The evolving nature of shopping Centres

Shopping Centres have diversified their services and have managed to attract unique tenants. Their role has changed and so have the amenities and services they provide to consumers – health and fitness, playgrounds, libraries, theatres, fine dining, places of worships and child-care have all entered the shopping Centre game.

“Centres have become a place where consumers can go to be educated, inspired, entertained and seek cultural experiences”

Shopping Centres aren’t just a place for selling and conducting transactions but a space where cultural and community-oriented services can coexist and complement alongside other retail stores. Successful retail establishments have managed to attract consumers who not only visit the Centre to purchase specific items but also visit the Centre for the other services that they offer. This means consumers are going to Centres not because they necessarily have to but mostly because they want to.

This indicates that foot-traffic and the number of customers in a retail environment have become dependent on the level of engagement that the Centre has managed to create. – And Activations might just be a solution to the existing foot-traffic problem…

Activations: the next generation of shopping Centre engagement

The shopping Centre plays a great role for local residents. In many ways, shopping Centres act as community Centres as well. In 2018 alone, 700 community-oriented events were in Australian shopping Centres. This is the proof that shopping Centres have become an ideal location for neighbouring residents to engage in activities and events that could benefit the community. Topics such as culture, environmental concerns and sustainability are prevailing in our communities. It would only seem natural to hold events and activities that would incorporate these types of subjects.

“Our Waste Warriors Initiative is proof that many communities are engaging in the sustainability movement”

Waste Warriors is a kid environmental educational initiative that has been created by our team to promote community engagement during the school holiday period. It offers a complete activation solution, which includes sustainable workshops and other learning and educational materials that inspires creativity and thinking.

Our Waste Warrior initiative campaign aimed to increase shopping Centre foot-traffic, drive repeat visitors and encourage dwell-time and was customised for each and individual client. Waste Warrior is an ongoing initiative and will continue throughout the year and will be making a comeback shortly. This year we are expecting thousands of proud, brave and innovative little warriors.

For more information on Waste Warrior visit

https://www.engageatdisegno.com.au/projects/waste-warriors-are-here2/ 

Reinventing the Wheel of Activations

According to surveys conducted by Relationship Australia, neighbouring residents are becoming attached to their local communities.  This indicates that more and more locals are envisioning the type of community they want to live in and are shaping and moulding it throughout various stages of its growth. More and more locals are engaging in economic activities that will strengthen their community and are choosing to shop locally.

“Localism has definitely impacted on how residents work, live and…shop”

Localism can be described as a person’s preference to choose their local community. This means that many individuals prefer to shop, work and live within their own community. Localism and other developing trends in communities have changed the way shopping Centre activities are perceived. While shopping Centres remain a destination for retail and transactions, it is the communities that will most likely influence the type of services and complementary activities offered.

 

For our team at ENGAGE, it’s all about creating campaigns that lead to further consumer engagement. We understand that in a retail and shopping Centre environment, consumers are searching for social interactions and opportunities to connect with other members of their community. Communities will continue to evolve, as will the shopping Centre and our need to further design fitting activations.

I now understand why these modern wave experiences and product immersions also known as Experimental Marketing are rapidly becoming the norm for many brands. For a brand such as Salta who own the Nexus Industrial Park there business is construction they develop and build both residential and commercial properties. Although gone are the days where you can build it and they will come, people are much more savvy these days and are yearning for something more in everything they do which is why there has been a huge need to create not only buildings but communities.

So the Nexus Industrial Park activation was shaped around the consumer and their needs and wants, and it was our job to fulfil their desires.. in a carpark, yes you heard that right the activation took place in a carpark. And may I just say that everything our Event Designer touches turns to gold – or multi coloured in this instance.  The carpark was unrecognisable once our work was done (one eighth of the job done). Who would have thought that a carpark could be turned into something so bright, bold and lively… the consumer defiantly didn’t. It was decked out with some super WOW custom designed ENGAGE props which included huge building blocks in colours and patterns. Chairs, tables, shapes of all sizes and colours but my description is not giving it the justice it deserves, but believe me it looked AMAZING! And to top it off there where food trucks, table tennis and a DJ to give the brand activation the fun, party vibe we were striving for. Oh and a massive balloon installation, how could I forget that, it was enormous and made for a super fun and engaging entrance.

