The history of experiential marketing: past, present, and future

Experiential marketing is what we live and breathe at Orbit Marketing. We design creative campaigns that maximise the customer experience, so carefully tailored that customers fall in love with your brand! But what is experiential marketing? In short, it’s all about experiences: that face-to-face interaction; that direct engagement between you and your customer that encourages them to participate in your brand. Let’s talk a little bit about the history of this most effective type of marketing, and where we see the future of immersive marketing is headed.

You might think that experiential marketing arrived along with the technology we’re lucky enough to live with today, but the tactic has been around since at least the 1800s. What is a live demonstration of stain removal by a travelling salesman, if not experiential marketing? What is an exhibition at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 with event goers being able to try chewing gum—many for the very first time—other than experiential marketing? Relying on engaging encounters with potential customers was enough technology for our marketing-minded forbears to make those sales.

Of course, these days we’re able to design campaigns that engage both physically, in-person, as well as virtually, incorporating the internet and social media. Today, when most people think of experiential marketing, they think of events, such as the in-store sampling events at supermarkets nationwide. Let’s not forget our pop-up shops, street sampling and retail activations all over New Zealand that we’ve created with our second-to-none team of Brand Ambassadors. If you’re interested in seeing how Orbit Marketing are leading the pack when it comes to designing creative, unique experiential marketing promotions, check out some of our work here.

The beginnings of experiential marketing have been around pretty much since the advent of the industrial era, continually evolving with us as a society. But where are we headed? Well, what we’ve learned is that people are moved by immersive experiences with brands. In the past, this was as simple as a free sample of Coca Cola. In the present, people are being engaged both face-to-face and virtually, on many different platforms simultaneously. So where to from here? At Orbit, we believe a more concentrated, curated approach is called for, using data to personalise the experience. Our experiential marketing campaigns are carefully designed to consider the consumer’s experience from start-to-finish, providing a memorable, authentic experience that is worth customers taking a break from their screens.

Here at Orbit, we are at the frontline of experiential marketing, and we will be leading the pack anticipating and incorporating the latest techniques, all backed up by reporting to prove it, of course! We know what works now, and you can be sure we’ll keep our fingers on the pulse of experiential marketing as things evolve.