experiential event case study

13 Examples of Experiential Marketing Campaigns That'll Give You Serious Event Envy

Published: June 06, 2023

When it comes to work events, trade shows, or promotional campaigns, they can really be hit or miss. It's not solely the product that motivates people to come back to a brand, but rather the way they experience it. This is where experiential marketing comes in.

While a surprising number of people haven't heard of the concept, it's kind of a big deal — 77% of marketers use experiential marketing as a vital part of a brand’s advertising strategy.

In this post, we'll be taking a deep dive into what experiential marketing is and share 14 of the coolest campaigns that break down how this strategy effectively works. By examining these campaigns, you'll be able to apply the lessons learned to your own business to get the most out of your advertising efforts.

Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing, also called 'engagement marketing', is a marketing strategy that invites an audience to interact with a business in a real-world situation. Using participatory, hands-on, and tangible branding material, the business can show its customers not just what the company offers, but what it stands for.

Experiential marketing (also known as xm marketing, engagement marketing, event marketing, on the ground marketing, live marketing, or participation marketing), might sound a bit like event marketing, which makes sense — experiential campaigns do tend to be event-centric. But there are also times when they have nothing to do with a specific event, as you'll see from the examples we picked.

When an engagement marketing campaign is event-centric, it's dedicated less to the type of event — like a concert, festival, conference, etc. — and more to interactions between the brand and the customer. (If you already have an event in the works, check out this guide to adding experiential elements to it.)

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What do experiential marketers do?

An experiential marketer is in charge of creating and executing on the strategy for a client's live, interactive marketing campaigns or in-person events.

An experiential marketer's role is similar to a brand ambassador, event planner, or brand manager, and typically involves the following duties: 

• Brainstorm innovative experiential marketing campaigns to increase brand awareness, interact with the public, and create positive brand perception 
• Perform market research to understand what types of experiential marketing campaigns would perform best with a specific audience 
• Create events or live, interactive campaigns to help businesses effectively connect with its target audiences
• Lead events and take charge of logistics as it relates to event management 
• Track, analyze, and report on all experiential marketing campaign performance
• Work with cross-functional teams including brand, creative, digital, social, and public relations
• Travel to events as necessary to ensure vendor compliance and execution, sales support, and overall event success

Why Experiential Marketing Matters Today

According to Forbes , experiential marketing can bolster a lasting connection between customers and a brand. It can also allow you to collect vital data about participating consumers, which can then help you improve your strategy. 

These campaigns can take an integrated approach. The primary purpose is to experience a brand in a tangible, offline way, but you'll still want an online dialogue around it.

When you consider that 87% of video marketers say video gives them a good return on their investment — and that people are twice as likely to share video content with their friends than any other type of content — it makes sense to incorporate a digital element. A branded hashtag , for example, can get people talking about the experience.

In other words, before getting people to participate in a specific event, they’ll first need to know about it. Omnichannel brand awareness campaigns often go hand in hand with experiential marketing strategies.

This process involves promoting the event in question on all available channels — be it social media, emails, ads, and so on — to reach the widest possible audience and attract attention.

Although complex, a unified marketing analytics software solution can make the process easier. It offers the tools necessary to monitor and adjust campaigns spread across various channels within a single place, as well as determine their overall impact by tracking specific metrics, like event sign-ups or top event landing page traffic sources, for example. 

Best Experiential Marketing Examples

• Warner Bros Pictures: Barbie Movie Selfie Generator
• Red Bull: Stratos
• Refinery29: 29Rooms
• Lean Cuisine: #WeighThis
• M&M: Flavor Room
• Benefit Cosmetics: 'A Lashtastic Virtual-Media Campaign'
• Misereor: Charity Donation Billboard
• Lululemon: Proud & Present
• Häagen-Dazs: Strawberries & Cream with Wimbledon
• Facebook: Facebook IQ Live
• Vans: House of Vans
• Rick & Morty: Rickmobile
• Coca-Cola: FIFA World Cup VR Experience

1. Warner Bros Pictures: Barbie Movie Selfie Generator

The highly anticipated film, Barbie, has been creatively marketed to fans of all ages and backgrounds — through unique trailers and immersive generative AI that let you become your own Barbie doll cover.

By visiting the website BarbieSelfie.ai , users were greeted with the message, "Welcome to Barbie Land, where you can be Barbie (or Ken). Click below to become an instant icon! #BarbieTheMovie".

Greta Gerwig's interpretation of Barbie supposedly leans into all the diverse and rare releases of Mattel toys, and their marketing team built on that idea by making an AI tool that allows users to identify as professionals in different fields, personalities, and color stories.

This marketing campaign is a good example of an experiential marketing campaign as it makes moviegoers feel good to see themselves represented in the coming Barbie movie and makes them feel as though they're a part of the Barbie fantasy experience that kids (and now adults) feel when they play with Barbie products.

It also serves as movie promotion between friends, family, and followers as those who post the photos spread the movie release date as every image has its premiere date, July 21st, 2023, on every image generated.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Lean into new tech like generative AI for your next marketing campaign. Its newness and image-creation capabilities make it an engaging tool that gets attention.
• Inclusion is key. The marketing team behind the Barbie movie could have strictly marketed the film to young women, but instead, it's done an amazing job of capturing the attention of all ages and identities — building some remarkable hype for this Summer.

2. Red Bull: Stratos

Red Bull has been at the forefront of extreme sports coverage for almost as long as the brand has existed. But the company brought its content marketing to new heights — a world-record height, actually.

Affectionately named Stratos, Red Bull's superterrestrial marketing campaign featured Felix Baumgartner, a skydiver from Austria who partnered with Red Bull to set the world record for highest skydive.

That record: 128,000 feet, about 24 miles above Earth's surface. Gulp.

To pull off this amazing stunt, Red Bull housed Felix in a small communication capsule and sent him up to the stratosphere using a large helium-filled balloon. And what's truly remarkable is that his ascent and preparation to jump, alone, allowed him to break another record before landing safely back on Earth (spoiler alert): Red Bull streamed the entire event online, and saw the highest viewing traffic of any live stream ever broadcast on YouTube — at just over 8 million viewers.

Want to see that experience again? Check out Red Bull's recap video below. I won't lie, I indulged in a rewatching as I wrote this article.

• Don't underestimate the power of suspense when hosting an event your audience can own a piece of themselves. Being able to witness something new, and maybe a little scary, is such a personal experience. And the better the result, the longer your audience will remember and reminisce over it.
• Oh, and if you can put your brand in the record books while you're at it, that's pretty cool too.

3. Refinery29: 29Rooms

For about three years now, lifestyle brand Refinery29 has hosted the 29Rooms event: What it calls "an interactive funhouse of style, culture, & technology." As the name suggests, it consists of 29 individually branded and curated rooms — and attendees can experience something different in each one. The rooms are designed and created with brand partners, who range from personalities like artists and musicians, to consumer-facing companies like Dunkin' Donuts, Dyson, and Cadillac.

Each year, 29Rooms has a different theme, with this year's being "Turn It Into Art." Attendees, it seems, are encouraged to enter each room and use the surroundings to create something — one room, for instance, invites participants to put on punching gloves and hit punching bags that each produce a different sound when contacted to create a symphony of sorts. A truly hands-on experience, indeed.

• Go nuts, but keep it on-brand. An experience should be memorable, but relevant to the people attending.
• Partner with creators like artists and musicians to create experiences, especially if they are recognizable within the region where you're trying to build or augment an audience.

4. Lean Cuisine: #WeighThis

It's disconcerting how many commercials today tell women to change something about themselves. Sitting on the couch and watching TV for just two minutes, I had already lost count of the number of times that message came up.

That's why it's so refreshing to see brands like Lean Cuisine, whose marketing used to center solely on weight loss, stray from diet-centric messaging. And its #WeighThis campaign is a great example of just that.

As part of the campaign, Lean Cuisine curated a gallery of "scales" in New York's Grand Central Station, and invited women to "weigh in." But here's the catch: The scales were actually small boards where women could write down how they really wanted to be weighed. And rather than focusing on their weight in pounds — or anything pertaining to body image — the women opted to be measured by things like being back in college at 55, caring for 200 homeless children each day, or being the sole provider to four sons.

What's particularly cool about this experience is that none of the participants actually interact with a Lean Cuisine product. No one was interrupted, asked to sample something, or stopped to answer questions. In fact, no one was really asked to do anything — the display itself was enough to make people stop, observe, and then voluntarily interact.

