These guys are
not musicians. They’re
Juke Box Heroes
TK TK and TK TK
(right) promote a
videogame.
{And they don’t even know it.}
From faux concerts to toilet-paper testing,
companies excel at getting you to try
their products. Because when you try, you buy.
by Courtney Barry
p h o t o g r a p h y b y P e t e r Ya n g
M y c a r e e r as a rock star begins one evening last August
at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. I form a
band from random concertgoers waiting to hear Mötley Crüe
that night: Brian (drums), Steve (lead guitar), and Barbara
(vocals). I will jam on a black-and-white lacquered bass guitar
with five colored keys instead of strings. We call ourselves the
Smashed Bananas.
We’ll play a video game called Rock Band, mimicking an
animated version of a real-life rock band on our instruments.
80 | Spirit
The game scores players based on how closely the performance matches the original song. We will compete against 16
battling bands that go by names like Sabotage, 7 a.m., and the
Sinners. A panel of judges scores each performance. The winning group gets a text message just as the lead-up band, Papa
Roach, comes onstage, telling the wannabe rockers that they
have won and to come backstage. Then the amateurs take the
stage and play a number on Rock Band to the cheers of thousands of Crüe fans.
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Historic Buy
London’s Great
Exhibition of 1851
pushed products.
Our song options run from Black Sabbath
(“Paranoid”) to Kiss (“Detroit Rock City”) to, of
course, Mötley Crüe (“Saints of Los Angeles”).
We pick “Dirty Little Secret” by the All-American Rejects. On a temporary stage on a mobile
vehicle outside of the amphitheater, my band
buddies and I get almost all the way through
the song, keying notes, vocals, and drum beats
as the video guides us along. Suddenly the TV
speaker lets out a loud clang. The animated
rockers in the video whom we were supposed to
be imitating abruptly stop playing and start yelling at each other, even throwing drumsticks in
frustration. We’re dinged.
The Sinners get the winners’ text message.
Garden State natives Keith Krueger, 23, Kevin
Krueger, 21, Mike Kenny, 21, and Mike Martel, 16,
gather backstage. “Man, I feel like a rock star!”
crows Keith. Around 9 p.m., just before Papa
Roach opens, the Sinners take the stage in their
street clothes, playing “When You Were Young”
by the Killers. Keith hams it up, playing like a
true rock star. Which he is, for one night anyway.
The credit—or the blame—for my short performance career goes to Mötley Crüe, the Jack
Morton marketing agency, and MTV. The music
network publishes Rock Band, and it teamed
up with Morton and other partners to promote
the video game. MTV came up with the notion
of letting Crüe concertgoers compete for the
chance to open up for the real band, and Morton designed and executed it. Concertgoers
are, after all, the ideal target market for a game
that lets you pretend to be a rock star. The idea
behind such events—pulling potential customers into contests and other forms of active participation in the name of “try before you buy”—
falls under the heading of what Madison Avenue
Mom Was Wrong
Videogame practice
paid off big-time for
the Sinners.
calls experiential marketing. And it’s coming to
a bar, mall, or rock concert near you.
Several ad agencies specialize in the field, creating experiences ranging from the glam to the,
well, not so glam. During the Beijing Olympics,
Detroit–based George P. Johnson ran a promotion for the Bank of China where visitors played
virtual badminton at kiosks. For the less athletic,
other kiosks offered simulated online trading
accounts. Gigunda Group of Manchester, New
Hampshire, created the grandly named Charmin NYC Restroom Experience, an event that
lets consumers field-test Procter and Gamble’s
Charmin toilet paper in Times Square bathrooms
every Christmas.
Some companies design their own experiences. Last summer, Warner Bros. used the
technique to promote the latest Batman movie,
The Dark Knight. Along with traditional marketing—TV spots, billboards—the studio ran a yearlong viral marketing effort. Promotional websites
such as whysoserious.com and citizensforbatman.com offered free Dark Knight tickets to
82 | Spirit
Pulling potential customers
into contests and other forms
of active participation is
what Madison Avenue calls
experiential marketing. And
it’s coming to a bar, mall, or
rock concert near you.
users who solved puzzles about the movie. The
final event, held last July in Chicago and New
York City, included an offline game component
where game-players roamed through the cities
for clues and fired up the bat signal. The campaigns worked. The Dark Knight garnered record
three-day ticket sales of $155 million on its opening weekend.
But experiential marketing isn’t only about
fun and games. The clothing company Cotton
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Casella Wines last year
introduced Yellow Tail Vinyl
Bars. There, a visitor might
put on headphones and
listen to jazz while tasting
rosé or tune into ’70s rock
while sipping riesling.
Industry uses charity to coax college students
into trying its wares. The company gets students
to donate their old denim and then turns the old
jeans and jackets into an insulation material. The
insulation helps rebuild areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. What do the students get in return?
Free T-shirts from Cotton Industry.