Was the set up was successful? TICK! At this point we dusted our hands off (literally) and it was time for the consumers to roll in. All the anticipation came down to this moment. At this point I was very confident that the consumers would have a fantastic experience, but I must admit in the beginning I really didn’t know what to expect however after seeing the ENGAGE team in action I had nothing but confidence. But let me tell you, this is something I found exciting- its defiantly not for the faint hearted though. A couple of hours to transform a space and there is no turning back, or no being late – the activation starts when it starts!

Experimental marketing is certainly not the traditional way of marketing a product, it allows the consumer to shape and produce the content. We had created what in my eyes was a perfect lunch break party, but did the consumer take it this way and understand the underlying meaning of this brand activation? TICK! People of all demographics there together creating what I would call a community! Witnessing an event come to life was fulfilling, and most importantly by the consumer’s body language and feedback they were enjoying themselves and creating their own authentic experiences

This day left me feeling nothing less than inspired. Seeing the plans on paper and putting it in to action was such an experience and I have a greater appreciation for Brand Activation Events. Although the Event Designers and Event Planners fool you into thinking it is all glitz and glamor it is much more than that and allows perfectionist like myself to work in full force.

Thinking outside the box is an understatement to making a Brand Activation Event a success and the team at ENGAGE have shown me this. Gone are the days of handing out flyers and leaflets nowadays it takes a lot of hard work to speak to the audience’s heart. ENGAGE took the brief under their creative and strategic wing and produced something spectacular bringing the brand story to life.

 

As seen, the power of social media to create brand adoration is in full effect. Brands need to jump aboard or be left behind. Savvy brands are increasingly recruiting their fans and followers to spread word-of-mouth love for their brand. Social media users crave experiences  – to amplify their public life, to create their ‘aura’. And there’s no better aura than this dunking Gatorade one…

For those of us not sporty and/or into American sports (just me is it??), the Gatorade dunk is a Super Bowl tradition. Amazing in itself, really. Baffling, I’d say. But… anyway…  The sports drink decided to incorporate the dunk into its ad campaign for the Big Game on Snapchat. Simple, savvy, clever. They initially showed an animated GIF of tennis star Serena Williams getting virtually doused.

This nice bit of augmented reality is, obviously, an optical illusion – as if she’d REALLY want to get dunked in Gatorade, no matter how dehydrated she was.

Here’s the clever part: Gatorade came out with an animated filter on Snapchat, which allowed users to dunk a virtual Gatorade cooler over people’s video selfies. They rolled this out to all Snapchat users who were able to save the animation and share it. Consumers personalised the Gatorade lens by pressing down on the app and holding their face—or a friend’s—in front of the camera in Snapchat. Filtering options appeared at the bottom of the screen.

The only branding was a single “G” on the cooler, which flashed onscreen for a split second. Pretty understated, albeit overtly obvious which brand it was. This highly successful Experiential Marketing iSuper Bowl moment on Snapchat drove over 160 million impressions. That’s more than the 115 million who tuned into the game! Insane when you think about it.

We really are seeing the consumer become the copywriter. More than ever they can make or break a brand just by sharing or not sharing. Simple as that. They set the tone, share the adoration (or disgust) far and wide to really mould your brand into what it is. The revered consumer and his/her love (or hate) for a brand is now the driving force behind social sharing.

This reality has turned brand marketing on its head, and – like it or no – it’s something brands need to realise; The Consumer is now in charge of what brands can do or say on social media platforms.

Market ‘at’ them with self-obsessed bombardment on your brand’s merits, and they will shut you down or ignore you. Harass them to “like, share or comment” so they can get some free gift or coupon, and they may comply – but that’s just a fleeting show of loyalty.

And to conclude, although this seems like we have the whole consumer as copywriter thing sewn up – tick the box – move on, we must also remember that brands who do this user-generated content wrong are at the mercy of those consumers who think you’re just wasting their time. Those cringeworthy social media campaigns that innocently ask you to complete the sentence: “I feel like a…” Cue obscene comments. You get the picture.

Consumers now act as ambassadors and advocates for brands through social media. A huge reason why your Experiential Marketing campaign must provide a fully rounded experience for the potential customer.

Audience-produced content can be extremely powerful for brands. It makes perfect sense – people trust the voice of their friends and peers much more than the voice of a brand. If you connect with your customers, and allow them to produce your content, your brand can win.

