Mentioning an upcoming marketing campaign event at your workplace can often clear out space faster than announcing free snacks in the break room. It isn’t that your employees or co-workers aren’t interested in the latest marketing trends, it’s the experience that they have at these long and tedious events that make them want to avoid another one at all costs.
The Top Three Marketing Campaigns You Should Try
Big industry conferences and trade shows have a tendency of being very generic and uneventful. That type of atmosphere doesn’t help hold the attention of the attendants for very long. That’s why some marketing brands are turning over a new leaf offering experimental marketing campaigns that are fun, interactive and exciting.
Here are a few examples of some of the best marketing campaigns out there.
Refinery29: 29Rooms
Over the past three years, the popular lifestyle brand Refinery29 has hosted its 29Rooms event. This interactive funhouse filled with culture, technology, and fashion consists of 29 rooms that are individually branded and curated. Attendants can have a different experience in each room they visit. The 29Rooms are designed along with brand partners and represent companies such as Dunkin Donuts, Cadillac and Dyson just to name a few.
There is a new theme for the campaign every year. In 2018, their theme was “Turn It into Art.” Those who attended the event were asked to use the surroundings in each room they entered to create something unique. It was a truly hands-on experience and one that was also very successful.
The advantages that marketers can take away from the 29Rooms experience is that it’s okay to think outside the box if you keep the brand at the focus of your material. The experience should be memorable but cater to those who are in attendance. It’s a good idea to partner with local artists or musicians to help create a marketing campaign that will easily draw in your target audience.
Lean Cuisine: #WeighThis
Lean Cuisine has created a successful marketing campaign that steps away from the usual advertising linked with dieting and healthy eating, and that is convincing women that they need to change something about themselves. Their #WeighThis campaign is used to focus primarily on weight loss and not on the usual messages that we all have heard from the diet and weight loss industry.
For their campaign, Lean Cuisine created a gallery of scales inside of New York’s Grand Central Station. They invited women to weigh-in, but this wasn’t your typical scale. Instead, they were small boards that allowed the women to write down how they wanted to be weighed. Instead of focusing on the numbers, the women wanted to be weighed by their accomplishments in life such as returning to school after having kids or successfully raising a family all on their own.
The great thing about this concept is that the participants never interacted with an actual Lean Cuisine product. They weren’t asked to try a free sample or heard about the brand’s products at all. The message that the brand wanted to send was for their target audience to focus on their accomplishments outside of weight loss to help them feel better about themselves.
The main thing marketers can take away from this is that you don’t have to interrupt your audience or push your samples on them to get their attention. Sometimes stepping away from your usual marketing techniques and trying something new can leave a longer lasting impression.
It’s important that marketers take the time to consider all the calculated risks involved and what you can do to successfully interact with your target audience. Even if it may seem a little unusual, if it collaborates with the message you are trying to send, it should work.
Guinness: Guinness Class
Legendary adult beverage brand Guinness took a luxurious approach with their marketing campaign. For several weeks, ambassadors dressed in flight attendant uniforms that were Guinness branded and stepped into bars throughout the U.K., where they came across unsuspecting customers who had the opportunity to win various prizes.
To participate, bar attendants had to order a pint of Guinness. Then they would use the provided mobile tablet to try their luck for a prize that ranged from passport cases to a free trip for five to Dublin, via a private jet.
The Guinness brand is nearly 257 years old and didn’t need to change anything about their actual products to see a boost in sales. Instead, they took on a new approach to encourage customers to buy their brand in exchange for a chance to win the trip of a lifetime.
One thing marketing teams can take away from this approach is to always think about your target audience, their interests and what they might aspire to. Associate those things with your brand and build a campaign around that.
The Real Cost of Marketing
Having worked in the marketing and business consulting industry for nearly 20 years, I’ve run into the same two issues with every single client. Either they are paying too much for marketing services, and not getting a return, or paying too little to see any progress, but not willing to spend more. The question has always been; who decides the value of a marketing campaign? How do you measure its success? Why do you sometimes find a $10,000.00 dollars difference in price on a marketing project, depending on what company is doing it for you and what marketing strategy they are using?