LATEST TREND: EXPERIENTIAL CAMPAIGNS USED AS TV SPOTS

The experience may make advertising authentic again.

I've been harping lately that the future of our industry is found in the bridges we build between digital and physical experiences. Take, for instance, this freakin' awesome experience / stunt for Mitsubishi from 180 LA.

But I've also been noticing that experiential campaigns are now being filmed and edited to be used as TV commercials. Is experiential marketing become an increasingly-used component of traditional ad shops who need to show authentic customer experiences? Seems that way.

How about the latest spots for Hyundai? It's a bunch of test-drives (the ultimate experiential campaign for the car industry) edited together into a spot.

 

Or the spots for Dominos? A bunch of real-life experiential tactics caught on camera and packaged as a series of commercials.

  

[Full disclosure: I work for CP+B, which created the Dominos campaign.]

But what gives? Is traditional becoming dependent on experiential, as much as digital is? Maybe. Just maybe.

 Isn't it time that commercials begin to portray authentic customer experiences, instead of glorified and often untruthful product attributes? I think so.

Jay-Z and BING Get OuterActive

The future of advertising will be played on bridges — real and virtual — that exist between the online world and the real world we all live in.

For instance, a campaing launched by visionary shop Droga5 for rapper heavyweight Jay-Z is a perfect augur to things to come:

An online and real-world scavenger hunt begins in New York and other locales mentioned in the lyric book/memoir "Decoded."

The way it works is, entire pages of the book will be reprinted on traditional advertising spaces like billboards, but they’ll also appear in rare, hard to find spots like the bottom of a hotel swimming pool, the lining of jackets in a store window, the felt of pool tables in a pool hall and plates in a restaurant, among others. They’ll continue to pop up in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans and London until the book is released on November 16.

On the web, the home base is Bing.com/Jay-Z. There, a map appears, and users are prompted to enter answers to a series of clue-like statements, each answer drawing the user closer to revealing the location of the printed lyrics. Once discovered, users can stake their claim.

In the real world, users can send a text message that includes a code printed on the page to announce they’ve discovered the lyrics. The first scavengers to discover where the pages are printed become eligible to win a signed copy of "Decoded" and the grand prize, a trip to see Jay-Z and Coldplay in concert in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve.

This is experiential as it gets, folks. A good explanation is here.

Advertising is used to create a deeper engagement with the campaign, not just to communicate that a campaign for the album exists.

The lyrics become advertisements, blurring the line between art and commerce in a more positive direction than merely "selling out."

And involvement with the campaign flows seamlessly from the digital to the physical.

Lovely. Just lovely.

CONVERSE WOOS BANDS WITH FREE STUDIO TIME

 It's common sense to deem musis as experiential. After all, listening to music or going to a concert is a truly experiential activity. No wonder that there's so much corporate sponsorship of music — it creates emotional connectivity that is experiential to its core.

But Converse is taking an even deeper approach to music sponsorship. According to this article in Fast Company:

The shoe company is building a studio in Brooklyn called Converse Rubber Tracks, which will provide artists with free recording time in exchange for future promotions. Converse is not looking for revenue from the songs themselves–artists will actually keep ownership rights–but it is hoping to gain access to on-the-verge bands, which will generate good will for the brand for helping to break them and get Converse in on the ground floor.

I love this. Converse it providing a true benefit. Call it the Red Bull model of helping athletes.

Most bands you hear about still come out on Warner, EMI, Sony, Universal or one of the "big four" subsidiaries. But brands like Converse do have the power to alter the archetypal trajectory of up-and-coming artists.

This isn't sponsorship, per se. It's more than that. It's deeper. It's a tacit partnership and a big sign of support for a brand and a band.

FREE EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING RESEARCH

My good friend and colleague Erik Hauser is planning something big for his Experiential Marketing Forum (EMF). He is about to begin releasing a shit-ton of new research on experiential marketing, knowledge that he says will be "instrumental to pushing our industry forward." And best of all, this forthcoming research will be absolutely free to all EMF members. So go sign up on the EMF!

LIFE OR DEATH OUT-OF-HOME

On average, 1,500 Serbians commit suicide every year, about 40 of them by jumping from Belgrade's bridges. So, the Serbian office of ad agency McCann Erickson created this (Danube) river projection message with the phone number of the local suicide prevention office and the line "you are not alone."

Truly experiential? Or not.