Learn Why Brand Experience Is the Future of Marketing

Marketing, as always, is constantly evolving.

Even more, audiences are getting savvier with their wants and needs, and marketers are just trying to keep pace with constant changes, aligning with the needs and demands of their targeted audience. Why? Businesses have become entirely consumer-centric and the future of marketing relies on connecting  and engaging an audience for the long haul.

As audience needs are rapidly evolving, brand experience marketing is taking place as a key player in any marketing strategy. When executed genuinely, it is a holistic and immersive platform for brands to spread their message. New-age consumers who are willing to spare some time to understand a brand's purpose or messaging find this type of marketing appealing. Let’s delve into what this domain of marketing entails. 

Brand experience marketing explained 

Brand experience marketing leverages data, technology, and storytelling in order to reinvent the complete live experience of the customers. So, to understand this marketing strategy, let’s begin with its definition. 

This term came into being like other marketing terms prevailing in the industry, i.e, with the rise of communicating channels and the media to spread the story or message of a brand.

According to reports, brand experience marketing is booming at a faster rate than advertisements, CRM, PR, and media. And this is the reason why many marketers and top companies are incorporating this type of marketing after understanding the connection it establishes with a targeted audience.

Brand experience is a type of experiential marketing

People often get confused with brand experience marketing and experiential marketing. As a result, it becomes difficult to choose a marketing strategy between these two.

While there is always overlap at the edges of these terms due to the rapidly evolving social, digital, and mobile mediums, there are some differences that exist and can benefit a brand in various ways.

Brand experience is a type of experiential marketing, and it includes a broad range of activities to establish a deeper emotional connection and higher brand affinity. Such activities are corporate events, experimental stunts, the interaction between consumer and employee via phone or in-store, using the website or app of the brand, and so on.

There are other marketing terms present in the industry such as experiential marketing, event marketing, line events, and so on. All these marketing strategies are beneficial to brands, but they lack one simple yet essential aspect: branding.

Branding is the supreme goal of marketing, and brand experience marketing is an open-minded branding concept utilizing more colorful and large tools to spread the message of a brand.

5 innovative brand experience marketing campaigns to emulate

Now that you have some insight on brand experience, let’s look at some innovative brand experience marketing campaigns from big-name brands. 

1. Refinery29’s 29Rooms

Refinery29 introduced its 29Rooms experience that defines the destination of a modern woman for how to lead a well-rounded and stylish life. It brings those spirits to life with its 29Rooms installation.

This is one of the best examples of brand experience that directly connects the targeted customers, in this case, women, with the brand by checking out the beautiful exhibition. These rooms are designed by artists, retail brands, and other innovative minds to witness an adventurous and fun way to live life.

2. Vans’ House of Vans

Another great example of brand experience is the House of Vans from shoe retailer  Vans. These events are in New York, Brooklyn, London, and Chicago. The brand has created the events for the community of skateboarders in order to bring together and let them enjoy their similar passions for sports, film, and music.

Previously on International Women’s Day, the brand also created the event to promote and encourage women in the art of skateboarding and hosted skate sessions, live music, and documentary screenings as well. With this event, the brand was successful in bringing together the skateboard community to promote the visibility of women as part of their brand experience marketing.

3. Oyo's Raho Mast

Indian startup Oyo is the second biggest hotel operator in the world per room count with more than 18,000 hotels existing in India after Marriott International. The 6-year-old startup is expanding fast to reach the shores of the US, the UK, and China – thus, expanding its branding campaigns as well.

The Raho Mast campaign is an example of a brand experience campaign of the company to let consumers know that it does not matter where they are, who they are, or whatever their budget is, they are sure to get quality service.

The campaign shows different scenarios of a family and a couple struggling to find their perfect hotel within budget. It also deploys famous TikTok influencers to amplify the campaign.

4. BYJU’s Keep Learning, Keep Winning

Edtech firm BYJU launched a TV campaign called Keep Learning, Keep Winning, which featured the Indian cricket team with their new jerseys showing the BYJU brand name. The company's campaign is spreading the "keep on learning" messaging to its audience, and engaging them through famous sports stars. 

As cricket is the most celebrated sport in India, the brand associates with it to expand its reach broader. Cricket inspires millions of people in India, and BYJU is trying to reach the heart of people, especially the younger generation, to learn more and more.

5. Netflix’s Gilmore Girls pop-up: Luke’s Diners

Netflix is undoubtedly a must-have for many people around the globe. The brand was also influenced by the idea of brand experience marketing when it launched its campaign Luke’s Diners and converted about 200 coffee shops in the US into a pop-up version of the diner from famed TV show Gilmore Girls.

