David Atkinson, managing partner,
What is the outlook for experiential 2015?
There is a broadly positive outlook. There will be a greater blurring of the lines between social and experiential with content creation objectives driving growth in the discipline. This will mean new entrants to the market, which could result in further commoditisation of the discipline. The value placed on the delivery of the live experience will be lower than the social value of the activity. This could mean that some of the intrinsic quality of experiential activation is lost as corners are cut ‘live’ and added on later in an edit.
Is there anything the industry needs to improve as we move into 2015?
There is a danger that the power of procurement departments will commoditise the sector further, which can mean that great ideas and best practice ways of working are lost in the battle for lowest cost. The industry is crying out for a standardised model for calculating ROI and evaluating experiential effectiveness. The proliferation of various agency specific ROI models demonstrates the need for industry agreement on how best to present value.
What has been your 2014 highlight?
Heineken: Birra Moretti Gran Tour. Birra Moretti is an authentic Italian beer that enhances the enjoyment of the simple pleasures in life, such as the pleasure of eating and drinking in good company. We connected ‘Moretti Men’ with their passion points of great food, great company and great beer at a series of authentically Italian ticketed street food events in 2014. As well as selling every ticket available we also amplified the activity reaching more than 500,000 consumers via earned social media.
Michael Brown, managing director,
Is there a positive 2015 outlook for experiential marketing?
PS Live is looking at 52% growth on last year’s performance as we come to the end of the year. If I couple that with significant approved projects in 2015, the outlook seems very positive at this stage.
Big trends for the next 12 months?
The thing that most enters our sphere of influence is big data. All experiential agencies are striving to make what they do as relevant and as measurable as possible. The near future will see more and more experiential agencies invest more in this. Without such weaponry, an agency can only operate as an event producer as opposed to a genuine experiential marketing business.
Another marker for us in 2014 that looks set to grow next year is the deployment of live content from the experiential activity to the paid, digital out-of-home campaign. We have an increased number of case studies, including Center Parcs, Very Beauty and Littlewoods, in which the live experience has been created to inform the DOOH campaign with compelling content. We have used a proprietary tool called Liveposter to implement these new initiatives, which allows the deployment of live data and content to change the creative on digital panels either singularly, nationally geo-targeted.
Chris Wareham, managing director, Mash Staffing
What is the outlook for experiential in 2015?
We’re very optimistic for both Mash and the industry as a whole. The level of innovation we’ve seen from many of our clients this year has shown experiential marketing taken to a new level – incorporating incredible technology with great people to create a really immersive experience.
How can the industry improve?
The single biggest area for improvement in the industry is proving ROI. The richness of a consumer interaction through a piece of experiential is significantly more than it is through traditional media channels, but putting science behind the value in this is very hard and something the industry needs to help measure.
What has been Mash Staffing’s highlight during 2014?
The 'Tour de Where?' campaign, run by Initials on behalf of TV channel Dave, saw our staff pretending to be lost cyclists while the real Tour de France passed through London. We’re always glad to get great feedback from our staff on the campaigns they’re booked on - and this one was described as ‘the best job ever’ by the whole team.
Tom Eatenton, founder, Kru Live
What is the forecast for 2015?
The outlook is undoubtedly positive for 2015. We have numerous projects that are repeating next year and many are upsizing those carried out in 2014. There is a strong focus on activity around the Rugby World Cup and some exciting brands with new experiential campaigns that are going to be entering the arena too.
What emerging trends are you seeing, which will be beneficial to our sector in the next 12 months?
We are seeing more emphasis being placed by our peers on the importance of timely payments and a very high level of communication, support and training of managers and field teams – we aim to remain as innovators in this area. Technology is always evolving and the use of field-based apps and data capture technology remains a strong part of measurement and reporting to ensure that value is being achieved from this type of activity.
How does the industry need to develop?
Advance planning remains a important area that brands and creative agencies should focus on – naturally the further out that key decisions are made, the more time and focus there is on the fine tuning that distinguishes a great activity from an okay activity. There is a clear impact on results for those clients that plan well in advance against those that are still in development right up to the minute they launch.
Those brands and agencies that engage their partners very early in the process always have a smoother delivery, better consumer feedback and social media chatter and quantitative and measurable results to draw from post-event.
What has been a Kru Live highlight in 2014 and why?
We have delivered work as far as New York for Greggs, as well as projects in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Manila for Keds to name a few. Another campaign of note was the UK launch of Google Glass – we trained a large team of brand ambassadors across a number of days with highly technical knowledge of this new product and the greatest accolade for me was the brand director’s feedback. He said: "I cannot tell the difference between the Kru Live team and the Google team." Truly great praise.
Andy Dougan, managing director,
Is there a positive 2015 outlook for experiential marketing/brand experiences?
The amount of experiential marketing being employed by brands as well as the volume of events taking place is likely to continue growing, not only within national boundaries but overseas as well. We’re also seeing an evolution from tactical/executional projects to larger strategic platform briefs – with an ever-increasing emphasis on cross-territory delivery.
Consumers have received greater exposure to experiential events and marketing and, as a result, consumer demand for experiential, as well as expectations of what makes a good experiential event, has also grown.
What emerging trends are you seeing, which will be beneficial to our sector in the next 12 months?
Evolving experiential technology is a continuing trend to look out for and warrants exploration and investment from agencies within the sector. The incorporation of smart watches/bands will become the default choice as a new experiential technological resource.
This trend will be beneficial to improving the customer experience by blurring the lines between digital and physical resources used by consumers in events. This technology will also prove to be beneficial in terms of measuring and tracking the number of visitors to an event as well as allowing consumers to rate their overall experience of an event. This may allow us to improve the ROI of our work for our clients.
Are there any pitfalls, or anything the industry needs to improve on as we move into 2015?
A continuing need to embrace, yet educate procurement departments – our sector is the least understood, most likely due to the perceived lack of measurability and accountability. Some clients see the value and ‘get it’ but there is still a deep set point of view that experiential is an un-proven channel and one where margins are frequently squeezed at the expense of the overall consumer experience.
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