Casella Wines used experiential marketing last year to boost the Yellow Tail brand in
its native Australia. Working with the Morton
agency, the winemaker placed booths on welltrafficked streets in Sydney, Brisbane, and other
cities. Large overhead banners proclaimed,
“Hello, I’m Yellow Tail.” Passers-by met the company’s cool ambassadors at the booths and were
steered to a nearby Yellow Tail Vinyl Bar. The
portable bars poured free glasses of wine paired
with specific musical selections. A visitor might
put on headphones and listen to jazz while tasting rosé or tune into ’70s rock while sipping riesling. The bars gave potential buyers a chance to
try Yellow Tail in a social environment that bore
at least some resemblance to the places where
they could buy the product.
The companies behind these events hope the
process doesn’t stop there. If consumers like the
product, then they will become ambassadors—
the goal of all experiential marketing. “We’re not
telling you,” says Daniel Diez of Morton, “your
friend is telling you.”
W h i l e m u s i c a l wine tastings, bat signals,
and rock concerts make experiential market-
Doll ’Do American
Girl stylists create
repeat customers.
Cola War Pepsi
fought Coke with
’70s-era taste tests.
84 | Spirit
ing sound cutting edge, the concept has been
around since at least the 19th century. In the
Great Exhibition of 1851, some 13,000 exhibitors
from around the world filled London’s massive
Crystal Palace. They allowed visitors to try out
the latest Industrial Revolution tech, from a coffee roaster to a carriage for invalids. “The Crystal
Palace exposed products around the world as
mass markets were for the first time being created,” says Joseph Pine, co-author of The Experience Economy. That was a critical task as the
world economy shifted away from agriculture
and to industry.
With the advent of radio, experiential marketing created the personal testimonial. “If you
look back at the way that marketing took place
before the Internet, before television, celebrities
were saying, ‘Look what I have, do you want to
try it? Do you want to buy it? My experience with
this is that this is a great product, and I could
not live without it,’” says Martha Russell, associate director of Media X at Stanford University, a
program that promotes interdisciplinary business research. “The tradition of testimonials and
product trial are some of the forerunners of what
we call experiential marketing now.”
Still, these precursors to today’s cool ambassadors did not put products into buyers’ hands.
That came with the rise of test drives, door-todoor salesmen, and the Pepsi Challenge. Tim
Hayden—CEO of the Austin, Texas–based experiential marketing agency GamePlan—believes
that the blind taste tests pitting perennial
also-ran Pepsi with Coca-Cola showed a more
aggressive side to experiential marketing. Those
who didn’t actually compare the colas in malls
and state fairs across America saw the TV commercials of consumers happily voting for Pepsi
with their taste buds. Coke’s market share took a
considerable hit.
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Experiential marketing these days is
much more sophisticated than a booth
with soda in plastic cups and a hidden
camera. Even classic techniques like the
test drive keep evolving. Hyundai let customers try out its new Genesis model on
a course designed to simulate real-world
driving conditions. At last year’s State
Fair of Texas, potential car buyers got
behind the wheel of several new-model
GM cars. Their kids mimicked Mom and
Dad by zipping around in battery-powered toy cars at an adjacent track.
Of course, not all experiential marketing campaigns succeed. In 2002, a company called Interference hired actors
to pretend to be tourists who asked
people to take pictures of them on their
new Sony Ericsson camera phones. The
actors wouldn’t reveal that they were
working for Sony unless directly asked.
The controversial marketing effort eventually wound up on 60 Minutes.
Two years later, Bluetooth Special
Interest Group, which licenses Bluetooth
Marketing on the Cheap
GamePlan founders Tim Hayden and Keith Dudley estimate that corporate experiential
marketing budgets can run anywhere from $50,000 to more than $20 million. Don’t have
that kind of money? Then try these inexpensive ways to get your product into potential
customers’ hands.
Get mysterious
Hire college students
Print business cards with distinct but intriguing information, such as a question or a
clue about your company.
(Remember the Bluetooth
campaign?) Pass the cards
around at events, especially
where people you know
that need your company
get together.
Professional brand ambassadors often have college
degrees, a second or third
language, and nice salaries,
according to Bacardi brand
master apprentice Aaron
Rodonis. But you can get
college students to tell a
minimum of five people
about your product and
where to buy it for about
$50 a day. That’s cheap.
products, had much better luck with a
similar campaign. The wireless communication technology company lacked
a million-dollar budget but needed to
Host a Tupperware
part y
Ditch the Tupperware, and
bring your product. Gather
people in a house or attract
them on the street to a
Yellow Tail–style booth to
sample your goods. Provide
good food and libations to
keep the party fun.
make a splash with potential buyers at
the Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas. Bluetooth hired GamePlan to
create a three-day experiential market-
ing campaign. The result was Operation
Blue Shock.
“We hired 300 models, 150 men
and 150 women, and dressed them
up in tuxedos and cocktail dresses,”
says GamePlan vice president Keith
Dudley. “The models wore sunglasses,
and they weren’t allowed to speak to
anybody.” Dudley’s emissaries handed
out business cards printed in seven
different languages. A card might say,
“Walk through walls” in Chinese. The
Bluetooth logo—minus the name of the
company—appeared on the other side.
