Campaign Design, Awareness and Publicity

I spoke yesterday at Spinweb about marketing your business experientially.  After I updated an older power point presentation with a couple examples and case studies I realized that I had no B2B examples in my presentation. Wouldn’t you know it Michael Reynolds asked this very question! I promised I’d share some examples, and here is the one (borderline) B2B sample that I talked about.

We  have a customer in Idaho that is a not for profit organization that is dedicated to developing resources for autism leaders (Teacher’s education curriculum and certification,  etc.). There is a void in the education system for educators that are prepared to handle the teaching and learning challenges associated with Asbergers, Autism etc. Our initial goal it to present the curriculum to as many Colleges and Universities as we can. The challenge: How to get the faculty to pay attention to our postcards, emails and advertisements. What we’ve begun to do with our Experiential Approach is to ignite young people that are passionate about the cause by building student philanthropy groups through offline communities, brought together by an exclusive online community. We’re targeting specific college communities. We’re promoting through a viral video that carries the message of connecting individuals experiences to the needs at hand and inviting them to play a role in the solution.  Several small events will happen at these campuses, etc. Student feedback is vital and in most cases the major driver in the selection of new curriculum at a College/University. We studied this market, and determined this approach. The principle of the matter is engaging the target industry’s consumers to drive them to the business by sharing their experience. Ultimately businesses make their decisions based on what allows them to grow… customer demands.

Let me share a national example for you that I’ve enjoyed. I am a big fan of the Fox show 24 and have written about it before. They frequently are featuring Sprint product in the show, but another product they often show is Cisco – the name will be prominent on the screen showing some of their high end business productivity tools. Their target client: businesses. The Cisco product is blatantly placed into the environment we imagine, which makes us envious of how we can use the same tools in our office or share the experience.

There’s also a great story about Intel using experiential marketing here.

The question is where does you client spend their time off the clock? They watch 24, they go to cigar bars or sushi bars, they enjoy certain types of music and entertainment, etc. Everyone needs an experience, both at work and at play.