This is an expanded presentation by Allen Mukwenha the CEO for EXP Malawi. He made the presentation at the 3rd Season of the Marketers Conference. It was an eye opening presentation into the world of Experiential Marketing, how it can be brought to life and why it is an important element when developing a campaign to include it as part of the marketing mix.

1. Designing & Executing Live+ Experiences
Experiential
Marketing
OPTIMISE YOUR MARKETING MIX

2. Experiential Marketing – Optimise your Marketing Mix 2
Marketing is about facilitating, easing, opening, accelerating and shortening the sales cycle – in other words, opening the door to get consumers to have a relationship with the Brand.
Exp hosts an annual African Experiential Marketing Summit across the continent, in Johannesburg, Nairobi and Lagos, at which it features some of the industries leading speakers to share with marketers, the insights, learning’s and best practices that are happening in this very exciting industry.
At the end of the day, Marketers simply need to connect with their consumers. It is something that always has, and always will, be the challenge, but the “how” part is where it gets interesting.
Marketing is more and more about the consumer first and not the Brand. It is a bottom-up active approach to engaging them as opposed to a top-down passive strategy.
Advertising is about reach, Direct Mail is about reach and targeting, Below-the-Line can often rely too heavily on discounting and Online is about reach and amplification.
Experiential marketing builds the business and the Brand at the same time and allows the marketer to take the best part of each
of these disciplines and put them together with one single minded experiential thread, optimising the marketing mix with the worlds fastest growing form of marketing – Experiential (Event) Marketing1 – to amplify reach, convert customers and drive sales.
3 Learnings for you to take out from this paper:
1. Interact personally with the consumer and give them a GREAT BRAND EXPERIENCE.
2. GENERATE BRAND VALUE by applying strategic direction and creative wizardry to event fundamentals.
3. Experiential Marketing is BEYOND JUST BEING AN EVENT or activation – IT’S A CAMPAIGN that can optimise your marketing mix.
Source1 - Event Marketing Institute (EventTrack 2014)
Connect personally with people in exciting, immediate ways, with the right message at the right time.
Everything must come back to the Brands relationship with the consumer – no matter what media or technology is used, there is nothing better than one-to-one for great story telling.

3. Experiential Marketing – Optimise your Marketing Mix 3
“We can change the way consumers think, but how they feel is something deeper and stronger, something that’s inside them. How they think is on the outside, how they feel is on the inside and that’s what we need to tap into.”
Give the Consumer a Great Experience of your Brand
The best way to change the way people ‘feel’ about your Brand is to create personal and relevant experiences for them, aligning the Brands value proposition to the realities of their lives.
It has often been quoted that “nothing is real until it is experienced” (John Keats) and in a learning study done by Wiman and Meierhenry, they proved that people remember only 20% of what they see and 30% of what they see and hear, but the number soars to 90% when they personally experience (do) something.
In fact, the way communication works is based on this principle, as the classic marketing model is “you read my message and then you try my Brand” whereas in fact the opposite is true, as the reality of today’s world of cluttered advertising is “you see my message because you already use my Brand.”
This is supported by research done by a leading marketing theorist, Dr. Jannie Hofmeyr, that showed that as many as 80% of consumers who watch a Brands TVC are already using that Brand.
Experience precedes the message because it delivers the Brand promise. The rules have changed and the shift is essentially from that of passive to active marketing strategies.
So, instead of Brands selling features and benefits, they now offer a Brand Experience that is developed around the consumer and in so doing, builds, bonds and renews their relationship with Brands in the way the Brands deliver on their experiences.
The consumption expetience must live up to (equal) the message that the Brand sends / gives to its consumers, as this experience is the message that stays with the consumer forever.
Generate Brand Value
The latest EventTrack research shows that more Brands are using events and experiences and that the return on investment ratio that top Brands realise from them is improving.
The smarter (strategic direction) you are in developing and executing (creative wizardry) your event against your Brand proposition ensures that the shiny object (what people remember from the experience) remains the Brand and not the ‘Band’ or the ‘entertainment’.
Interacting with PEOPLE to give them a
Great Brand Experience.
The consumption message must live up to the message that the Brand sends / gives to its consumers, as this experience is the message that stays with the consumer forever.

