6 Min Read |
Brands no longer need to wait for the summer months with their festivals and crowded city centres to interact with their audiences. At Home experiences bring engagement and trial opportunities to everyone’s living room, says Vaughan Edmonds, Planner at global brand experience agency Sense.
The events of this year have created change across the globe at a rate unprecedented in modern times. The way we live our lives has fundamentally changed and these shifts have had immediate implications on our marketing.
In particular, a global lockdown wasn’t great news for the types of environments traditionally associated with brand experiences, which have become an increasingly important part of beauty brands’ marketing strategies – festivals, events, crowded high streets, bustling shopping centres and commuter hubs. However, the past six months have taught us a great deal about the art of brand experiences.
We’ve learnt that brand experiences were never really about the environments they took place within. They are about people – brands augmenting their lives to make the everyday a little more exciting. Just because the people weren’t on the streets didn’t mean the show couldn’t go on.
It doesn’t take the latest in-depth webinar series to know where people have gone. It turns out we’re adaptable. Rather than turning our back on the activities that were once only possible outside of our front doors, we’ve brought our favourite past times into our homes.
We’ve seen a global increase in intent for activities such as for cooking (+54%), at-home entertainment (+40%) and home improvement (+22%) (McKinsey). Zoom’s daily user base grew from 10 million to 200 million in the three months over lockdown as more of us were forced to work away from our offices (McKinsey). There has been an 18% increase in e-commerce use in the UK for products normally bought in-store as a result of COVID-19 (Shopify).
These changes in behaviour have created a range of unexpected new challenges for brands. The issues range from the very broad to the very specific. For some brands, product trial may be the cornerstone of a marketing strategy. With the dramatic reduction in footfall in environments like commuter hubs and events, these brands now face the challenge of sampling efficiently and effectively. For other brands, engagement may be the foundation of their approach. Content only goes so far – some brands need tangible interactions rather than passive absorption.
The good news is solutions do exist for brands facing these sorts of challenges. Innovation is occurring that represents the immediate future for brand experiences and all the benefits they bring. Successful experiences can be activated in any environment.
The past few months have seen beauty and wellbeing brands focusing their attention on the home to great effect. We’ve seen Grazia partner with No. 7 and Bare Minerals to host a week-long digital beauty event including make-up tutorials and celebrity beauty routines with ticketed Zoom webinars and free content on IGTV. The Body Shop used Instagram to promote their #TimeToCare campaign, where influencers shared their top in-home pampering tips to The Body Shops’s followers. Finally, NEOM created their Sleep with NEOM virtual festival, an online evening event showing attendees how to create a calming environment in their homes to enjoy a better night’s sleep.
So what makes a great brand experience at home? Here are five key tips for beauty brands to bear in mind when activating in living rooms up and down the land:
- Remember the difference between experience and content
Experience and content are not the same thing. Experiences are powerful because they involve an interaction. The act of slicing up our own garnish, dressing up our living rooms and applying our own make-up is so much more memorable than watching someone else doing it.
- Social amplification is essential
In the past, the question for every brand experience was how to increase the reach for something taking place in the physical world. At Home experiences rely on social amplification and it has never been easier for brands to include more people in their experiences. Hundreds of people tuned in live for the PizzaExpress x Fever-Tree Mixing Masterclass. The convenience of an experience taking place in your living room makes it far more accessible. The key for brands is understanding which social channels and influencers will increase reach as effectively as possible.
- Think about an occasion to align with
Marketing is all about building associations. To build habits (and ultimately increase sales), At Home experiences should align with a natural consumption moment in the home. With us spending more of our time at home, the opportunities for brands to align with have grown. Take exercise for example. At the start of 2020, few could predict that half the nation would be leaping around their gardens to a 9:00am Joe Wicks HIIT class by April. The change in behaviour presents an opportunity for many brands that would never normally be consumed in the home. This is how we can change perceptions and how products naturally consumed on-the-go could begin to become relevant in people’s lives again.
- Consider your marketing objectives
Brand experiences are a powerful tool if used strategically. They can deliver a plethora of different marketing objectives. In general, they can help grow awareness and consideration, whereas product trial can be used to build association and drive immediate sales. When planning a campaign, especially an experience, try to build a strategic roadmap. What does our audience currently think about our brand? How do we want them to think instead? How can our experience be designed to changed those perceptions and show the brand in a new light?
- Idea first, format second
Experiential is a flexible marketing discipline. The possibilities for an experiential activation are endless and the best marketing is distinctive and original. Just because your competitor did a comedy gig live over Zoom doesn’t mean you should do the same. There are a multitude of ways a brand can augment and improve the At Home experience. Trust the creatives to build something unique.
Despite a turbulent few months, this winter may be one of the most exciting in recent memory for brand experiences. A few brands have pioneered the At Home experience movement, innovation that was necessary regardless of a global pandemic. Brands no longer need to wait for the summer months with their festivals and crowded city centres to interact with their audiences. The opportunity to engage with consumers in their homes exists. For those willing to grab that opportunity, the chance to stand out from the crowd and drive brand advocacy is enormous.
About the Author: Vaughan Edmonds is Planner at global brand experience agency, Sense. A strategically-driven brand experience agency that produces unique creative moments to capture the hearts and minds of any audience. With offices in New York and London, Sense are passionate about creating thoughtful experiences that impact culture and reach communities in meaningful ways.