A Little Aside

As is usually the case when I start researching, trawling and surfing, I uncover a myriad of amazingly pertinent viral and Experiential Marketing campaigns that add weight to my arguments/hypotheses/musings/rants/annoying babble. In this case, it’s even more potent and fruitful. So, I shall have to split my findings and ramblings over two blogs – or there would be Juice Overload for you, poor reader. Not a good look for a work day.

And now on to some seriously juicy case studies:

MTV VMA Green Screens 

To promote MTV’s VMAs in August 2015, the channel came up with a wondrous piece of user-initiated promotion. They called on ‘artists’ from all over the world to finish the promos for them. The campaign took out green screens on billboards and wallscapes across the States. All media drove traffic to MTVVMA.net, where people could pretend they were Van Gogh, Picasso or Rolf Harris (without the aftermath) and make whatever art statement they wanted. Incentivized by the promise MTV would pick the best pieces to replace all the green-screens out in the world, people shared their works of VMA art on their social channels, spreading the word far beyond traditional media. Two weeks before the event, MTV chose their favourites and changed the green-screen media for fan-made VMA art. All art was continuously cycled, so many people never saw the same art twice.

Straight Outta Somewhere

But perhaps no other campaign in recent years has made such an impact virally, through the engagement of the audience. In this, consumers do, indeed, becoming copywriters. This particular viral marketing campaign became a sensation. Almost overnight.

North Kingdom, a Swedish ‘experience design agency’ (really?!), was approached by Beats By Dre to create an innovative and buzz-worthy Experiential Marketing or otherwise immersive consumer-centric experience to support the release of the film about N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton. What they came up with was a masterpiece in consumer engagement that trended No.1 two days in a row across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, with an average of 15,000 #Straightoutta tweets and retweets per minute. According to Twitter, there have been more than 400,000 Tweets mentioning #StraightOutta since Aug. 6. The site has had over 7 million visitors since it went live on August 5, plus over 6 million downloads of the meme. Not bad for a campaign that relied heavily on the fan to create.

Straight Outta Somewhere showed that if you have empathy for your target audience they can and do engage. The idea was to use the iconic STRAIGHT OUTTA logo, and invite the audience to get creative on social media. In addition to the creative output of Normal People across the globe, celebrities, the White House AND UNHCR used it to comment on current events.

As the site itself outlines: “We certainly think that the campaign helped to make people excited about the film and a desire to see it in cinemas. Because the meme created an emotional connection between the people and the plot. It’s a unified experience.”

TBC: Tune in next week for more juicy consumer copywriting shenanigans.

Wow! That made you pay attention, I’ll wager.

And just to redress the balance and see the real WW spin in all her 1970s glory …

The good news is there is a plethora of ways to measure ROI on your campaign. And below are just a few:

Social Media

Social media traction is the name of many a game these days. In order to track the ROI, do some of these easy little things below:

– Use hasthtags and track brand mentions on key platforms.
– Ensure guests ‘check in’ when they arrive at your event.
– Brand ambassadors can update their status and post product images etc.
– Calculate ‘Likes’ and track progress on each platform.

Your Own KPIs

Have a clear set of goals in mind. Discuss your KPIs with your team beforehand, and don’t just run blind and flailing into the Experiential Marketing world just because you have a wonderful creative idea (note to self  – sounds familiar). Do the Grey Suits In The Boardroom discussion before you let loose with your fully immersive customer-friendly experience.

Decide which KPIs have to be reached for your Experiential Marketing campaign to be considered a success. And similarly, those that you don’t mind losing to ‘experience’ and would still consider the campaign a success. KPIs are extremely helpful in comparing one event against another too, allowing your brand or product range to grow and diversify.

The End Game: Sales

So let’s face it: The whole point of your intricately creative Experiential Marketing campaign is to sell product. Yes, you want customers to fall in love with your product and brand, but in terms of instant gratification – it’s all about the Kerching ding ding factor, is it not? But how can you measure if a sale is a direct result of your campaign? Well, the truth is, it’s extremely hard to. BUT, you can do some research and spot differing patterns in customer purchases correlating to your Experiential Marketing activation. How extremely exciting!

In conclusion, although sales are indeed the ultimate Brand Goal, we all know that the path to consumers ‘Tapping & Going’ with your product under their arm, is creating real bonds – loving connections between your brand and the consumer. Experiential Marketing is there to pull people into the brand, and that’s the real ROI.

So, yes, it’s a gamble – but if you roll the dice on an Experiential Marketing event, you may very well turn out extremely rich in customer luuuuurve. And as The Beatles reminded us many a psychedelic time – All You Need Is Love.

