LIFETIME EXPERIENCES – Making the impossible event possible
1. Could you explain to us the concept of experiential marketing from your point of view?
Lifetime experiences result in a customer devotion to the product the experience is associated with. The essence of the experience has to match the one the brand is designed to achieve by translating the 6-dimensional impact (5 senses + spiritual) to targeted audience senses and consciousness, perhaps sub-consciousness as well. The closest concept to experience producing marketing belongs to tourism. In Croatia the link between the two related professions somehow seem to sometimes be lost, but the secret is in applying both in the same goal. Providing lifetime experiences is the key to success in both.
2. What is the importance of experiential marketing as a medium of communication for events?
Producing unique, individual, lifetime experiences is the most efficient and convincing media of delivering a message to consumers. Impressions printed into the minds of consumers must be permanent, always desired and addictive. The message of the brand or the concept has to be holistic, overwhelming, the messenger an empathy driven maniac obsessed with details.
3. How best can you “wow” conference participants?
By providing the electric feeling of goose bumps, by tantalising and mesmerising the audience. Ideas are bulletproof; unexpected, incredible, fascinating, concerning all the senses and uniting in a single place and moment regularly incompatible concepts. Our clients, Homo Ludens and Homo Turisticus, both desire excitement, thrills, news, education, fascination, emotions, driven satisfaction. Nowadays technology exceeds our recent expectations and our audience expects nothing less: HERE, NOW, ALL OF IT! Match that, and only then a good job has been done.
4. What are some of the greatest challenges when conceiving and staging a successful event for a brand?
Making the impossible events possible. Courage. Who dares wins. To be a revolutionary in producing emotions by providing experiences of extraordinariness. The most incredible ideas put to life produce the most powerful impact. Ideas are bulletproof, but to recognize and catch the moment of fascination is a skill of the profession. To know how to grasp the moment before it is gone in a flash. Each never-seen-before, a brand new event concept and idea are ever more exciting to produce. The audience is more mobile, faster, ever well educated and experienced. To match the modern era fascination for challenges is more demanding than has ever been. The human component of the event or the experience producing concept is in my opinion the key. Humans are social beings depending upon each other. The key instrument is to involve total consumer attention. The most complex and sophisticated emotions-producing marketing messenger that ever existed is a real person in action. Entertainment, performers, hosts, hostesses are the brand ambassadors, in their very essence producing the experiences. That is what I am dedicated to: to produce the perfect match of individual, human interactions can only be achieved by engaging the proper team of co-workers and performers.
5. What do you see as the future of experiential marketing right now?
Marketing (Promotion) will start by a first, superficial, but fast impact; digital media being the perfect platform to provide the engagement. Today, without the credibility, vivid colors, fullness of aromas, sounds, flavours and touchable senses of the targeted experience, no essential impression or drive could be delivered. Expectations are high and brands need to provide experiences or access that can’t be found anywhere else.
Here are some tips for experiential marketing in practice: Keep it simple, you have less than 10 seconds to attract, engage, educate, discover emotional trigger, be authentic, entertain, create a relationship with your client/consumer. People bearing the message, real people, are the future. Leading by an example, people are the key to success. Teams of professionals delivering the most precise message including self devotion, emotions and fascination in the experience they share. Body, mind and essence alike.
Photo: Antonia Radić
ANTONIA RADIĆ – SHORT CV
Daily work in tourism and in destination marketing, continuous improvement, frequent business and study trips allow me daily track of the latest global trends in tourism, the constant changes in the general development and the needs of tourists of a new era.
Long-term cooperation and work with international companies in the field of events and experiential marketing helped me become aware of the importance of a positive attitude and to develop and adopt a positive and proactive business philosophy in general. I have learned about tourism, hospitality and experiential marketing in a dynamic, multilingual and multicultural environment, and thus realise the importance of personal experience and perception. Today I share experience, associated with tourism and marketing with clients, employees, colleagues and students as a guest lecturer. Formal education has even further shaped my previous study and work experience in this, above all, dynamic business branch. Experience, unique and attractive is what I consider my daily mission both in business and private life.
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