4. Experiential Marketing – Optimise your Marketing Mix 4
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do (experience) and I understand.” - Confucius
EventTrack shows that when this is applied, 14% of Brands are seeing a return that is greater than five to one from their event, compared to 7% the year before. It also shows that:
1. Events and Experiential are used to increase sales (79%) and increase / create Brand awareness (78%).
2. People are more inclined to purchase after the event experience, as it:
a. Gave them an opportunity to first try the brand (84%).
b. Helped them realise the benefit of the product (53%).
3. Live events (89%) help most in getting a consumer to understand the product, compared to TV (5%), Print advert (3%) and online banner / website (1%).
4. 96% of people interviewed said that attending events and experiences drives their purchases of the Brand.
So what does this all mean and how can we make it useful in the day-to-day challenges that we face as marketers?
Experiential is no longer just an event or activation – it’s a campaign
Experiential is a strategic opportunity to actively involve the consumer in your Brand, bringing its value proposition to life in a creative and impactful campaign – i.e. pre, during and post ‘event’ – taking into account:
1. Consumers have become more empowered – they create their own relationships with Brands and you need to build a campaign that promotes this.
2. It is more about the ‘quality’ and ‘depth’ of the engagement than the ‘quantity’ of the past – develop a campaign that builds quality time with the Consumer, rather than the ‘amount of times’ or ‘impressions’ a Brand gets.
3. We need to build real and relevant experiences that show and add value to the consumer’s life.
4. Don’t look to grab the consumers’ attention, but rather give them your attention as a member of their “tribe” (i.e. their circle of friends and family).
5. It’s no longer about ‘talking’ to people but rather ‘listening’ to and involving them.
“96% of people said attending live event drives their purchase of a Brand.”
-EventTrack’14
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
EventTrack'14
89%
5%
3%
1%
Marketing that Best Helps Consumers Understand a Product
Live Event
TV Commercial
Print Ad
Online Banner ad (website)

5. Experiential Marketing – Optimise your Marketing Mix 5
An experiential campaign reflects and celebrates people’s lifestyles, allowing them to escape with Brands that they see as being caring and contributing positively towards their ‘tribe’.
The universe is built on information that is real and relevant and this information is generated by peoples Live experiences. It is through their live experience that they give the information life and this is then used to enrich other people’s lives, as people influence each other, each and every day (word of mouth).
The experience must be specifically tailored – pre, during and post event – as a campaign around the consumers life, moving the Brand from ‘Brand-in-Mind’ to ‘Brand-in-Hand’ to ‘Brand-in-Heart’, as a result of the information that they have from their (or their friends) experiences with the Brand.
It does this by optimising the marketing mix by:
 Going to and owning the environment (’Place’) it executes in and then leveraging this experience to others in their circle (‘tribe’) – here the ‘Place’ becomes the social / media platform you use to leverage the experience.
 Letting the consumer experience (‘Product’ and ‘Promotion’) the Brand in an enjoyable way.
 Letting the consumer learn (‘Product’, ‘Price’ and ‘Promotion’) something about the Brand that builds value to their life.
 Giving the consumer something new and different to do (not repetitive), allowing them to escape (‘Product’, ‘Price’, ‘Place’ and ‘Promotion’) with the Brand and the value it can give their life.
If a Brand is successful in achieving this, it will have friends, fans and followers that will influence a wider base of consumers and the Brand will be part of something bigger, something that matters or is at least enjoyable, rather than just being an event or a transaction.
Experiential Marketing is beyond just being an event, activation or transaction.

6. What do we need to do to change the way we (marketers) think of experiential marketing, in order to apply it differently to our marketing plans and achieve greater success with our target audience?
The brief is critical to the success of any campaign or project
It does not define what ‘media’ to use, but rather the business opportunity, the target audience and the challenge.
It orchestrates the strategic and creative wizardry that should follow in identifying where, when and how to engage the consumer and the development of the experiential campaign.
Develop a campaign that is built off a strategic direction to achieve specific experiential goals
A well-defined and executed strategy is directly connected to consumer needs, emotions, and competitive environments. It must be integrated into the larger marketing programme, deliver a ‘high-touch’ opportunity to connect, succeed in differentiating the Brand and shorten the sales cycle. A strategy is the broad plan of action – Tactics are the means for carrying out a strategy.
Apply creative wizardry to bring a single, potent strategic thought to life
The single, potent thought or platform is a strategic summary of what is needed to open the door to the consumer and achieve the Brand opportunity. It is from this that a campaign idea is conceptualised and taken this across the chosen touch points, applying creative wizardry to how it is executed, ensuring it impacts and engages the consumer with the Brand proposition.
Bring the campaign to life through in+egrated experiential marketing
It’s no longer just about an event, it’s about how people can participate elsewhere – how you leverage the event and make a campaign out of it. It’s about developing real, relevant and personal experiences, and then putting the tools in place to leverage the experiences with others in the ‘tribe’. It’s about creating In+egrated experiences that can live 24/7/365.
Time
It takes work, planning, and creativity to develop campaigns that are beyond just being an event – amplifying reach, converting customers and driving sales. If you want to join Brands that are successfully using experiential to optimise their marketing mix and achieve this, it’s worth the effort to take / give a good amount of time to develop a Great experience for your Brand!

7. Experiential Marketing – Optimise your Marketing Mix
As experts of the experiential marketing requirement, Exp develops Live+ experiential campaigns, a multidimensional cross media approach to amplify reach, convert customers and drive sales.
www.expagency.biz