Matthew Blake on Mastering Experience Marketing for Global Impact

Matthew Blake has forged a career dedicated to facilitating the intricate connections between organisations and increasingly-diverse audiences. From employees and investors, to prospects and customers, he’s centred on creating engagements that are not only impactful and relevant, but memorable. His extensive experience with global clients has afforded him a truly distinct perspective on all that is experiential marketing. 

For Matthew, understanding a client’s needs extends beyond comprehending their business; it requires a much broader perspective, encompassing the industry’s wider ecosystem. It’s all about unpacking industry dynamics, competitor strategies and audience influences. Curiosity, as well as the ability to ask the right questions all play pivotal roles in ensuring impactful solutions are achieved. 

There are plenty of misconceptions that exist surrounding experiential marketing. Here, Matthew dispels the notion that it cannot yield measurable results. For organisations wanting to find out how tailored experiences can turn into positive impressions and influence behaviours, this interview is a must read. 

LBB> Matthew, can you briefly walk us through your journey at GPJ and your role as strategy and planning director?

Matthew> Marketing communications as a holistic discipline has been central to my career so far. My various roles at GPJ have all been about creating a platform to help organisations communicate with their various audiences. From internal employees, investors, prospects, and customers to user communities, curious young minds and those starting their careers. Initially working as a Marketing Specialist to realise IBM’s significant brand value in the physical environment, I now oversee the agency’s Strategy and Planning discipline across our diverse portfolio of all clients. Together we strive to realise maximum value from their spend on experiential projects and portfolios by designing and delivering intentional engagements that are impactful, relevant and memorable to the right audiences at the right time.

LBB> How has your experience with global portfolios for clients like IBM and now DP World shaped your perspective on experiential marketing?

Matthew> These clients and many that we partner with at GPJ are massive global organisations. From a brand perspective they strive for consistency to help drive positive recognition and perception with whoever and wherever they appear. But below the brand level and to influence their diverse audiences there is great complexity as they deal with various nuances across the geographies they operate in and attempt to show relevance to the diverse sectors they provide solutions for. Experiential marketing is unique in bringing expertise and knowledge together for a specific and relevant dialogue that benefits both the organisation and the audience. For the audience they have the attention of the brand to seek out the experts and answers they need. For the brand they can access invaluable audience insights into their real-word needs and challenges – providing invaluable audience and end-user research and insights. This unique and personalised conversation is unlike any other business and marketing communications. 

LBB> How do you work to ensure you not only understand a client’s needs but also proactively align with them?

Matthew> Of course understanding our client’s business is essential but taking a step back to understand the wider ecosystem our clients operate in is also just as important. What’s going on in the wider industry that our clients’ audiences are concerned with? What are our client’s competitors saying to these same audiences? Our role is to provoke, gain interest and engage an audience, therefore we need to see and understand how else they are being influenced and engaged to ensure the solution we provide makes an impact and more importantly, makes a difference. 

As any strategist will tell you, being curious is the key and asking the right questions to understand how and why things are the way they are. At a brand/organisation level and particularly for program strategy development, this involves a thorough onboarding process with access to all key stakeholders to really appreciate all the moving parts of these organisations. I’ve never met anyone who was not willing to share their passion for their business when you take an interest in their role, their company, and their industry.    

At a project level this all starts with a solid brief and an opportunity to interrogate that brief. Nothing we create is ever merely for decoration. There is a reason, a need or an action that needs to happen. Our strategic questioning helps draw the information needed.

LBB> When aligning global event portfolios to a client’s sales and marketing goals, what key factors do you prioritise?

Matthew> It always starts and ends with the audience and understanding our clients’ objectives for those audiences. What’s changing for them? What are the issues that are impacting their role, business, or industry? These all impact where customers and prospects are showing up and what they need to hear is constantly evolving. Many factors mean roles and responsibilities change and purchase influence shifts. One example of this is how the Chief Sustainability Officer is playing an increasingly pivotal role in shaping the future direction of a business. As organisations work to manage regulation, compliance and meet net zero commitments this role becomes an increasingly important target in existing and new event properties.   

Of course, a client’s marketing and communications objectives are wide and varied and the event and experiential platforms used to achieve these need to be specific and tailored to help meet desired goals. It’s not always directly about the final sale and revenue generation. We partner with our clients to build a diverse portfolio of activity for many comms and business objectives including brand awareness and brand perception building, thought-leadership, community building, education and recruitment.  

LBB> How do you see the role of experiential marketing evolving within the wide communications landscape?

Matthew> It wasn’t so long ago when most marketing activities and disciplines were siloed, with every one master of its own destiny with specific objectives, targets, and budgets in most cases. Today our clients are planning sophisticated integrated campaigns to achieve some fundamental and business critical communications objectives. Experiential plays an increasingly important role in this integrated landscape to influence key audiences along their journey with a brand.

Integrated campaigns can only succeed with the close integration of the communications experts that design and deliver them. For many of our clients GPJ has the privilege of close collaboration with their other agency partners to craft and build effective integrated communication campaigns. All working towards a consistent ambition these integrated agency teams bring together diverse skills and knowledge that means the resulting output for the client is far greater than the sum of its parts. 

LBB> How does spending extended time with audiences amplify the impact of these experiences?

Matthew> The extended engagement time from in-person experiential fosters much deeper relationships which obviously builds trust. It allows for more profound exploration of subjects, personalised experiences, and tailored content to cater to the specific needs and interests of individual attendees. Ultimately this leaves more positive impressions to influence attendee behaviours for more effective decision-making. Organisations also benefit by gathering direct feedback and insight into customer realities, not only aiding the refinement of future event experiences but also their own offerings and services. 

LBB> What are some misconceptions about experiential marketing, if any, that you’d like to address?

Matthew> One that I’d like to dispel is the inability for experiential to capture measurable results. 

Many of the tactics used in experiential marketing can easily be quantified and evaluated through considered metrics. From a strategy and planning perspective we insist measurement is integral to the experience design process to aid post-event KPI and ROI reporting. This is used not only to assess the effectiveness and impact on meeting our client’s business objectives, but also to monitor our own capabilities to deliver efficient and effective experiential engagements on behalf of our clients.

Finally, I would add, successful and effective experiential marketing is not easy. It requires careful planning, strategy, and attention to detail. Designing and delivering creative and lasting impactful experiences requires a well thought out approach.