Looking closely at advertising trends in South Africa, it is clear that South African consumers expect increasingly immersive experiences that play on their senses and emotions. What we are talking about is experiential marketing.
We all know how hard it is to grab a customer’s attention, let alone hold onto it. So how do we create memorable experiences in a world where every single one of us is inundated with information and images?
Experiential Marketing and Knowing your Audience
The first step is understanding your brand’s current audience and the audience you wish to attract to increase your reach. How do they “look” like? What do they identify within your brand’s offering? What would they like to see more of? These are the sorts of questions you should be asking yourself before you even begin conceptualising an experiential marketing project.
To create memorable experiential marketing for the South Africa market, you need to be aware of cultural nuances. This all comes back to knowing who you are targeting with your campaign. If you’re activating for brands that target African people, ensure that your promoters can speak vernacular languages.
Research is Key
Whenever we begin a new project, the first step is a period of research into a brand’s current audience and the brand’s current strategy. This gives us a good idea of what direction to head in when creating an experiential marketing campaign.
Experiential Marketing we did for Flora
When Flora approached us to leverage their Comrades Marathon sponsorship, we began by ensuring we had a thorough understanding of the brand. Their current in-store campaigns and their product offering. As a brand that prides itself of its product’s health benefits, we used this insight to inform the kinds of activities and experiences we created for the Flora exhibition . We took advantage of the large area we could work with by sectioning off areas for activities and experiences.
By creating memorable and enticing spaces, we were able to hold our audience’s attention. This helped us to not only meet our client’s objectives but exceed them.
