The last year has seen a lot of comment in the marketing press about the difficulties of measuring live brand experiences and the failure of brands and their agencies to carry out proper evaluation. Undoubtedly some of this criticism is justified but this shouldn't detract from the fact that lots of interesting work is going on in this area.
Marketers are realising that not only is evaluating brand experiences often quite straightforward but that in themselves they offer fantastic research opportunities for learning more about consumers and their relationships with the product or brand. Live experiences that work well see consumers actively engaged in an immersive two way relationship with a brand and this shouldn't be passed up as an opportunity to better understand consumers. Indeed in some cases the experience of talking to consumers is itself turned into an immersive experience.
In the US, JetBlue's Story Booth campaign, saw airplane shaped recording studios being placed on the streets enabling consumers to record their recollections of travelling with the airline.
Of course, brand experiences typically aren't designed with the primary objective being to capture consumer insights rather this is an additional benefit that needs to be integrated into the experience. The key is to create research opportunities that add to the consumer's experience rather than detracting from the experience you have worked so hard to create. All too often traditional techniques see consumers being sidetracked from the live experience to take part in research activity - often clipboard wielding researchers.
At Sledge we look for research techniques that rather than distracting from the brand experience add to it. An example of this is our recent work for commercial television's marketing body thinkbox. The thinkbox experience was designed to communicate to advertisers the exciting new opportunities provided by TV. The event had to re-engage advertisers with television as a medium and engender a sense of its power and glamour. Two research techniques were used that enabled thinkbox to learn more about its audience and the effectiveness of the experience whilst simultaneously adding to the 'TV-ness' of the event; a mobile camera crew was used to interview people throughout the day and, borrowing from Big Brother, a diary room was created that enabled us to have a dialogue with people whist enhancing the overall experience.
We believe that techniques such as these demonstrate that not only are there many innovative ways of measuring live brand experiences but that in themselves experiences represent a wider research opportunity.
Jez