Lean Cuisine figured out what message it wanted to send: "Sure, we make stuff that fits into a healthy lifestyle. But don't forget about your accomplishments. That matters more than the number on the scale." But instead of blatantly advertising that, it created an interactive experience around the message.

Still, the experience was clearly branded, to make sure people associated it with Lean Cuisine. The company's Twitter handle and a branded hashtag were featured on the display in large text, which made it easy for people to share the experience on social media. And that definitely paid off — the entire #WeighThis campaign led to a 33% increase in positive brand perception, and earned a 6.5 million reach just during week one .

• Don't interrupt — especially if you're trying to grab someone's attention in New York City, like Lean Cuisine was. If you create an experience that provides value to the people who pass by it, they're more likely to participate.
• Figure out the message you really want to your brand to send — that may or may not be directly tied to an actual product, and it might be something that your brand hasn't said before. Then, build an experience around it.

5. M&M: Flavor Rooms

If you've ever had a peanut M&M versus regular M&M debate, you know people can get passionate about candy. So, when M&M needed to choose its next flavor, the company chose to do so with an immersive pop-up in New York City. 

The experience included "flavor rooms", which were each complete with decor and fragrances unique to a certain flavor. The pop-up also included snack and drink lounges with M&M-themed cocktails — which, I'm willing to bet, we're great opportunities for M&M to appear on different attendees' social pages. 

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• With every marketing campaign you launch, find the "fun" factor. It's easy to get caught up in how much your brand helps solve your customer's problem. But what about them, as people, would also bring them enjoyment?
• Consider how you might leverage your audience for key business decisions. If they're the ones who will be buying and using your product, they're also the ones best-equipped to tell you what's working, and what isn't. An experiential campaign is one good opportunity to connect directly with your consumers and create enjoyable experiences in which they can provide perspective. 

6. Benefit Cosmetics: 'A Lashtastic Virtual-Media Campaign' 

In today's digital-first world, a good experience doesn't have to be in-person. But traditionally, consumers still want to test out new makeup products before purchasing — which created a challenge for Benefit Cosmetics during the worldwide pandemic, in which most retail locations were closed. 

To draw attention to its new Magnet Extreme Lengthening Mascara, Benefit, working with Because Creative Experiences , chose to create an immersive experience in which users could collect tokens and exchange those tokens for discounts, mascaras, or virtual beauty consultations on Benefit's website. Best of all, they used Augmented Reality to create a fun, unique experience for their users. 

Here's how it worked: Once users signed into Benefit's Virtual Reality platform, they were asked to drop their location. Next, thanks to Augmented Reality, the prospects could use their phones to find tokens in their physical space. 

The campaign proved incredibly effective — including a conversion rate of over 50%, a CTR of 39.4%, and an average gamification dwell time of 2 minutes and 22 seconds. 

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Takeaways for Marketers: 

• Even adults love games. Consider how you might gamify your own experience and provide unique challenges or contests to drive engagement. In this case, the experience is fun whether or not a user purchases the product — which is key towards creating a good user experience. 
• If an in-person experience isn't feasible, get creative with technology, VR, or AR to create the next best thing. Nowadays, digital experiences can feel just as real as in-person. You might need to think beyond traditional social campaigns to grab your audience's attention.

7. Misereor: Charity Donation Billboard

When was the last time you used cash to pay for something?

Tough to remember, right? We're kind of a species of "mindless swipers" — globally, an estimated 357 billion non-cash transactions are made each year . And knowing how often we whip out our cards, German relief NGO Misereor decided to put our bad habit to good use with its charitable giving billboard.

It was what they called SocialSwipe. Set up in airports, these digital posters would display images of some problems that Misereor works to resolve — hunger was depicted with a loaf of bread, for example.

But the screen was equipped with a card reader, and when someone went to swipe a card — for a small fee of 2€ — the image moved to make it look like the card was cutting a slice of bread.

Even cooler? On the user's bank statement, there would be a thank-you note from Misereor, with a link to turn their one-time 2€ donation into a monthly one.

Needless to say, this experience required a lot of coordination — with banks, airports, and a mobile payment platform. Because of that, the experience couldn't just be a one-time occurrence. The people who interacted with it were later reminded of it during a pretty common occurrence: receiving a bank statement.

• Visually represent the impact of participating in the experience. People interacting with this display were shown exactly where their money was going — like slicing bread for a hungry family. (Infographics work nicely here, too — check out our templates .)
• Partner with another brand to create an even better experience. In this instance, Misereor worked with Stripe.com for the payment technology, and with financial institutions to get a branded message on users' bank statements. (And stay tuned — we'll talk more about the value of co-branding here later.)
• Don't be afraid to nurture your leads . Even if you don't use a branded hashtag to integrate the experience with an online element, find a way to remind someone that they participated.

8. Lululemon: Proud & Present

To celebrate Pride Month, Lululemon worked with MKG to create an immersive, thoughtful experience that combined an engaging social media campaign with real-life community-centered events. 

First, the athletic brand asked its own employees and ambassadors to reflect on topics relevant to the LGBTQ+ community. The brand shared their responses via images and video on Lululemon's Instagram page throughout the month. 

Next, the brand created an art installation at Hudson River Park that reflected those same responses. This space, which stayed in the Park for two weeks, encouraged passersbys to read and reflect. That's not all, though — Lululemon also created a community-focused yoga practice in the same park, which aimed to raise money for The Trevor Project. 

• Consider how you might create a cohesive experience to unit your online and offline presence. In this case, Lululemon leveraged its social accounts to reach its 3.7 million followers, but then created a few special, in-person experiences to drive the point home for its New York-based community. 
• An experiential marketing campaign shouldn't just focus on selling a product or service — it oftentimes can, and should, focus on a larger issue. In this case, Lululemon's dedication to Pride Month increased brand awareness and loyalty.

9. Häagen-Dazs: Strawberries & Cream with Wimbledon

To draw attention to its new, limited-edition ice cream flavor Strawberries & Cream, Häagen-Dazs worked with Wonderland to create a GIF photo booth at the tennis championship Wimbledon. 

The booth included a swing (playfully alluding to tennis), which encouraged famous tennis players, models, and influencers to take pictures to post on social media — a good opportunity to collect user-generated content and expand their reach quickly. 

Naming itself "the official ice cream of Wimbledon", Häagen-Dazs created a commercial for the limited edition flavor, as well: 

Takeaways for Marketers 

•  Consider how you might create fun opportunities to encourage user-generated content. This doesn't have to break the bank, either — there are plenty of budget-friendly options to create small booths at business conferences that still embrace that Instagram-worthy look. 

10. Facebook: Facebook IQ Live

Facebook — who also owns Instagram — has always understood how much data it has on how people use these platforms. For that reason, it created the Facebook IQ Live experience.

For this experience, that data was used to curate live scenes that depicted the data. Among them was the IQ Mart: A "retail" setting that represented the online shopper's conversion path when using social media for buying decisions. There was also a quintessential Instagram cafe, chock full of millennial-esque photo opportunities and people snapping them — latte art and all.

The campaign wasn't just memorable. It also proved to be really helpful — 93% of attendees (and there were over 1500 of them) said that the experience provided them with valuable insights on how to use Facebook for business.

But what makes those insights so valuable? Momentum Worldwide, the agency behind Facebook IQ Live, puts it perfectly : "When we understand what matters to people ... we can be what matters to them." In other words, we can shape our messaging around the things that are important to our target audiences.

And by creating this experience, Facebook was able to accomplish that for its own brand. In creating this experience, it also created a positive brand perception for a few audiences — including, for example, the people who might have been unsure of how to use the platform for business.

• Build an experience for people who aren't sure about how they would use your product or service . Find ways for them to interact with your brand in a way that creatively spells out how it can benefit them.
• Bring your data to life. We love numbers, but creating a live installment that illustrates them can help people understand exactly what they mean. And since 65% of people think that live events help them understand a product , this setting is a great place to do it.

11. Vans: House of Vans

Recently, Vans hosted House of Vans pop-up locations at skateparks within major cities like NYC and Chicago. This gave skateboarders a place to meet up, connect, listen to live music, and shred. 

Vans also used these skatepark-based popups to promote the launch of their new shoe line which honored David Bowie . 

With Vans being a leading shoe line of skateboarders, pop-ups in and near skateparks seem like a natural fit for an experiential marketing experience. 

