and security clearance can be a
major headache
Yakult being successfully
sampled in Dublin’s Grafton
Street and Connolly, Dublin’s
main train station.
One of the main logistical
problems was to keep our
teams, who were spread
over a large crowded area,
supplied with chilled product
in the absence of power to
run refrigeration units.
Find out how we did it...

5. Where?
Supermarkets - Key is to make sure that additional stock
is ordered. No point having a great day
if the store runs out of product
BBC Good - Very focused target market looking to
Food Show learn and experience - try to be sited
away from the drinks zone
- can get ‘messy’ later on in the day
Ideal Home - Fantastic for experiential, but it is a long
Exhibition show which requires a good strong
team to survive the month
County Shows - We love them - target the larger ones
to maximise reach and cost
effectiveness
Think...
Reach vs interactivity vs budgets vs objectives
The Royal Bath & West show
was the ideal place to
educate families about the
benefits of St Ivel advance
milk with Omega 3. The public
where able to sample the
milk to overcome fears that
the taste may be adversely
affected by Omega 3.
It also gave Dairy Crest ideal
platform to show the dairy
community their commitment
to R&D to develop the dairy
industry.

6. Setting Targets
Always difficult to forecast how many consumers you will reach
Have seen some targets by agencies that are fantastically
impressive (although I doubt achievable)
Be realistic e.g.
Therefore to reach 3,000 consumers a day, you will need a team of 7
working a 7 hour day.
This is not the most scientific of calculations, but it will give you an idea
of where to start
A staff member
works an 8 hour
day with an hour
off for breaks
They interact with a
consumer every
60 secs - non stop
They therefore
interact with
420
people/day
=x

7. What’s most important, reach or interactivity?
Experiential is all about a positive consumer
interaction with the values of the product
being promoted
However! There is no point providing the
most fantastic and impressive interaction
experience if you reach one man and his dog
But set yourselves targets and balance the
creativity of the interaction experience with
your evaluation and result objectives
Yes be creative, yes make sure you represent
the brand, yes makes sure the consumers
have fun
The launch of Capcom’s Devil
May Cry needed to evoke
the excitement of the game
and talk on a level to a young
and promotionally sceptical
audience.
We targeted large captive
queues outside major concert
venues with mobile
projections units using the
surrounding buildings as
screens. We displayed short
action clips which promoted
the game in a media which
was complementary to the
subject matter in a language
that was received well by the
audience.

8. Effective Stand Design
A day set up is fine if at a show, it costs
you nothing
A day set up at a supermarket costs you a lot
in budget and lost contact opportunities
Design considerations need to be taken into
account not only your product values and
messages, but also:
build time
team size
transport
storage
reusability
durability
to name just a few
Lavazza bases its yearly look
on a prestigious calendar
which they produce using
world renown photographers.
2008 used a ‘Majestic’ theme
with photography by Finlay
MacKay.
Tieing into the theme, we
dressed our team in costumes
reflecting the main
advertising icon attracting
much attention, both by our
audience and the local TV
channel!
2009 sees photography by
Annie Leibovitz - look out
for our team at events
throughout the UK

9. People
They are your life blood
They are your brand
They represent success or failure
Not too many or too few
Make sure they represent your target market
Make sure they are experienced

10. Evaluation
As much your responsibility as your agencies
We cannot evaluate without key information that is only
accessible by you the client
E.g. - provide research that shows propensity to purchase
following sampling of your product and we can project life time
values and returns from your campaign
Why not do some research within the campaign - face to face
questionnaires work well but also mean additional staff

11. www.fountainmc.com
Call Stephen Bough on 07887 656 165
Oakley Lodge, 8 All Saints Avenue, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 6EW
Have a marketing question?
Give us a call or visit the ‘ask the
experts’ section on our website.