B-to-C Events

Last week, in the brand’s first foray into experiential marketing, employment site TheLadders hosted more than 3,000 hungry job seekers at New York City’s Grand Central Terminal to give them help searching for their next employment opportunity. The event was a one-day only opportunity dubbed Job Central. The brand invited members from New York and surrounding areas, and had more than 4,300 RSVPs from current members and those who heard about the event through word of mouth.

To generate awareness and excitement for its new Jamba Kids Meals, the Jamba Juice smoothie chain on Jan. 4 marched 70 “bananas” through the streets of New York City. Jamba’s colorful Banana Man brand personifier led the procession followed by Strawberry Girl and other fruit troupers.

Many mobile tours are kind of like speed daters. They try to make the most impressions on the most people in the quickest amount of time, then move on. Stonyfield’s Know Your Food mobile tour, however, this summer took a different approach. Its strategy involved fewer markets but sticking around for two or three weeks rather than packing up after a day or two. It reached less people but connected with them more often, supplementing activations at large fairs and festivals with retail events, grassroots marketing and guerrilla sampling at each stop.

There is always an element of risk when it comes to launching a new event program. But it can often be even more challenging to build on the success of that program’s first few years. Sure, it’s going great, but which parts of the activation should be expanded in the coming year to gain maximum ROI? Which metrics do you look for to gauge where to grow and where to go? And what strategies should you embed in your program to help you assess how to make the next iteration even more successful?

Consumers are getting more and more cynical, and untrusting of branded communications. Instead of looking to brands for advice and tips on trends and the next new thing, they look to trusted peer experts and tastemakers, frequently online. For years, brands have been aware of this and have been looking for ways to influence those influencers. The problem is complicated. Such attempts are frequently tone-deaf and way off the mark, like paid reviews and blog posts. The other big hurdle is in the strategy. Too often, there isn’t one.