EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING FOR PREPARATION OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IN EVENTS [dropshadowbox align=”left” effect=”lifted-both” width=”250px” height=”” background_color=”#c9cca3″ border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]In last summer issue of Kongres magazine we are starting from the assumption that only events and conferences will survive that will in addition to top content also sell an experience and create interaction through the personal experience of congress participants. [/dropshadowbox]
Successful brands have for many years been using the strategy of experiential marketing, using it most in the area of corporate events. Events are one of the best selling experiences. The English agency Universal World Events has recently set up an Audience Engagement team, which consists of eight top experts. The Audience Engagement team is experiencing a real boom and need for sharing best practices.
All this could be summed up with the concoction “Meetingstainment”. The combination of expert content and entertainment are found today in all kinds of key events. There is not a lot of room left for differentiation of events in the postmodern era; we can only consider the experience and the possibility of personal communication with participants on the emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual levels.
Participants may enter through the experience of active participation and communication. The events have a variety of options to create such experiences, the most common being:
– Entertaining experiences which relaxes participants and prepares them to assist and network
– The educational experience, like House of Experiments
– The aesthetic experience, which is induced by the use of specific sites with high aesthetic value-added
– The escape experience from everyday life in the form of various teambuilding programs
All kinds of experiences trigger emotional reactions. Most events are used as a hybrid combination of different stimulations. It is important that they are genuine, as only in this case can we earn the trust of the participants.
Using elements of experiential marketing at events is today a paradigm for the future and the foundation of differentiation of your event, mainly because it is based on communication, which is not intrusive, but authentic, and it interacts with the participants, only when they really want this. Therefore you have to encourage dialogue, choose unobtrusive communication and enable participants to co-create your event.
In summer issue of Kongres magazine, we confirm that the experiential events have become a way of life and thinking. It has to be based on a good story. Events have to encourage thinking, sharing, interaction and engagement. Only when your participants find themselves in your story and identify with it, then they will become your loyal followers and co-creators of events.
Read more about EXPERIENCE MARKETING:
Kongres Magazine July 2013 FPO
