Seven brands on experiential: The Economist

Marina Haydn, EVP circulation and retail marketing at The Economist on how experiential helps educate potential readers about the magazine's brand values.

Marina Haydn, EVP circulation and retail marketing at The Economist
Marina Haydn, EVP circulation and retail marketing at The Economist

"Experiential is an effective form of audience development. We can carry a potential reader through all levels of our marketing funnel within one activation. It enables us to raise awareness, deepen brand and product understanding while converting to trial in a one-step journey. This is successful in markets with varying degrees of brand awareness – from our heartland in the UK, to the US, Australia and Hong Kong. Therefore it is important in our marketing mix as it is scalable while delivering a positive, measurable return on investment.

"Experiential helps educate potential readers about our brand values and personality through crafted content activations that are relevant to our audience. Research has shown that brand understanding post-activation is significantly stronger. They leave with a story to tell about an Economist experience, that encapsulates that The Economist is not only about economics, but is forward-looking, an advocate for positive change and innovative. Our editorial challenges our readers, and is often underlined with a bit of wit. So is our experiential.

"The challenge we face with experiential is creating digital amplification that drives real marketing value. We are building strength in this area with dedicated content hubs, beacon technology, location-based social media posts, concept hashtags, polling stations for lead generation that all connect back to our digital marketing technology infrastructure. Experiential’s strength is real world human interaction and it is challenging to find the right mix of digital components to smartly build on that. 

"What experiential brings to campaigns that other mediums don’t is human interaction in the real world. Any marketer’s potential audience is ultimately individual people. What better way to engage with them than face to face?" 

View the full , plus the 

As part of the report, we also spoke to brand managers from  and  on their experiential strategies.

More: This year's Brand Experience Report also includes  and an overview of the report on , plus a .

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