• Identify your audience's hobbies and embrace them. In the example above, Vans knew that they had a big skateboarding audience, so they crafted an event to reward them while intriguing other skateboarders.
• Similarly, if you know you have audiences based in certain locations, go to where they are for your experiential campaign. This will provide less friction and make your audiences feel like you are literally meeting them where they are.

12. Rick & Morty: Rickmobile

To promote the return of the animated Adult Swim series Rick & Morty, Cartoon Network sent a car around the country shaped like Rick, a main character and mischievous time-traveling grandfather on the show. By marketing primarily on social media, the company was able to get the campaign to go viral. 

People began following where the Rickmobile was via a live destination page on the adult swim site.

When the Rickmobile hit major cities, people flocked to it to take a picture with Rick's face and enter the mobile where they could purchase products related to the TV show.

• It's okay to embrace social media to create anticipation and excitement around your pop-up or experience, just as Adult Swim and Cartoon Network did. 
• Embracing weirdness, like that of a giant cartoon head driving around the country, can be a helpful way to make your event shareable or intriguing — even to people who might not follow the content or company that you're promoting.
• If you can work in product sales, consider it. In this example, the network not only promoted the television show, but it also sold products related to it. So, essentially, people directly paid for aspects of a large scale ad.

13. Coca-Cola: FIFA World Cup VR Experience

In Zurich, during the FIFA World Cup, Coca-Cola placed a VR experience in front of a train station. With the experience, you could stand in front of a screen and see a popular soccer player next to you. You could then practice a soccer move with the athlete or compete in your own mini soccer tournament.

While VR isn't accessible to many marketers, this experience did have a few scaleable strategies associated with it.

• To give your attendees an experience of value, consider hosting an expert who can answer questions or give tips related to your marketing campaign.
• Embrace major events. If you know a city or area will be highly populated due to a game or another event, consider placing a pop-up there that somehow relates to that audience or the event itself.

Unique Marketing Campaigns

• Lululemon: Proud and Present
• Zappos: Google Cupcake Ambush

Clearly, taking some very calculated risks worked out pretty well for these companies. So when it comes to creating an experience with your brand, don't be afraid to think outside of the box — and don't be afraid to work together on it with someone else.

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Experiential Marketing: 110 Inspiring Examples

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In this article, we’ll dive deep into what experiential marketing is, how to best use brand activations for the greatest effect, ways to incorporate activations on a small budget, and how to measure its ROI.

We’ll also get those creative juices flowing with 100 examples of some of the most memorable experiential marketing and brand activation examples out there. Let’s begin with a round-up of some extraordinary experiential marketing campaigns covering all types of experiential marketing and activations.

Top 10 Examples of Experiential Marketing and the Best Brand Activations

It was hard to choose but here are the top 10 great experiential marketing campaigns that really stood out from this post (click to jump straight to the example and read more):

1. Creating a Need: Red Elephant Car Wash

2. Getting Your Message Across without Being Salesy: The Wolf by HP

3. Make Them Think of You: Warm Wishes  from the Dry Bar

4. Helping Them Do Something They Never Thought Of: Departure Roulette by Heineken

5. Assisting Them in Slowing Down: No WiFi Zone from KitKat

6. Creating a Visual Depiction of Trends: Saks IT List Townhouse

7. Giving Them a Wow Moment: Climbing Wall by Ikea

8. Playing on Fears” Drunk Driving Makes You a Criminal by Rikki’s Taxi

9. Reaching Out to the Audience: Land’s End Heritage Tour

10. Showing Appreciation: Thank You Machine by TD Bank

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is Experiential Marketing Definition

2. 100 Experiential Marketing Examples

3. 10 Experiential Marketing Case Studies from the Best in the Industry

4. Experiential Marketing Research

5. Experiential Marketing Best Practices

6. Experiential Marketing Strategy / Brand Activation Strategy

7. Experiential Marketing Techniques

8. Trends in Experiential Marketing

9. Experiential Marketing on a Budget

10. Measurement and ROI of Experiential Marketing

What is Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing focuses on creating an experience for the participant, which then, in turn, evokes an emotion or reaction that is memorable for them.

This memory and emotional reaction generally transfers onto the brand and establishes a positive emotional connection. It offers a win/win for both marketers/brands and participants.

Other words to describe experiential marketing or which can sometimes come under the event activation banner include:

While some Fortune 500 companies are creating experiences that rival blockbuster movies, experiential marketing activations needn’t be costly. It merely requires a focus on creating a WOW! moment and that generally means knowing your audience’s interests and emotional hot buttons.

Intrigued? Check out what we mean with the following examples of experiential marketing campaigns. Experiential marketing: a practical guide to interactive brand experiences.

100 Experiential Marketing Examples

10 Successful Experiential Marketing Campaigns / Brand Activation Campaigns

10 b2b experiential marketing examples, 10 experiential marketing interactive brand experiences, 10 cool experiential marketing ideas, 10 affordable experiential event marketing examples, 10 impressive experiential marketing events and event activations, 10 outrageous and inspiring experiential marketing examples, 10 experiential events that challenged audience thinking, 10 retail experiential marketing and the best “in store” activations, 10 big budget experiential marketing ideas.

The following examples showcase exceptional ways to make brands more playful and approachable through inventive brand activation examples.

Volkwagen’s Piano Staircase

Ever heard of “The Fun Theory”? Well, it suggests that people will do something if it looks fun. And for Volkswagen, the message of fun involves a piano staircase.

In 2009 the automotive industry turned a regular subway staircase into a giant piano that produces different keys as people walked up and down the staircase.

The aim of the tactic was to encourage environmentally-friendly habits, and according to Volkswagen, fun was the quickest way to modify behavior. The result of this experiential marketing campaign? 66% of people chose the stairs over the escalator at the subway terminal.

Misereor – SocialSwipe Billboard Donations

Today, intangible cashless payments cause many of us to spend and spend without much notice of how much. Meanwhile, many go without basic goods and have to count every coin. Misereor, a German charity organization, came up with what they termed SocialSwipe to engage us in a story during a normal interaction that many of us take for granted.

These digital posters showcase challenges that Misereor seeks to resolve – hunger depicted with a slice of bread, for instance. The screen is fixed with a card reader, and when passersby attempt to swipe a card, the image changes to engage them in an action connected to the cause or challenge – in this case, making it look like their card is cutting the bread.

The Zappos Cupcake Ambush

To build awareness for its new photo app, tech giant Google went out on the streets of Austin, Texas to give out free cupcakes, the catch was that the recipient had to “pay” by taking a photo with their new app.

The brand Zappos didn’t just want the cupcakes though, they wanted the people buying the cupcakes. So they set up a dispenser next to Google’s food truck that gave out pairs of shoes or a watch to people who fed it with a cupcake.

Cartoon Network’s ‘Rickmobile’

To generate buzz for the return of one of its series, Rick & Morty, Cartoon Network came up with the ‘Rickmobile’, a merchandize-filled truck shaped like series main character Rick Sanchez. The car moved from city to city, and a social media campaign was created to allow fans to follow the car’s movement over time.

Whenever the Rickmobile got to a major city, crowds flocked around it to take pictures with the character’s face or to go inside to purchase some merchandise.

Say Disney’s Bear Specialist Hospital

Ever been to a bear hospital? Over 8000 children have. To promote Doc McStuffins, Disney came up with popup hospitals across the United Kingdom where kids could bring their damaged bears for treatment by staff dressed up like medical practitioners.

The bear also didn’t have to be torn, the children could bring it for regular checkups and the staff would pretend to run tests on the stuffed animal.

Faster 4G Internet Slide Vodafone

Experiential marketing often ties in concepts marketers want their audience to understand in an active representation of that. In this example, Vodafone is rolling out faster internet and so they added a slide next to a mall escalator for a faster experience.

Barbie Mattel

Experiential marketing sometimes makes dreams come true and what little girl didn’t dream of living in a dollhouse? Mattel turned this bus stop into just that as part of its Barbie campaign.

Reduce the Bumps Nivea

Find a common ground in your marketing. Nobody likes cellulite. Most people enjoy popping bubble wrap. So what happens when you put those concepts together? You can reduce the bumps, have fun, and tie in the concept with the product.

Red Elephant Car Wash

See a need (or create one) and fill it. That’s what Red Elephant Car Wash did when they placed faux bird droppings on car windshields. Flip over the unusual business card and you have a new place to try when you get your car cleaned.