 

* Yes – we still have blackboards. We are in the 1970s for this paragraph, remember.

This idea promoted Heinken’s adventurous spirit and sense of risk taking to a brand new audience.

Heineken set up a Departure Roulette board at the airport, informing travellers they could trade in their airline tickets for wherever they were about to fly to, and agree to go to whatever destination the Departure Roulette board randomly turned up. They were just … #dropped.

Result was a huge social media presence of Heineken hashtagging – plus a whole new audience of travel-spirited people imbibing the beer and all it claimed to stand for.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines used a puppy-powered viral video in a unique experiential marketing online campaign back in 2014.

The airline shows a lost and found service at Amsterdam Airport using a beagle named Sherlock to return misplaced iPhones and toys and comfort anxious fliers. The ad racked up more than 1.8 million views on YouTube within the first few days of the campaign, and a staggering 22,207,546 views (well, maybe 22,207,547 views by now) to date.

Such campaigns create a unique experience for consumers, and connect with people on an emotional level – the key to successful experiential marketing campaigns.

It is glaringly obvious in our technology-led, fast-paced, swiping left, right and centre world that different forms of experiential marketing like viral videos, installations, and live events would not have an effective vehicle without social media. Such campaigns are brand ‘conversation starters’, and allowing your fans to be a part of such a dialogue is vital in building Brand Love.

Being active on social media ensures that your brand is always connected with potential ambassadors, and you can leverage such social relationships to promote all your experiential marketing campaigns.

As we have already explored, when people have memorable experiences, they naturally want to tell others about it. This is where linking social media and experiential marketing truly pays off.

Brands are now using that modern FOMO thing to their advantage: creating tools for attendees to share what they’re experiencing on social media.

For an old school, ‘real’ experience-lover, I find it depressing and slightly unnerving that the millenials and Gen Ys of today spend their whole time “having an experience” through the lens of their smartphone. A sea of phones held aloft at a live concert is the Norm.

As Joan Coraggio, group director of brand integration at Saatchi & Saatchi LA, so rightly points out: “Ten years ago you’d go to an event and turn your phone off. Now, you consider your mobile an essential part of the experience.”

So, for brands, which feed off user-generated content to fill their own social feeds, this is amazing news. For many, it’s the best way to get the attention of their consumers—especially those lens-obsessed millennials—whose raison d’être seems to be living by sharing all their cool experiences with all their friends, as opposed to being taken in by traditional ad campaigns.

For brands at least  – may social media reign a long time!

Traditionally, a beer brand – yes, but now synonymous with sport (especially football – in the traditional English sense of the word) and the magical, tantalising slogan Open Your World, Heineken also sponsors numerous high profile sport and music events around the world, including European Rugby Champions Cup and since 2005 Europe’s most prestigious football competition – UEFA Champions League.

In the past few years, Heineken has put Big Euros into its experiential marketing campaigns. This way, it has forged an unbreakable bond with its fans on a brand new and much more sophisticated level – The Experience. We all know it’s The Experience that people want, see, love, share and use to define themselves across social media channels.

The brand’s carefully crafted social media campaigns such as #ShareTheSofa (below) deliver tremendous online “talkability”, boosting brand awareness and positioning Heineken exactly where it wants to be – at the forefront of every beer drinker/football lover/person’s mind.

But, my ultimate two favourite campaigns from Heineken, which I just have to share, and which make me laugh, cry, go all silly, get excited and just clean shake my head with their pinpointed perfection on The Human Cause are The Cliché and The Dilemma.

What’s so clever about most of Heineken’s campaigns, but these two in particular, is that although they are intrinsically about beer and football, they’re not about that at all. They’re about commitment and passion – how we live our lives, how we interact with our loved ones and friends and the various situations where these relationships are challenged and are set head to head against each other. And how we react. They take real life situations and emotional wrangles we all have and lay them out for all to see and FEEL.

The first one – The Cliché is about passionate football fans – and the realities of that passion. It outlines the passion at a given moment in time versus long-term commitment. This negotiation drives the comedy, not to mention the unease we feel as viewers. The other ad – The Dilemma is just that: a dilemma between friendship and fanship.

Heineken’s ability to use content marketing, experiential marketing and viral advertising with social media to consistently push its brand values to new users makes it a winner.

The brand leverages its connections with sport, adds a well observed pinch of storytelling and capitalises on the brand’s heritage to create experiential marketing and content marketing campaigns that blow the audience away with their Bullseye resonance.

