Making experience count

You don't need an unlimited budget to carry out high-impact experiential campaigns, if you tap into the power of 'roaming' activity, which benefits from a captive and carefully targeted audience

Permission costs for conducting experiential activity at festivals, railway stations, retail areas and other traditional locations can be restrictive.

They often add five- or six-figure sums to a campaign budget, before any of the customer- interaction activity costs are factored in.

Naturally, these costs are beyond the scope of many organisations, particularly challenger brands, which would greatly benefit from the results that an experiential campaign can deliver.

While the success of some campaigns may rely on a high- profile presence at costly events and using premium event spaces, many organisations can take advantage of more cost-efficient, experiential approaches to deliver bottom-line results.

The ability to successfully undertake high-impact experiential campaigns at a lower cost is more important than ever in today's economic climate.

Many brands require maximum audience reach for the lowest possible unit cost. If savings can be made on permission costs, the investment can be refocused on increasing the total number of people who come into contact with the activity, by either extending the campaign duration or increasing the number of brand ambassadors used on each location visited.

One of the easiest methods to adopt for lower-cost campaigns is to use interactive roaming field teams, which can carry out activities such as product sampling, interactive demonstrations and in-depth data capture, alongside innovative ambient media and eye-catching promotional vehicles.

These teams visit targeted locations, which align with the brand's core target audience and provide close proximity to a purchasing opportunity. City-centre office districts and business parks provide good examples of frequently overlooked locations.

We regularly send teams of fully branded, smartly attired brand ambassadors into thousands of professional working environments across all the major cities of the UK.

The teams might offer tasty product samples to receptive office workers, who are pleased to have a distraction from their working day. This location works best if the chosen products are designed to be consumed or used in the workplace, appeal to the particular demographic group being targeted, and are available to be purchased locally.

This allows ROI to be tracked, so activity can be measured locally and nationally in terms of immediate and long-term sales increases. Experience shows that this approach works incredibly well - a recent campaign undertaken for a convenience-food brand resulted in a sales uplift of more than 40% across all local stockists within the target cities.

The opportunity for memorable one-on-one customer interaction is often greater using roaming teams than it is in more traditional environments. In railway stations and supermarkets, for example, a brand ambassador will have only a matter of seconds to engage a potential customer, as most people are in a hurry.

By contrast, roaming sampling teams visiting individual offices have a captive audience. Targets enjoy their unexpected visits, particularly when they are given free samples. It creates a buzz in the workplace, which leads to targets sharing their opinions with their colleagues, and allows the promotion teams greater opportunity to present the full USP to potential customers en masse.

This flexible mindset should also influence choices of event equipment and promotional vehicles. If correctly devised, they should enable fast deployment of high-impact experiential activity, without the need for costly 'setting-up' periods within the main event arenas of high-profile locations.

Most importantly, it works. Something you should consider when the board next demands you find innovative ways to reduce your costs without diluting results.

Joel Kaufman is managing director of Link Communication

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