Guinness Private Jet

One of the best forms of marketing is the kind that creates an aspirational feel. This is what sets the Guinness Class experience apart.

For a couple of weeks, Guinness ambassadors would dress in flight attendant uniforms branded with the Guinness logo and visit bars across the United Kingdom, where customers got the chance to win various prizes.

The prizes ranged from key chains to a free trip on a private jet to Dublin. All the customers had to do was shake a mobile tablet with the prizes, and one lucky person would win the private jet trip per night.

Reaching businesses over people is slightly different in experiential marketing. Businesses will want to see a little more meat. These experiential marketing activations and campaigns deliver that.

Team Summit Dish Network

Turn a bland 40,000-square foot convention center into Main Street USA connecting 13 different areas with a general theme.

“Did You Mean?” MailChimp

Agency: Droga5

MailChimp had some fun with the “Did you mean?” corrections Google performs when you’re searching for something and spell it wrong. The business created funny fake companies with marketing collaterals. Who can forget FailChips , a company that markets the crushed crumbs of potato chips found at the bottom of every bag?

Software Factory CA Technologies

CA Technologies recognized that businesses need help with disruption and innovation. So they created a fun story about providing a tour of the modern software factory.

The Message GE

This experiential marketing campaign uses a media we don’t cover elsewhere in this list, the podcast. GE appeals to its tech-driven audience in this serial podcast about what else? Tech and aliens. Okay, who saw that last part coming? Still, it’s an interesting concept that kept it on top on iTunes while it was produced.

The Wolf HP

Internet of things world forum cisco.

This conference is about topics involving the Internet of Things . It’s received multiple awards and is a strong example of content marketing and experiential marketing designed by Cisco.

Minds + Machines GE

Along the same lines as hosting an event as part of experiential marketing is GE’s Minds + Machines that highlights the future of the “industrial landscape” and addresses ways to bring about the “most powerful digital outcomes.”

Smirnoff’s Comic Book Event

Smirnoff decided to give its clients a truly immersive experience by inviting guests to a whole new comic book world.

The event venue was set up with human-size comic book graphics that had a consistent storyline. All brand ambassadors were to dress as characters from the comic to keep the fantasy alive all night long.

Bartenders also dressed as characters, and this created an entire night of immersive experiences for their clients. The event left attendees with a memorable experience that revealed Smirnoff’s creativity and powerful branding.

Glamour Magazines Beauty Festival

Glamour magazine teamed up with Fiat to create the dream experience of every fashion enthusiast, targeting fashion entrepreneurs and brands alongside prospective magazine subscribers. The experience involved consumer attendees getting beauty treatments like manicures, customizable skin care, and every form of body pampering under the sun from top brands. And it soon became the Coachella of the fashion industry, attracting industry influencers and celebrities alike.

Leading makeup and beauty brands got to display their products and have consumers experience them. Brands also got to see the latest trends in the industry as well as ideas they could emulate.

Lloyd’s Register

When Lloyd’s Register noticed an economic downturn was affecting its corporate clients and causing some of them to cancel an “unneeded” expense of their training, the company knew it had to do something and words weren’t enough. Instead, it turned to VR to show its clients the many dangers of accidents and the impacts they have on business. Seeing the effects was much more powerful for clients than simply being told training is important.

When customers and potential customers interact with the brand, they enjoy themselves and transfer those warm feelings to the brand. Speaking of brand activations ideas, here are ten that stood out.

Warm Wishes Dry Bar

Chandon created a billboard stuffed with thousands of golden balloons that gave the appearance of champagne bursting out of the bottle. It was an attention grabber.

Travel Wisconsin

This campaign encapsulates the fun of a destination and “seeing” oneself there. Travel Wisconsin married a funhouse mirror with popular local activities, like tubing, and placed the activity where people would be waiting, at a bus stop.

Bright Idea The Economist

The Economist does a lot of experiential marketing. This billboard is captivating in its simplicity. The bulb lights up as someone walks past, insinuating that we all have bright ideas.

Guinness Interactive Innovation

The beer brand offered its Shanghai customers the chance to experience and taste various Guinness beers in an intimate environment. The intimate environment was created to teach guests about the Guinness culture and enhance the smell, taste, and texture of the beer while consumers drank it.

Bates Motel SXSW

A&E’s TV show Bates Motel is creepy enough but what if they offered the ultimate brand experience and let you stay overnight in one of the rooms? At SXSW a few years ago, they did just that. Several “lucky” visitors could spend the night in a replica of the set. And we never heard from them again (just kidding).

Google Home Donut Truck

Agency: Promohire/Optimist

Remember old milk trucks delivering fresh milk to your door? No? What about fresh donuts? That’s what Google Home did with an old H-van painted pink with a pink and white interior. The vehicle served as a pop-up donut shop promoting Google Home’s mini smart home speakers.

Healthy Drive Thru WeightWatchers

Drive thrus are so convenient but most of the food available has people choosing between their health and convenience. No one wants to make that choice so Weight Watchers created a healthy pop-up drive thru to launch its new Flex program. It shows the type of meals on the plan and since they’re made to order, diners can see how simple they are to make.

Escape the Cold with Experience Kissimmee

The balmy breezes of Florida are not a hard sell in cold, winter climates and we’ve seen a lot of campaigns aimed at such things recently. Snowmen in New York holding signs reminding people of warmer weather was a good one and so is zip lining in freezing temps. Check this out:

Next Stop Innovation Coach

This award-winning installation looks like a copper subway car complete with graffiti. But inside it’s a swanky Coach shop with clothes and purses galore.

These examples transfer a concept to the brand.

Kia’s Dream Chute Slide

Kia has always been out to solidify its reputation as a cool, fun and youthful brand. And they did this perfectly when the brand created a 2 story slide with built-in cameras for the 2014 launch of Kia Soul in London.

The red engine slide was simply amazing, with participants able to get images of their slide-face.

Ghostbusters Marshmallow Man

Based on research that revealed how unexpected events can cause pleasure responses, commuters at Waterloo station in London were thrilled to see the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man coming out through the floor at the station.

They certainly achieved their aim in surprising consumers with a delightfully unexpected event.

Refreshing Shower Sprite

Meet a customer need and get their attention. That’s what Sprite did when it set up pop-up showers at the beach.

Baltika Beer

Baltika Beer mounted replicas of their beer cans midway up subway car poles where riders would grab to stabilize themselves. Thus the company “forced” people to get the product in their hands.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

When the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movie was about to come out, the promotions company wanted to show people what it would be like to be a part of the film. Since no one wants a cheeseburger on the head, they created sculptures on the sidewalk to get people talking.

Oldtimer Rest Stop

Grabbing attention often involves large sizes but it also helps when you can tell people exactly what you offer without forcing them to think about it like with this oversized billboard.

This treatment helps people see what it’s like to use the product by “picturing” people in the frame of a taxi door. Passersby can enjoy live pictures.

Take a Chance or Fly Air France

This funny campaign points out that for just a little bit more you can eat dinner, enjoy champagne, and get WiFi.

WaterAid’s Hope Lockers

WaterAid, with the help of MediaMonks and Proximity, created Hope Lockers, which played a video when swimmers opened their lockers.

The video contained information on the plight of children who live without clean water and showed swimmers the number of kids that died due to polluted water in the space of time they were swimming.

Once the message had completed, the swimmer was asked if they’d want their coin returned or whether they’d prefer to donate it to charity for the cause.

Departure Roulette Heineken

Experiential marketing needn’t be blockbuster expensive. There are ways to incorporate it on a smaller scale.

Take a Chance Kate Spade

When Kate Spade launched its new stationery, it used an interactive wall in the St. Louis store to engage customers. The sign on the wall of brightly colored envelopes invited guests to “Take a Chance.” Suggestions like “smile at a stranger” and “have cake for breakfast” encouraged openers to try something new.

Bazaar Magazine

Ever dream of being a cover model? Bazaar Magazine helped passerby realize that dream with this cute photo opp. Sometimes a successful experiential marketing campaign simply allows participants to imagine what life might have been.

Adidas Jump Store

Pop-up stores are naturally intriguing, but Adidas’ ‘jump store’ was out of the box. Partnering with Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose, the brand challenged fans to win a pair of trainers placed on a 10-foot shelf by jumping to take them off.

The event created a memorable and exciting experience for all the kids who participated in it.

