They should start with the experience.

Nigel Clifton, Head of Creative at N2O, recently shared his thoughts with Campaign on why brand experience should be part of the conversation much earlier in the campaign planning process.

Below is an extract from the article.

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The latest IPA Bellwether Report is good news for anyone who believes in the power of experiences.

While many areas of marketing remain under pressure, investment in events and experiential continues to grow. In a climate where every marketing pound has to prove its value, brands are still choosing to invest in bringing people together, creating moments and building real-world connections.

That says something.

It tells us marketers understand that people want experiences. They want to discover, touch, try, learn and connect. They want something they can feel, not just something they can scroll past.

But here's the part I struggle with.

If brands believe experiential is valuable enough to earn a bigger share of the budget, why is it so often brought into the process once all the important decisions have already been made?

The positioning has been agreed.

The campaign has been signed off.

The media has been booked.

Then comes the call:

“Can you activate this?”

As an industry, we've become comfortable treating experiential as the moment a campaign comes to life. I think we've got that the wrong way round.

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Because the best experiences don't simply bring an idea to life. They create it.

Experiential starts from a different place. It doesn't begin by asking what people need to see. It asks what people should feel. What should they discover? What should they do? What memory should they leave with?

Those questions don't sit at the end of the creative process. They belong right at the beginning.

That's what makes face-to-face experiences so powerful.

When someone chooses to spend time with your brand, you're no longer borrowing a few seconds of attention. You're earning minutes, sometimes hours, of genuine engagement.

That’s incredibly rare in modern marketing.

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Read the full article

Nigel’s full opinion piece was recently featured in Campaign. The full article discusses the growing investment in experiential, the role real-world experiences can play across the marketing mix, and why brands should be asking one simple question much earlier:

“What experience could this brand create?”‍

Check out the full article in Campaign here.

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