The brand started this campaign to promote Gilmore Girls’ 16th anniversary as well as its fourth season’s release. Although the brand kept a low budget, it was successful in spreading high awareness due to its brand experience marketing strategy.

Why is brand experience important for customers? 

There are so many other examples of brand experience by big-name brand such as Ikea’s Bath Boats Drive, WWF’s #StopWildlifeTrafficking, Xbox’s Survival Billboard, and so many others. They are examples of how much brand experience can positively influence a brand to reach its targeted customers.

Brand experience is an instrument that can put your audience and your brand together in a room, thereby giving a good opportunity to have a  real conversation. You won't get this type of opportunity in other channels because you are dealing and engaging with actual people instead of datasets.

It works both ways; it is beneficial for both the brand as well as consumers because both entities can know each other better. This way, a brand can deliver per the expectations of the consumers while the consumers can understand a bit more about the brand to inch more toward mutual trust.

So, here is how brand experience paves a way for brands and is worth spending their time and resources. And at the same time, it is beneficial for consumers as well.

1. Creates empathy

Audiences don’t always know what exactly they want, and they might not always tell you what they need.

The sad part is many businesses only think about the datasets they have of their targeted audience instead of thinking about the people behind those datasets. And that’s where their business strategies do not show good results.

However, brands have started using their data intelligently to improve their service offerings by establishing a deeper emotional connection with their audience. The catch here is to formulate usable and real insights from the data to gain as well as show empathy to your targeted audience. This is the first step toward a deep and true connection.

Brand experience marketing builds a stronger connection between your brand and targeted audience through empathy so that you can have a true and real conversation to know your customers and align your business and marketing methods as per their needs.

2. Better engagement

Audiences yearn for a more relevant and deep connection with a brand. And it's not actually enough for you to just fulfil their demands; you also need to be persistent and be a greater part of your customer’s life.

Brand experience does the same, and makes you a larger part in the story of your targeted audience for you to succeed. You can engage better with your audience by understanding their senses to create new moments that engage each one. 

These moments give your audience an everlasting experience with your brand through live events and face-to-face interactions. With the help of brand experience, you can create such an ambience that cannot be imitated, recreated, or captured by mere photos or videos.

3. Wider reach

A brand is represented by more than just its website, logo, and other visual aspects. The brand has the absolute potential to explore beyond such typical things to stand out and be successful.

Brand experience marketing gives you the opportunity to drop that veil between you and your customers so that they can communicate with the person behind that website and logo. It humanizes your brand before your customers so that they understand there is always a person working for them to deliver excellent service or product. Ultimately, your brand visibility increases when your customers get that human touch through brand experience marketing. And your reach goes beyond the horizon to reach more people, inclining them towards your brand.

4. Building trust

Trust is one of the major reasons customers would want to buy products and services. There are so many businesses out there and you must stand on the crowd to be the best so that people will choose you. You cannot just rely on traditional marketing methods especially at that time when new and innovative methodologies are available to cast a strong impression of your brand on your targeted audience.

Brand experience marketing is the method where you can build trust with your audience through live events and interacting with them directly. As a result, they feel emotionally attached to your brand and even recommend others to consider your brand due to the trust factor.

5. Inspiration

It is not always that marketers can only spread brand awareness by telling the story of the brand. The new-age marketing involves motivating and inspiring customers towards your brand. You can also invite technologists, filmmakers, musicians, and so on to participate in your brand experience marketing to derive inspiration to your customers. 

6. Real-time feedback

One of the most amazing things about the method of brand experience is that you get the opportunity to interact with your audience in real-time. As a result, you can get feedback instantly. If you compare it with traditional marketing strategies, it usually takes months to collect data and then the process of analyzing that data comes up to finally extract the information out of it.

On the other hand, this marketing is beneficial to consumers as they can directly tell their issues and concerns to the brands so that they can work towards fixing it. And when brands directly listen to their customers about their product and services, they can improve them faster.

7. Design-driven results

Brand experience is a great way to align design thinking with a brand strategy which is not offered by other marketing channels. It combines elements like empathy, inspirational diversity, multisensory engagement, and faster feedback. As a result, the results can be overwhelming and can yield desired results for your business.

Conclusion

Brand experience is one of the greatest marketing strategies that can help you to connect with and pour customers better, show empathy to them, understand their pain-points, and get faster feedback. As a result, you can better connect with your audience and incline them towards your brand by establishing an emotional connection with them.

Even the big brands have incorporated it into their marketing campaigns. So, what’s holding you back? Plan and implement this intelligent marketing strategy to see better results. 

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