Ikea’s Big Sleepover

In response to a customer on Facebook who said “I wish I could have a sleepover in Ikea,” Ikea gave 100 customers the opportunity to have a sleepover at their warehouse. The people chosen got massages, manicures and a bedtime story anchored by a reality TV star.

“Ultimate Day Out” Nutella

It’s fun to imagine your ideal day. Maybe it consists of chocolate in some form. Nutella wants that to be true. They created a contest that would give someone their ultimate day out as long as they could draw it on a giant slice of bread covered with Nutella.

3D Oreos at SXSW Festival

At SXSW, Oreos parent company Mondelez International crafted an idea of a combination of the classic oreo cookies, Twitter and 3D printing. The idea was to use trending flavors on Twitter to create a flavor palette on the 3D printer and allow attendees to create their own unique oreo flavor with the printer.

Big Babol XXL Bubble Gum

Want to prove that your gum blows bigger bubbles than those others? Use a campaign that shows people just how large those bubbles can get. Wonder what happened when they popped.

No WiFi Zone KitKat

Manhole covers folgers coffee.

The steam that comes up from manholes was the perfect backdrop for this campaign. Folgers coffee used that steam and a cold day to create mini reminders of why everyone loves a good cup of hot coffee on a cold day.

Ride a Bike, Get a Treat

It’s amazing what people will do just to get something they could go to a store and buy. In this installation, participants could ride a bike, play a game, and get a drink from the vending machine when they accomplished the goal.

These installations were designed with the Wow! factor in mind.

Design Touch Event Tokyo

Ever see a beautiful plant and just want to touch it? You’re not the only one and in this display, visitors are encouraged to do so. When they do, a brilliant light display surprises everyone. This activation was created as part of the Design Touch Event, which is a month-long celebration of experiential elements.

HBO’s Escape Rooms

Escape rooms are games in which participants are locked inside a room, and to escape, they have to solve some sort of mystery. In recent years, they’ve been gaining momentum.

HBO took advantage of the game’s rising popularity and created escape rooms at the SXSW festival with each room having a theme of one of its popular shows. The shows included were Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley and Veep.

It was an interesting way to bring it’s fictional characters to life and get fans immersed in a different world.

Run Club Nike

Designer: Coordination Asia

This installation in Shanghai’s Times Square changes the indoor running experience for those who participated. As they ran, their stats were displayed to everyone inside and out so that people could cheer on participants. The environment is very high tech.

Jeep Experiential Space

Not only is this fun pop-up a former shipping container but it’s also decked out on the inside to provide Jeep lovers with a variety of fun things to do including virtually test driving a Jeep and getting a feel for the Jeep lifestyle.

Aston Martin On Ice

How would it feel to be James Bond for a day? Well, Aston Martin’s owners got the chance to answer that question. In 2015, Aston Martin opened a track in the Colorado Rockies and invited people to push the cars to the limits around a snowy track in the mountains, just like a scene out of 007.

The experience was shared on social media platforms and this boosted the brand’s awareness.

Delta’s Stillness Practice

Participants were given an orb and led to a glass room. Placing their hands upon the orb in front of them, biometric sensors capable of syncing their heart rate with the lights in the room would activate. The orb would then take in the lowest recorded heart rate and pulse a calm light that matched it.

The campaign pulled in over 9 million Twitter impressions.

Esurance and Puppies

Mondays stink. Esurance knows this. Following their new campaign “Surprisingly Painless,” they brought puppies to play in tents in ten cities. That’s how you bring a smile to people!

Coca Cola’s Small World Vending Machines

Coca Cola sought to go beyond simply promoting its product to deliver a larger message: to fix the fractured relationship between Pakistan and India.

They placed high-tech vending machines in major malls in Lahore and New Delhi. These machines were capable of enabling face-to-face interactions with someone in the other nation. The aim was to work together to accomplish various tasks on the screen by mirroring each other’s movements.

Build a Better Bay Area Google

Crowdsourcing how donations are spent is a great way to build community and that’s exactly what Google did with the Google Impact Challenge . Google raised $5.5 million for community nonprofits and then set up mobile voting kiosks to figure out how to best spend it.

#GetTeleported Marriott Hotels

People make a lot of choices. Whenever they do it’s common to wonder where the path would have taken them if they chose another one. Marriott capitalizes on the “what ifs” of vacations with their virtual reality teleporters where participants can feel the sand beneath their toes and a host of other experiences.

These “over the top” examples are lots of fun and draw a crowd.

SAMCOM Anheuser-Busch InBev

Experiential marketing 2018. Go big or go home seems to be Anheuser-Busch’s model when it comes to their three-day sales conference. While they always feature experiential elements, their 2018 meeting leaned more toward immersive experience. First, they held an opening parade down Bourbon Street. In its immersion zone, the company featured each of its brands. Each brand included an activation. For instance, Bud Light World featured a moment with the king and queen of their “Dilly Dilly” campaign.

Climbing Wall Ikea

Apple optical shop window.

Pictures can say it all. Tell people exactly how you can help in one image.

The Fast Lane Volkswagen

What happens when you take grocery carts and add skateboards? Grocery shopping goes a little bit faster (and becomes more fun).

Bottle Bank Arcade

Improve recycling efforts by making it fun. Just press start and insert your bottles. Collect points. Enjoy the flashing lights and video game sounds.

PacMan Bud Light

Guests played a real physical PacMan game at this event for the Super Bowl. Check out the size of that quarter.

Giant Seesaws

Located on the Place de Festival in Montreal, thirty lit, adult-sized seesaws transformed the space into an adult playground.

Burbu Car Wash

This unique car wash offers a 25-minute cleaning process. 25 minutes for what you might ask? The business will show you through transparent operations, which are put on in a very theatrical way. The surroundings are almost entirely blue, except for the white ball pit and swing in the VIP section.

JetBlue IceBreaker

To promote their new flights from New York to Palm Springs JetBlue placed various summer accessories in a massive ice block and let New Yorkers know they could take anything they wanted from the Ice. The catch was that people had to use what they had on them to break the ice and claim the prize.

Kiss & Tell Fresh

Makeup company Fresh invited women in Manhattan to a glass truck for a mobile makeover. They received a lip product application of their choosing and then were given the option to “tell” by sending an e-card or a traditional postcard with their new look.

Nonprofits sometimes believe experiential marketing is too expensive but if you’re looking for a big impact, it’s ideal.

What Goes Around Comes Around Poster Campaign Global Coalition for Peace

This clever poster used the shape of the column it would be wrapped around to illustrate their thinking.

Reusablebags.com

Escalators are a great place for experiential marketing because they are at once fun and perilous. This campaign plays up the dangerous teeth at the end while also calling attention to the plight of sea creatures that eat plastic bags.

Antarctica Kilroy Travels

This example pulls double duty. It uses a physical depiction of what many of us think of when considering Antarctica, ice, and it uses fear of missing out due to melting and climate change.

WWF and Panasonic

This example also addresses climate change with a polar bear made of ice that slowly melts to reveal only a skeleton.

Drunk Driving Makes You a Criminal Rikkis Taxi

“paper panda” in paris.

In order to bring meaning to just how few pandas are left in the world, this group created paper mache pandas and placed them around many large cities such as Paris, Berlin, and Bordeaux. Every panda represents 1,600 pandas and each sculpture has a different face and attitude.

Sweeper United Nations Mine Action Service

Unless you’ve lived in a war-torn country, it’s difficult to understand the perils of living with mines. The United Nations Mine Action Service looked to create that understanding through an exhibit at the New Museum in New York City. The event simulated walking through a minefield using beacons and an app.

Flash Drives for Freedom

Check out this wall from SXSW. Flash drives are a way to get information into North Korea. This organization found a creative idea to garner attention and increase donations for flash drives.

“Give Warmth” Caritas Charity

Filling a need is also something we see over and over in experiential marketing. Caritas Charity and Coca-Cola wanted to do something to raise money for the homeless. Instead of asking people to donate money to that directly, they offered them a heated bus shelter for a euro. That money was then donated to the program.

Imagine a World March of Dimes

For their 80th anniversary, the March of Dimes wanted to do something different from the average fundraiser so they created a free, interactive, pop-up exhibit . The exhibit is housed in a whimsical land of interactive games and puzzles, a selfie station, and flower-crown-making area, as well as a diaper changing area. It brings together the joy of childhood in order to help those who are not born healthy.

Pop-ups have become a very large component of experiential marketing as they allow stores to reach a new audience and try out locations.