I’ll drink to that.

One such brilliant experiential marketing idea of theirs is Red Bull Flugtag (German for “flight day”). Competitors attempt to fly home-made, human-powered flying machines with usually hilarious consequences. The flying machines are usually launched off a pier about 30 feet high into the sea or a lake. It’s basically a giant winged laugh rather than a serious sporting event (in opposition to the Red Bull Formula 1 team for instance), and most competitors enter for the entertainment value, their flying machines rarely flying at all! This experiential marketing event started in Vienna (home of Red Bull) has been toured globally, flapping its haphazard wings in Sydney, Auckland, Tel Aviv, Kuwait to name a few. The result? More glowing global love for this never-endingly creative brand.

Bringing In The D’Oh

One relatively simple but brilliantly immersive experiential marketing campaign came in 2007, when 20th Century Fox hyped the release of “The Simpsons Movie”. 

They decided to bring the cartoon world alive by creating Kwik-E-Mart convenience stores in the real world. In a clever marketing alliance (as opposed to rivalling them), the studio partnered with the 7-Eleven chain of stores to transform a dozen stores into their “Simpsons” counterpart. The shelves even had trademark favourite treats like pink sprinkled doughnuts, Buzz cola and Krusty-Os cereal.

Sliding Down To Success

Fanta tapped into every kid (and adult’s) dream, by installing a giant slippery dip in place of the down escalator at the Dizzengof Centre in Tel Aviv. Although I have doubts such a fun experiential marketing activation would make it through the acres of OH&S red tape in Australia, but this activation was a massive success and made shopping for chicken soup and matzoh a hell of a lot more exciting for the Israeli shoppers that particular month.

How Brexit Has Broken European-wide Marketing Activations

(in my humble opinion at any rate)

I’m not going to use this blog as a carte blanche* opportunity to lament my Motherland’s short sighted, idiotic and highly embarrassing vote to leave the EU. Perish the thought… However, what I will say on the subject, in relation to the whole realm of Experiential Marketing, is that such inspirational and easily activated campaigns as the one below,  unveiled at Berlin’s central train station, back in November 2008, by BBC World News will not be simple, let alone possible, in the future due to our exiting the EU. Applause for the small minded, racist, xenophobic bigots of the UK who managed to muck up the future for our children and our children’s children – not to mention the marketing world and its free flowing ideas marketplace.

Rant over. BBC World News created this campaign to launch its ad campaign that featured the text “you can’t restrain a powerful question” and “you can’t suppress a powerful question”.

The 9 foot statue of a microphone breaking through the floor of Berlin’s central train station carried the line, “You can’t bury a powerful question.”

The idea of this activation was to reveal how BBC journalists go to great lengths to ask the questions its audience expect to be answered.

Bravo, merci, danke and dank je.

* French phrase courtesy of France, who are still in the EU, unlike my Motherland, UK

Gone are those days of displaying products in cases for all to see. Brands now realise that their potential audience needs to ‘interact’ with the product, to become one, to stroke it, caress it, hold it, get biblical with it, in a non Jesus-like way. In terms of psychology, we all know that touch can create strong connections between people and products. Physically holding products can create a sense of psychological ownership. And this psychological advantage of touching something is highly evident in modern Experiential Marketing techniques. By touching something – you create love and a bond with it. And more often than not, when you touch it, you buy it. “Sold to the label-obsessed lady lying on the psychologist’s couch!”

Brands once thought the key moment in their relationship with the consumer was the point of purchase, but we now know, in fact, there are THREE key moments:

• When they experience the brand first-hand
• When they buy the brand
• When they talk about the brand and share it with friends

There’s no doubt that technology cuts across all three of these moments to create a Perfect Storm for brand awareness, especially in Experiential Marketing terms. But, it is still fair to say that the traditional, old school approach of physical immersion on a real level can have you reaching for your dollar-laden wallet too. It’s all about creating that indisputable, unbreakable bond between your brand and the consumer. That sweet spot where they realise that their life would be so dull, so quiet, so ‘unliveable’ without your brand in it. They would rather throw themselves off the Floor 5 escalator at Westfield, than live without it.

Some retailers who shine in this particular realm transport the customer to another place, another time, another (much better) experience. These brands which can indeed embrace the theming of products and do it really well, do so by creating a full 360 degree lifestyle for the customer. IKEA sets up rooms that you (sort of) want to live in; you go to buy a cushion and you come home with the sofa, side table, rug and lights from that particular ‘Life Set’ too.

