Experiential Marketing in 2019

As 2019 fast approaches, the future looks bright for experiential and immersive experiences in the world of sports and entertainment. As brands and rights holders continue to strive towards greater market share, the results from deeper personal engagement are ever evident.

However, agencies will need to continue to prove their worth and develop new and improved ways to give clients the best value and ROI for their investment. And it’s this investment that will be scrutinised more than ever, with clients wanting more from their money, marketers will need to be smarter looking at improved ways of spending clients’ budgets and making them work harder, adding greater value to the client and consumers' lives.

Recent times have also seen what appears to be a movement away from technology, both from a consumer perspective and from a business spend. People appear to be more conscious of spending all their time looking at mobile phone screens and not appreciating the here and now, with an increasing popularity in taking a digital detox. From a business point of view, online advertising spend has become fraught with uncertainty, with issues such as increasing cost due to higher competition, ad fraud and algorithm changes affecting performance. This all helps to strengthen the role that experiential and live events have to play in the marketing mix. Get it right and businesses can expect to form deeper and more personal relationships with their consumers.

Looking more closely, two shifts that will impact 2019 are:

1. Creative technology integrated into experiences, however, not big-ticket items, more in the form of lower-level entry points that add instant value, reward and ROI, but don’t cost the earth.

2. Owned IP; agencies and brands that create their own IP become the master of their own destiny and allow multiple revenue streams and engagement models across all touchpoints, giving consumers the very best experiences that drive advocacy and leads to sales.

Paul Hicks is director of experiential and events at CSM Live