TopShop Water Slide

Through the powers of virtual reality, TopShop created a water slide in its London headquarters that took participants through Oxford Street as they went down the waterslide.

Benetton Interactive Windows

This collection of interactive windows at the Benetton stores causes passersby to stop and check them out. They can even try on some clothes.

Fortnum & Mason Experience

Fortnum & Mason is known for its sophisticated wines, luxury hampers, loose leaf tea and other luxury items. The brand decided to take their customers through a tour of how they make whiskey in their famous Glenfiddich Whiskey Distillery using virtual reality as well as loose leaf tea tasting.

House of Vans

The vans store created a ramp space within their store for young people aged 5 and up, for customers to not only shop but socialize with each other. It was built for skaters and is free to use for customers.

TOMS Virtual Reality Headsets

Kate spade igloo popup.

Bryant Park in New York City is abuzz with the holiday spirit at Christmas. The pop-up market and Christmas lights make it a delightful time for locals and tourists. This Kate Spade pop-up store added to the holiday experience as it was in the shape of an igloo and lit from inside.

Louis Vuitton Launch Party

This pretty pop-up is too cute to miss. It nearly resembles a Faberge Egg in its beguiling shape and the bright red on white design is sure to make an audience eager with anticipation of the launch.

Valentino Pop-up Shop

This display is too gorgeous not to go in. Then again, it’s so pretty passersby may just want to stand in front of it taking selfies all day.

Roomvertising Ikea

Ikea created this pop-up in the shape of a 20×20 apartment to promote its store opening in Brooklyn. Inside it gives great ideas for decorating a small space. Functional and cute, just like its offerings.

Fine Whisky Emporium Dewars

Dewars had a pop-up commissioned and then hit the road to increase their audience. Riding the tiny house craze, they appealed to a new market that may have formerly believed whisky was an “old person’s drink.”

Get your wallets out for these big experiential marketing ideas.

The Simpsons Kwik-E-Mart 20th Century Fox

In order to bring some hype to The Simpsons Movie, 20th Century Fox paired up with 7-Eleven to transform several locations into Simpson-esque stores. The stores also carried some of Homer’s favorite brands.

IFS Shopping Center Candy Carpet

To promote the IFS shopping center in Chengdu China, 13 tons of colored candy covering over 13,900 square feet were carefully fitted together to make a newsworthy candy carpet.

Indoor Streetscape MillerCoors

MillerCoors took over the Austin Convention Center and created an indoor streetscape for the evening. They recreated the capital city’s Rainey Street.

Coachella Absolut Lime

This installation let the branding guide the theme and atmosphere, a verdant green. The only problem is that it’s hard to achieve in the desert. Using a 20’ lime tree, hedges, and lights as well as a faux lime photo booth backdrop, there was no mistaking the brand. They served about 7,000 people a day.

Casinò Di Venezia Giant Roulette Wheel

The Casino Di Venezia’s campaign at Marco Polo airport turned the typical black belt conveyor belt into a giant roulette wheel.

National Geographic Encounter: Ocean Odyssey

This experience is more immersive and less marketing but still amazing so we included it. Located in Times Square, it provides adventurers with a look into the seas and interactive experiences with dolphins, rays, and humpback whales. Hard to believe there is absolutely no water involved.

Thank You Machine TD Bank

City of taipei.

Great experiential marketing examples 2017. In order to garner more support for the 2017 Summer Universiade and build a buzz, the City of Taipei transformed several of their subway cars into fields, pools, and other event backgrounds. They lined the cars with laminate floorings that look like track and lane lines.

Christmas Miracle WestJet

Again, we see the joy behind making someone’s wishes come true. WestJet asked travelers what they wanted for Christmas and while they flew, the busy WestJet elves went to work to make it happen. The gifts were waiting for them when they arrived.

Unlock the 007 in You SkyFall Coca-Cola

This creative contest challenged participants to unlock their inner James Bond and take on a series of timed challenges. It played upon a desire to achieve and an interest in seeing themselves as something else.

10 Experiential Marketing Case Studies from the Best in the Industry

If you’re considering experiential marketing, you likely want to know how well it works. Here are a few examples from some of the top experiential marketing campaigns and best experiential marketing companies in the world.

“Chalkbot” Nike

The first experiential marketing case study is one of the seminal experiential marketing pieces where social meets world. In it, a roving robot was created to “write” messages along the race route for the Tour de France participants. It was originally designed to celebrate Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong message.

While not its main goal, it increased apparel sales by 46%.

“Replay” Gatorade

Agency: TBWA/Chiat/Day

There’s little more frustrating than a tie among cross-town rivals in high school football. Gatorade facilitated a rematch fifteen years after the original game and brought the audience in through webisodes and a TV series. The main goal was to extend the appeal of the popular sports beverage past current athletes and into a market of 30-something men.

The program cost $225,000 in paid media and earned $3.5 million. It also increased Gatorade sales by 63%.

Missguided Unicorns

Missguided is a clothing store that caters to millennial females who are into all things pop culture, and to that effect, decided to introduce a unicorn theme to their first physical store in the United Kingdom.

The vending machines in the store were literally selling the tears and dreams of the mythical creatures.

Tweet for Your Feet Old Navy

In order to build a buzz around their $1 flip flop sale, Old Navy created several flip flop vending machines. When participants tweeted their favorite vacation spot to wear Old Navy flip flops and used the hashtag, a pair of flip flops was dispensed.

The tactic generated 9,000 tweets that mentioned Old Navy, creating 12 million social media impressions. The campaign also got coverage in Forbes, AdAge, and InStyle magazine.

We wrote about this example under the section about experiential marketing that changes minds. But we wanted to share the success of the campaign as well.

When UNMAS used their app and beacon technology to show the perils of walking through an area that could contain mines, they saw a 152% increase in donations from the year before and a 250% increase in traffic to their website.

Aventura Mall CUR8 Room

This pop-up helped students get ready to go back to school by allowing them to work with local designers to come up with their own creative designs for sneakers, backpacks, and phone cases.

2,000 visitors came by and that yielded 1.5 million+ social media impressions.

CUR8 Experience at Aventura Mall from Turnberry Media on Vimeo .

Time Warner Cable Super Bowl Event

Time Warner Cable offered a 60-minute tour inside a cable box using interactive booths.

25,000 people took the tour, which yielded 455 public relations placements and 1.5 billion impressions.

Red Bull Stratos Jump

Red Bull, popularly known for its “Red Bull Gives You Wings” slogan, decided to “test” that theory with this experiential marketing stunt. Skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumped from space and the jump was broadcast live as a webcast in 2012.

It garnered an impressive 52 million views and sales increased 7% in the six months after the campaign. Red Bull experiential marketing is great at getting people excited and keeping fans loyal to their brand.

Facebook IQ

Facebook is easy to use but so many of its users don’t employ basic personalization and security on their accounts. Thus the Facebook IQ event. At this physical event, attendees learned the online shoppers’ conversion process when using social media to make buying decisions. Facebook also provided a spot full of social media photo ops.

93% of the 1,500 attendees said the event provided them with valuable insights on how to use Facebook for business.

Flash Drives for Freedom Human Rights Foundation

As mentioned above, Flash Drives for Freedom used SXSW to show people that information sharing is important, especially so in a country where exchange is not supported.

At the event, 125,000 drives were donated/pledged, which allowed them to get 50M hours of reading material to people in North Korea. The group received $6.4M of free media coverage of their efforts and program and 571M media impressions.

Hopefully, you are fired up by these experiential marketing examples and case studies . Let’s look at the research and how you can adapt this to your own event activations.

EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING

The numbers behind the marketing are always important so let’s talk about the data behind experiential marketing.

In a poll conducted by Event MB , 32% of event planners saw experiential marketing as a priority for 2018. While that’s not a huge number, it is indicative of things to come.

Since you likely won’t create an experiential marketing campaign overnight it’s important to note that this is becoming more important in the industry and it definitely is to attendees. And we’re not alone in speculating on this. 58% of event planners saw demand for experiential increasing.

Next, let’s talk about the younger generation.

First, the under-35 generation prefers experiences over material possessions. They admitted that they are willing to pay more for them. According to a study by Harris Group, 72% of the Millennials polled preferred to spend money on experiences over things.

Next, it’s important to note that they don’t just want the experiences, they enjoy sharing them with their tribe.

