More than a moment
Alexis Vera, VP creative and strategy at SGK, discusses how connected experiences win at the speed of culture.
“Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it” – Ferris Bueller.
A real 20th century prophet so accurately described how quickly culture moves across the brand and consumer landscape. Of course, Ferris wasn’t specifically talking about brands and consumers, but the fact remains, our consumer-led brand ecosystem has never moved more quickly, had more inputs across that landscape or been less linear. Consumers find brands on their terms, through their channels and at their pace. The good news? Consumers have shown that they crave real life experiences in the era of social media and the mobile phone. But these moments come and go in the blink of an eye, so where is the staying power? How do we extend those moments and turn them in to real business success?
The first thing we have to recognise is that the moment alone is not the moment. Thinking about the experiences, before, during and after the moment of truth will help build buzz, create anticipation, maximise the experience in real time and create staying power to drive consumers to other touchpoints across the brand. This requires us all to think actively across channel, build IRL to URL connections and execute a creative strategy that works harder for the brand at every touchpoint. Building towards a key brand moment is the start of the conversation, and an opportunity to activate seeding, influencer and social content solutions aimed at the connection between these touch points and the main event. Get people thinking about the experience they are going to have with the brand ahead of time!
Maximising the halo at the moment of truth, whether it is a pop-up experience, product launch, brand collaboration, event or other key brand interaction is such a critical part of the campaign’s success, connecting real life interactions with disruptive surprise and delight moments that inspire sharing, UGC content and open doors to brand connections beyond that one engagement with the consumer. This means thinking about the day before experiences, paying them off at the moment of truth and having experience extensions live and ready to go as consumers engage the brand. Oh yeah, and the experience needs to execute flawlessly with real-time data capture, reporting and optimisation.
Beyond each marketing moment, the data and learnings from the experience drive adjusted and scaled content delivery across digital, paid and social channels, extending the story and closing the loop with influencers, content creators, and UGC content alike. These extensions of the experience then colour in-store, trade and online channels with connected content experiences that keep the story alive, driving deeper, more authentic engagements anywhere the consumer is ready to interact, or better yet, transact. Is this closed loop constellation of moments across a campaign that really begin to make an impact with the consumer, allowing them to find and engage with you on their terms while feeding the interest and desire for IRL experiences. In the end, the moment is a central touchpoint, but it is more than what happens in the moment, but how that moment is intelligently connected and mutually amplified that create real connections between brand and consumer.
