Experiential marketing trends in 2018 focused on surprising and delighting consumers. Marketers sought to enhance experiences by offering amenities like free cabana service at the beach. Immersive technologies like virtual reality provided powerful promotional experiences despite their costs. Non-tradigital activations generated buzz through interactive elements like string art murals, on-site customization activities, and appearances by social media influencers. The goal was to create memorable photo opportunities that generated real-world word-of-mouth for brands.

1. EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING TRENDS
2018

2. SURPRISE & DELIGHTS
Enhancing consumer experiences is the hot button marketers now push. Like offering free cabana
service on the beach to the delight of beach-goers. Find a location that draw the target consumers
and then figure out how to elevate the experience for everyone.

3. YARN BOMBINGTaking a niche creative task and using it in a different way to promote a company or product. This is a
surprising and pleasant experience for audiences and one that is picture and social media worthy

4. PORTABLE VIRTUAL REALITY
VR is a hot button topic in marketing. It has not scaled in terms of mainstream adoption but the power of
VR experiences at marketing events, festivals, etc. is undeniable despite its cost and production timeline.

5. STRING ART MURALS
String Art is taking over Etsy and can make it’s way to mainstream marketing with audience inclusive
murals. These make a big colorful splash and produce photo worthy moments

6. CUSTOM CROSSOVER PRODUCTSMarketers leverage the popularity of loved local shops and boutique names to create crossover
products. King of Pops made custom popsicles named for xFinity in a limited promotion in this case.

7. ON SITE AIRBURSHING
Customizing give away’s always give the item more shelf life in audiences homes. Doing this with on
site painting and artistry ups the street cred.

8. SOCIAL INFLUENCERS GO OFFLINE
Marketers already access celeb and social influencers. But the new trend has been to have the social
players make “real world” appearances and events so consumers experience them offline.

9. ON-SITE EMBROIDERY
A more upscale way to customize premiums. Technology is making embroidery and embossing possibly
on site at events in short time frames to accommodate lines of consumers

10. CUSTOM INFLATABLES
Make a large impact, can be interactive for photo opps and games and are not as expensive as you’d
think. Particularly if you can reuse in multi markets for tours!

11. TECH DEVICES AT EVENTSNew technologies are being deployed at events to make it easy for consumers to check in, register,
provide data and participate in marketer’s activations. So easy and fast to capture data or enable
sharing these days with RFID, beacons, etc.

12. Patrick West
patrick@themachinenyc.com
646.380.9468