The Next Big Thing in Social Media is Happening Offline

Why are PR agencies suddenly winning experiential work at an astounding rate?

Because giving people a real world experience is the most authentic way to drive buzz, and PR offers an accepted ROI measurement for the success of the activation. Social media managers and social agencies are late to the party.

It’s time for anyone trying to start a social conversation to look at experiential as a key driver for creating meaningful online conversations.

What’s in it for Social? Authenticity.

Brands want to create meaningful conversations online. Experiential works because it embraces consumer behavior organically. If an offline experience resonates with a consumer, they’re going to talk about it, and today that means they’re going to talk about it online. The division between “online” and IRL is blurred to the point that it’s basically negligible.

Event trends that are driving the new behavior:

• Brand Me: “I am what I share.”
• Exclusive Inclusivity: “I want something no one else has (if my friend can have it too).”
• Social One-Upmanship: “I need to be either the first or the most unique.”

What’s in it for Experiential? Clarity.

What do the phrases “universally accepted” and “crystal clear” have in common? They have never been used to describe experiential ROI. Sure, there are exceptions, especially in the world of transactional retail activations. But it gets muddy when you’re working cross-platform and have to show traction in several (or all) of these channels: PR, social, content, engagements, impressions, and retail.

The key seems to be isolating a single channel, such as PR, content or social, and designing an experiential engagement to pay off that specific KPI.

Content and PR have figured it out.

PR and branded content channels have recently enjoyed success in the experiential space (for brands and agencies) for two primary reasons:

1. Clear ROI

In the interest of being thorough, the first thing I did when we I was asked to launch an experiential division was march into my CEO’s office and ask for PhD level statistics and analytics resources so we could be the ones to solve the elusive ROI riddle, certain we would pull the sword from the stone.

While we were busy gaining no traction, a trend was building outside our four walls. PR agencies were using experiential as a PR driver. They were creating experiences that generated press, and then measuring the media results using the universally accepted ROI calculations for PR. Nobody had to quantify the value of a face-to-face engagement with cross channel amplification. The same applied for branded content.

2. It works…really well!

Social is next.

Brands have embraced social. They are committed. The budgets are there. Metrics and measurement tools are readily available and embraced by CMOs. But does it align with experiential? Absolutely. Here’s why:

• Social ROI is simple and universal. It’s easy to quantify the value of an engagement if the KPI is an online conversation.
• Social listening is key. Social listening tools, in the greater scheme of marketing analytics, are among the most cost efficient. You can measure social impact without requiring share tools or hashtags (but they certainly can help). You can measure historical data, how you’re influencing the conversation during your campaign, and what the lasting effects are. The data is real time.
• Earned beats paid. 3% of people trust promoted posts, 90% of people trust recommendations from friends. An earned impression is, on average, 3.2x more valuable to a brand than paid impressions.

Rules of engagement:

1. Activate on the shared strand of DNA between the audience and the brand. Ask two simple questions:
   1. Could we create this same experience for another brand?
   2. Would this experience work if we changed the audience?
   If you can answer yes to either of those questions, you have failed. If you do it right you won’t need share tools or rewards. Consumers will engage and share organically.
2. You shouldn't have to bribe the audience. Rewards for participating are great as long as they aren’t compensating for a not-so-great experience. You can’t phone it in with a lame experience and think it’s ok to make up for it with a reward for participating. You might get a line at your activation, but that’s a win for the bribe, not the brand. Ask yourself this question: Are consumers waiting in line at our activation because the experience is awesome or the participation reward is awesome?
3. Be authentic. Consumers will sniff out a fraud a mile away.
4. Protect the user experience. This is so important that we have people in our experiential group whose full time job is “protect the user experience.” You need to put yourself in the consumer’s shoes, identify how the activation would resonate, and fight for that to not get watered down by brand mandatories and executional limitations.
5. Don’t ask for too much. If experiential commits to using social ROI, we can let go of some of the obtrusive activities that are often required of participants so we can measure event effectiveness. Do you want your consumer’s experience to end with meeting their favorite NFL player or with filling out your survey? If you have done it right, you can trust they will share their experience and you can measure your success online instead of at the event.

SOCIAL BRIEF + EXPERIENTIAL EXECUTION = SUCCESS

At my previous agency, Omelet, we received a social brief for Game of Thrones, Season 3. We chose to execute it experientially with a wildly successful influencer outreach and stunt, resulting in over 76 million earned impressions, without any paid media or endorsements. Check it out:

So What’s the Takeaway?

Social media managers need to include experiential marketing in the media mix. Consumers have been sharing offline experiences online since the invention of social media. Embrace it. And the ROI rocks. It is simple, universal and can outperform a lot of other social drivers.

Our prediction for 2015? Much like PR and content agencies, social agencies will be adding experiential as a core offering.

Want to chat more about it?

Email me at markwestanderson@hotmail.com to talk more or request a PDF.