Harris Group also found that spending on experiences and live events as a total of US spending has risen 70% since 1987. It’s surmised that a lot of this has to do with a desire to share experiences, be the first to do so, and share it with their tribe through social media. There’s a fear of missing out. They also use social media sharing to connect with people who are experiencing the same thing.

Experiential marketing is not only creating tons of content, it is also assisting in generating data but it’s up to the event planner or marketer to use it in an effective way.

Experiential Marketing Best Practices

In addition to the marketing component and the brand strategy, which we’ll get into in a bit, there are a few things to keep in mind if you want to be an experiential marketing specialist:

Know your audience. You can’t appeal to them if you don’t know what they like.

Use the basics of marketing things like fear of missing out, playing up an interesting experience, and enabling social sharing are important in experiential marketing. have a social media strategy in place for the campaign., hire someone who can help you tell the story. a pr professional is a smart spend because even though you’re going to get earned media through experiential marketing, you need someone to get the ball rolling., use the content you’re creating and the data you’re collecting., create activities that are attendee or customer focused and employ an active component. this isn’t about getting your audience to watch your new marketing video. you need an active component to drive engagement., employ branding. if you go to great lengths to attract a crowd the last thing you want is people asking, “what was the point of that”. you want them to know who was behind the experiential marketing or it won’t be a branding exercise and thus won’t be successful., use video. in a good experiential marketing event, participants will capture it on video and share it to social media. but since you want reliable footage of good quality, the only way to ensure that is by doing it yourself., enable shares. social media is essential to a good campaign. again, others will probably do this for you, but sharing it with your audience will help you build momentum, get people talking, and help those who weren’t in attendance enjoy it as well..

Here are a few additional considerations according to event planners:

Experiential Marketing Strategy / Brand Activation Strategy

So why is experiential marketing becoming so hot? Two reasons: because it’s memorable and effective. Years ago, advertising was a fun medium. People would talk about clever commercials. There were special television shows dedicated to the “funniest commercials of the year.” These days, consumers are finding ways to avoid commercials. They’re:

Commercials and advertisements are having a harder time reaching the target audience . Plus, experiential marketing is doing something advertising can’t. It’s creating an emotional connection between brands and consumers. Ads used to be able to do this with some humor. Today’s audiences are savvier and expect more than just a clever line. They want interaction. That’s difficult in a one-sided broadcast or printed page.

8 Critical Steps to Developing a Successful Experiential Marketing Strategy

But experiential marketing isn’t about shock value or Hollywood production. It’s still marketing, which means it requires a marketing strategy and a solid brand activation plan. Here’s how you can accomplish top experiential marketing campaigns:

Know your audience.

As we mentioned before, knowing your audience is incredibly important when it comes to understanding what will wow them. What is effective in connecting one group, won’t be with another.

Define your goals and your budget.

What do you plan to accomplish and how much do you have to spend?

Measure where you are today, before the event.

After you know what you’re trying to accomplish figure out the metrics that will help you measure success. Then record those metrics as they are at this moment. All good data measurement begins with a baseline.

Know this is not a one-person job.

The vision and strategy may be the brainchild of one person but the implementation of an event requires a team. Assemble one you can count on. Look for those with experiential or guerilla marketing experience.

Get creative.

Wow! moments are never derived from day-to-day experiences. If your audience has already seen or heard what you’re trying to do, it won’t have that special amazement factor. Shoot for something they’ve never seen.

Bring your “A” attitude.

Fun is very important in experiential marketing. Bring a good attitude and always remember the audience will feed off of the energy at your event. Keep it high.

Don’t forget the content value.

Experiential marketing is a social media food source. Capitalize on that and ensure that you capture the moments, share them, and use those hashtags.

Use your baseline and gauge your success against it.

Remember those metrics you established in step 3? Use those to chart your success.

Experiential Marketing Techniques

Do you still want more?

Of course you do!

We still haven’t covered exactly how you would go about creating a successful experiential marketing campaign. Let’s move past strategy and get into implementation of your brand activation plan.

Create an Immersive Experience for a Deeper Connection

This doesn’t need to mean lengthy, but you want your audience coming away from the installation feeling a new connection to your brand. For instance, think of someone who’s never felt what it’s like to sit in a hot tub. You can spend all day describing what it’s like with vivid words. You can show them a video of others enjoying it. But the biggest way to make an impression on them is by shoving them in giving them access to enjoy it themselves.

Details Make an Experiential Marketing Campaign

Here are a few additional things you need to do when creating your experiential marketing campaign.

Scout out a public space. Foot traffic is essential to drawing a crowd. Don’t forget to look into permits or other legalities needed.

Plan out the interactive component and make arrangements for what you’ll need on-site including samples, technology, presenters, etc.

Create a script to build excitement and engagement among the crowd.

Decide whether you will create a pop-up retail situation, take orders, gather leads, or simply work towards making an impression.

Decide whether this is a one-day event, something that lasts for a week, is part of a national or international tour, or seasonal.

Plan a contest as part of your event. Contests fuel participation.

Add an emotional component. This is an extra step and not essential but it does add a special touch to your experiential marketing. In 2013, Milka sold 10 million chocolate bars that were missing a piece. Inside it asked the buyer if they wanted the missing piece to be sent to them or to a friend. It was a nice way to connect and one that didn’t require a crowd but did get people talking.

Create a social media plan. If things go well, your event will get a lot of talk. That’s why everything must be branded and a social media hashtag should be used prominently so that when people talk, the conversations can be found easily. Don’t just plan on tweeting or posting a video. Brainstorm creative ways to get the most social media coverage. Tease your audience before, cover it live, and then show those who weren’t there how fun it was.

Don’t forget the call to action. Don’t get people all worked up without giving them something to do. It’s important to drive them to action when the current is in your favor.

As the research proves, experience is particularly important to a lot of younger participants. They enjoy it and they share it. They can be a powerful component of your earned media.

Reaching a Younger Generation with Experiential Marketing

Keep the following things in mind if you are trying to attract those under 35.

When executed correctly, your campaign should provide fuel for their sharing desire. This group is tech-savvy, the largest demographic on the visual sharing site Instagram, and largely well-versed in social media. That means if you’re targeting an under-35 crowd as part of your experiential marketing campaign, they’ll likely cover it for you on social media – an added bonus when it comes to increasing your audience. According to Splash, 81% of people under 35 admitted to sharing pictures on social media at a branded event.

Create an image-worthy campaign. knowing that the under-35 set enjoys image sites and actively shares on them, you should ensure your experiential marketing event is image-worthy . one of the ways to do that is to give out branded swag, tasters, or other social media bait. you can even create a contest around it, involving uploading pictures or voting for images., give them a look. those under-35 also value authenticity when it comes to brands and the ability to “peer behind the curtains” of their favorite brands. experiential marketing does both of these things. it shows them another side and allows an exuberant personality to shine through, which stirs energy, one of the things that makes for a great event., provide a feel-good factor. the younger generation will pay more for locally sourced produce and small business offerings. they like to feel they’re supporting something of value. look for ways to give that to them., how to use experiential marketing on a budget.

As we showed earlier, experiential marketing is about how you make participants feel, not how much money is spent. While your options may be larger with an immense budget, there are still plenty of ways to get your audience’s attention with a lighter wallet. You can:

Get Creative.

Creativity rules when your budget is on the smaller side. Get your thinking cap on and dream of ways you can make an impression on the crowd. Think about what you want people to take away about your company as a starting point.

Use the Five Senses.

Our senses create some of our most vivid memories. Think back to childhood and I bet there are smells that reignite memories good or bad. If you want to create an indelible memory, look for ways to involve the audience’s five senses.

Provide Samples Creatively.

If you sell a product, look for ways to sample your item. This could involve pop-up tastings or on-the-spot free trials. This tactic moves products for two reasons. If you have a great one, sampling will get people interested. But most people also feel obligated when you give them something to give you something (like a sale or a donation) in return.

Go Big or Go Home.

Flash mobs cause people to turn around and watch and they aren’t expensive to organize. Many of them are comprised of volunteers. You can use flash mob dancers, singers, or even stunt people.

Do Something Shocking.

Take a lesson from Nestle’s experiential marketing campaign for Natural Bliss coffee creamer. The point behind the product is that it is natural. What better way to illustrate that than by setting up a pop-up coffee shop with baristas in au naturel attire and body paint. It was shocking but fairly inexpensive. I’m not sure what the health department would think of nudists serving hot beverages but it definitely got people to pay attention.

Grassroots Marketing.