Pottery Barn is another example. They’re pretty good at creating rooms or party-inspired sets where people slip into that organza and glittery fantasy of what their life could be if they had that bedcover, those bowls, that pillow set – and kerching ding ding – Brands 1, Consumer Nil.

Research has shown that the more people touch things, the more likely they are to buy them. This means throwing out the idea of a perfectly aligned, OCD-inspired Experiential Marketing activation, and instead thinking of kicking the consumer (in a nice, friendly way) head-first into the mud and dirt and full enclosed touchy-feeliness of your product, to create that bond.

This idea seems to have created a shift in some smart retailers’ push to move product from those Crown Jewels-style display cases and into customers’ hands. Witness the Apple Store, for example. Everything there creates a ‘lifestyle’ for you – a way for your life to be fun, easy, connected, interesting – AND healthy and natural – some stores have trees growing through them. Oh yes, perfectly natural – all that chrome and the wifi and those buzzing, fizzing waves. But it gives consumers the feeling that it’s balanced, harmonious, they’re helping the environment as well as themselves by buying Apple products. Yin and Yang. Cause and effect. Om Namaste.

There are many studies out there on the psychological effects of experience driving customer decisions to purchase. It’s an area of much deep study, not least because it fuels our capitalist world. I personally feel one of the most important and sometimes slightly overlooked elements on ‘finding’ and sculpting your Experiential Marketing campaign is this:  Knowing Your Audience—really knowing them. Looking beyond demographics like age, income and media consumption to find out what gets them excited? What worries them? What do they talk to their friends about? Why and how would they use your brand, and why would they love it if you provided them with a fully immersive experience with it? Only then can you begin to truly create that experience that will bond your brand with them – like an indelible tattoo. Forever and ever. Amen.

The future isn’t plastic, it’s real. In fact it’s more than that, it’s SURreal. It’s full to bursting with experience and immersion and unbridled 4Dness. Here are just a few of the wonderful sci-fi tools at our disposal for Experiential Marketing campaigns for 2016 and far, far beyond.

In a galaxy far, far away:

Multisensory experiences

Not to be confused with Sting & Trudie-style Tantric Sex or Woody Allen’s Orgasmatron (above), multisensory experiences refer to Experiential Marketing campaigns that appeal to all the five senses – from nose to hand and everything in between, connecting the customer to the brand on a physical and emotional level.

Virtual Reality 3D Worlds

Leaps and bounds have been made in this technology from some slightly laughable, clunky, sci-fi-influenced way to engage in computer games (as in Lawnmower Man – above – still a pretty cool, cult, niche film from the 80s), to the sleek, immersive, modern day VR headset.  The sophistication of modern Virtual Reality headsets is driving a renaissance in this space:  Brands are embracing new, creative ways to utilise virtual reality in Experiential Marketing. VR allows for full plunging of your audience into your brand – allowing them to connect on a much deeper level.

Witness the 4D Budweiser Beer Garage unveiled at SXSW this year.

This multisensory journey meant consumers were able to see, hear, smell—and finally taste—how Budweiser was made. (Think Smell-O-Vision, but for beer).

This is the way brands are engaging now – four dimensions of connection.

Shipping containers 

Doing some fun stuff inside these chunky mobile showrooms is very Now (& Tomorrow). Mobile truck activations and refurbished shipping containers started appearing last year, and since then have multiplied like Viagra-fed bunnies across the marketing world. You can style them anywhere you want, then just drive them to your chosen area and voilà! Fully immersive, cutting edge, interesting looking Experiential Marketing campaigns. Tick. The refurbished shipping containers also provide that gritty, real, urban cool feeling – less corporate or sterile. Expect your brand to imprint immediately in customers’ minds.

And if you want to take it one stage further and dive in to that fully immersive brand experience, creating a VIP event, I thought this was a wonderful use of the containers too – converting them into swimming pools.

 

 

With a seasoned creative idea from an Event Designer, I could see George and Andrew performing Club Tropicana in one of these while sipping their Pina Coladas.

My 80s upbringing is once again dominating this blog. For the non Gen X’s among you, here’s their brilliant video from yesteryear

Oh yes indeed, the future of Experiential Marketing is so bright you’ll have to wear permanent shades. “Pack your bags and leave tonight. Gotta move your feet, don’t miss the flight!”