The models left after an hour, only to do
the same thing later that day. All of this
mystery—“What is this?”—generated the
buzz Bluetooth needed.
The next day, the models delivered
bouquets of flowers with yet another
message to the 93 Bluetooth exhibitors
at the show: “Thank you for making
the connection in 2003. Good luck in
2004.” The models later walked the floor,
whispering messages about Bluetooth
and then leading consumers to various
booths to try out the new Bluetooth keyboards and other products. That’s experiential marketing.
Dudley says GamePlan gauged the success of the campaign by a huge spike in
the Bluetooth website traffic: an increase
of 30,000 visitors over the course of the
three-day campaign. Bluetooth might
well owe its existence today to experiential marketing.
T h e e x pe r t s think the future of expe-
riential marketing lies in an acceleration
of current trends. More games. More
charity drives. More sunglasses-wearing
entourages. But marketers are looking
for more outrageous ways to get consumers to try their products. And one of the
most outrageous approaches comes
from the world of dolls.
American Girl started out selling
Molly, Kirsten, and Samantha—although
the company will soon phase out the
latter girl—and other dolls to appeal
to every culture and age group. Books,
accessories, (doll) body care, and DVDs
followed. Nothing special there. But
then the Mattel–owned company began
opening American Girl stores in New
York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, Minneapolis, Boston, and Chicago. Inside,
unsuspecting parents and kids enter a
world of experiential marketing. Girls
can dine with their dolls, and take home
photographs of themselves and their
dolls that look like cover shots on American Girl magazine.
The dinner and the glamour shots
particularly impress Pine: “Inside of that
store, you find a photo shoot with prices
ranging from $23 to $35, and you find
a café that charges 20-something dollars for lunch.” You may not have even
bought the actual doll yet, which costs
between $42 and $95. American Girl has
pulled off the neat trick of getting customers to pay for their own marketing.
Stanford’s Russell expects even the
more innovative manifestations of
the technique to become just another
tool in marketers’ tool kits: “One of the
things that experiential marketing is
Get the Goods
Admit it: All this talk of Batman adventures, free pinot noir, and Rock Band revelry makes
you want to join in the fun. But where can you go to get this swag? The insiders tell all.
Pay attention
just Show up
Befriend a ‘Mad man ’
Many companies that want
to roll out big new products
use events promoted by
radio, newspaper, and TV
ads. Jot these down and go.
If you’re lucky, your goodie
bags will more than make up
for the effort.
Many concerts, opening
acts, or new theater promotions use experiential
marketing to increase publicity. Head out to the venue
before showtime—whether
you have tickets or not—and
see what you can score. A
pleasant smile and friendly
banter can go a long way.
Go to experiential marketing
events and trade business
cards with the promoters.
Ask them if their upcoming
events need “extras.” Then
clear your calendar to get
the goods.
especially good for is telling a story that
is difficult to communicate in traditional
advertising.” That’s why she expects the
try-before-you-buy method increasingly
to supplement—not to replace—more
traditional marketing methods.
Going forward, Pine expects more synergy of marketing technology. Games,
for example, will become more mediaenhanced. Potential buyers will get to
play promotional games on the media of
their choice—PCs, mobile phones, and
iPods—and at any stage in the game.
In other words, you won’t have to be in
Chicago on a certain day to fire up the
bat signal.
“People will be walking around with
a mobile phone displaying a virtual
landscape,” Pine says. “Perhaps there
will be a medieval castle and a dragon
in front of it that you have to slay in order
to win a prize.” Though companies like
Hewlett-Packard are only now developing the technology needed to support
this rich marketing, you can already try
out some intriguing elements. “There’s
an application you can download onto
your Apple iTouch that makes it sound
like a light saber from Star Wars,” Pine
says. “And the iPhone has an accelerometer in it now so you can tell which direction it’s facing.”
Though observers can only guess at
the ways experiential marketing will
change in the coming years, they agree
on one thing: We can’t go back.
“New technology has shattered traditional media,” says GamePlan’s Hayden.
In today’s marketplace, buyers have
the control. “American consumers live
in a world where they wake up in the
morning listening to satellite radio that’s
commercial-free,” he says. “They go to
their office, they have a pop-up blocker,
a spam blocker, and caller ID. They leave
and go to a gym and listen to a playlist
that they created. They get home to a
DVR that allows them to watch what they
want when they want to watch it, and to
skip or delete anything they don’t want
to watch.”
That’s why companies can no longer
just place ads in traditional media—
print, radio, TV, and even the Web—and
expect someone to see them. Ultimately,
ad agencies and companies must build
marketing campaigns to reach consumers on their own terms and on their own
turf. Experiential marketing does that,
using games, cool ambassadors, and
dinners with dolls to get consumers to try
before they buy.
That might sound like an old idea. But
it’s anything but when you’re on a stage
in Jersey living a rock-and-roll fantasy.
Jam session, anyone?
Freelance writer Courtney Barry plots out her
next career as a rock star in Austin, Texas.