Grassroots or guerilla marketing involves a group of marketing foot soldiers. Just don’t use the kind with annoying clipboards who chase you down (ahem, Delta Airlines credit card). Most of us want to be part of the crowd. There’s safety in it and there’s often a fear of missing out if you believe everyone else is doing it. Assembling brand ambassadors can be done relatively inexpensively if people already love your brand. Send these folks to the street or encourage them to create video footage on behalf of your brand.

Trends in Experiential Marketing

Which brings us to…

Measurement and ROI of Experiential Marketing

Return on investment is becoming increasingly important to brands and companies. Marketers want to see if their creativity is paying off. Most often this requires deciding what your goal is, how you will measure it, establishing a baseline, collecting data, and then analyzing it.

But it’s the kind of data that is most important when deciding return on investment. What you measure must be related to your goal. For instance, if brand recognition is important to you and the reason behind your experiential marketing, measuring views of your video and new followers are great ideas. However, if you wanted to increase sales, views only benefit you if they translate to a purchase. In that case, you’d want to measure sales after the campaign versus sales before. Also, note any other marketing strategies you’re using at that time.

To become an experiential marketing specialist always connect your data to your goal or what you’re measuring won’t have any application to your revenue.

IN CONCLUSION

Experiential marketing is becoming an expectation. Experiences mean more to people as they continue to expect to be amazed. You don’t need a huge budget to embrace this trend but you do need a good knowledge of your audience, what they want, what they fear, and what delights them beyond measure.

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The Best Experiential Marketing Examples | Street Attack

In the world of marketing, there’s a secret sauce to making your brand stand out and connect with people in a big way. It’s called experiential marketing, and it’s not just a passing fad. Forbes is saying its the future of retail and we agree. It’s a strategy that works, again and again, and that we have been perfecting here at Street Attack for the last two decades. Unlike traditional advertising that relies on one-way communication, experiential marketing events invites consumers to participate actively. Great experiential marketing campaigns are about creating memorable and exciting brand experiences that really stick with people. It’s like making new friends and leaving them with awesome memories they’ll never forget.

In this article, we’ll dive into showcasing some remarkable examples of creative event and experiential marketing examples, exploring its different forms, and, most importantly, how brands have utilized this special channel to achieve astounding results. Get ready to be inspired as we examine the science behind the streets and dig into Street Attack’s case studies in this field.

The Science of the Streets

Challenges and counterintuitive principles.

Experiential marketing, especially at the street level, presents unique challenges. It’s a world where conventional marketing strategies often fall short, and success requires embracing counterintuitive principles. Street Attack has recognized that to connect with people effectively, you need to understand the ever-evolving dynamics of the streets.

Cities as Game Boards

Street Attack’s approach is to view cities as giant game boards, complex living systems composed of people, places, and time. This perspective treats each city as a blank canvas rich with information and culture that informs where and how to connect, engage, and inspire. To achieve this, we use a strategic Cultural Mapping process that combines human intelligence and machine learning to create real-time blueprints for activation strategies and media placements.

This method involves mapping cities at a hyper-local level, using data such as zip codes, census information, and consumer profiles. By understanding migratory patterns, key locations, and points of interest (POIs), we can determine precisely how, when, and where to activate. It’s about pinpointing high-value areas that may not have been used as media locations before, ensuring that the brand stands out with greater impact.

For instance, consider the challenge faced by New York -based health insurer Oscar during their crucial 2020 open enrollment season. Oscar needed a strategic approach to cover the Los Angeles, Miami, and Bronx markets. Street Attack’s solution was a six-month local activation campaign supported by micro-targeted Out-of-Home (OOH) media placements. Using Cultural Mapping, they identified key locations near hospitals and clinics, which had never been used as media locations before. This approach not only exceeded enrollment goals but also established authentic connections with the target communities.

In our next section, we’ll explore some of the inspiring case studies that demonstrate how Street Attack’s experiential marketing case studies have achieved remarkable results for brands. Get ready to discover the incredible potential of successful experiential marketing campaigns through real-world examples.

Experiential Marketing Services by Street Attack

To fully appreciate the impact of experiential marketing, it’s essential to understand the range of services offered by Street Attack. With over two decades of experience , Street Attack provides a comprehensive suite of services that cover every aspect of experiential marketing, ensuring that brands can create unforgettable moments and connect with their target audiences effectively.

Strategy and Management: From strategy to execution, Street Attack takes care of everything, including designing, building, logistics, local permits, and talent acquisition. Your campaign runs seamlessly from start to finish.

Field Marketing and Street Teams: Street Attack excels in one-on-one interactions. We curate and manage street teams and ambassador campaigns to leave a lasting positive impression on potential customers.

Cultural Mapping and Intelligence Gathering: Street Attack’s secret weapon, Cultural Mapping, involves mapping cities in detail, collecting data on consumer behavior, demographics, and psychographics. This data guides activation strategies and media placements in real-time.

Design, Concept, and Strategy: Street Attack’s creative collaboration with top-tier designers and artists ensures fresh, innovative campaigns that capture the imagination of your target audience.

Media Planning/Buying and Measurement/Analytics: Street Attack connects impact directly to sales revenue, media placements, and consumer behaviors, enabling data-driven decisions for improved future efforts.

Alternative/Street Media and Programmatic Out-of-Home: Street Attack’s expertise shines in targeting and securing unconventional spaces, including wild postings and posters, murals, wallscapes, digital storefronts, light projection, and vehicle wraps.

Urban Takeovers and Artist Collaborations: Street Attack specializes in designing magical moments using various mediums (link here), creating brand experiences that linger in consumers’ memories long after the campaign ends.

Video Production and Content Capture/Edit: In the digital age, speed is essential. Street Attack’s content creation capabilities help you leverage resonance and ripple effects for maximum impact.

Now that you know what Street Attack brings to the table, let’s look into real-world examples of our experiential marketing ideas. Discover how brands have harnessed our services for remarkable results.

Best Experiential Marketing Examples from Street Attack

Case study 1: oscar – “taking health insurance to the streets”.

Challenge: Oscar needed to strategically cover multiple markets for open enrollment.

Street Attack’s Approach: Six-month local activation campaign using Cultural Mapping.

Results: Exceeded enrollment goals by 4x, achieved authentic community connections.

[Read the full Oscar case study for details]

Case Study 2: SK-II – “Making Tokyo even more beautiful”

Challenge: Connecting with millennial professional women in Tokyo during the holiday season.

Street Attack’s Approach: Wonderland pop-up with AR-enabled invitations for influencers.

Results: 9,000 attendees, 98% engagement with interactive elements.

[Read the full SK-II case study for insights]

Case Study 3: NFL + Oikos – “A winning playbook”

Challenge: Leveraging the NFL partnership for maximum impact during the NFL Draft in Nashville.

Street Attack’s Approach: Citywide scavenger hunt, local micro-influencers, and targeted OOH media.

Results: 700% uptick in social/digital engagement, praised by the NFL.

[Read the full NFL + Oikos case study for details]

Case Study 4: SeaDoo – “One if by land, four if by sea”

Challenge: Launching Sea-Doo’s Spark personal watercraft in Miami’s trendsetting districts.

Street Attack’s Approach: Graffiti murals, projection mapping, artist collaboration, and an outdoor concert.

Results: 12MM+ overall impressions, significant social interactions.

[Read the full SeaDoo case study for insights]

Case Study 5: American Born Moonshine – “An old favorite with a new kick”

Challenge: Introducing a new liquor brand to a sophisticated audience.

Street Attack’s Approach: Cultural Mapping, hyperlocal media planning, influencer events, and brand experiences.

Results: Strong response, early achievement of acquisition targets.

[Read the full American Born Moonshine case study for details]

These case studies demonstrate the diverse range of challenges faced by brands and how Street Attack’s experiential marketing strategies have been tailored to address them effectively. Each campaign is a testament to the power of experiential marketing in creating meaningful connections with audiences and achieving remarkable results. For a deeper dive into these campaigns and to see what made them successful, click on the respective links to read the full case studies.

Revisiting Experiential Marketing Examples

As we conclude our journey through the world of experiential marketing , it’s clear that this approach is far more than a passing trend. It’s a dynamic strategy that adapts to the personal needs and challenges of each brand. Whether it’s taking health insurance to the streets, making Tokyo more beautiful during the holidays, or gamifying a citywide scavenger hunt during the NFL Draft, experiential marketing shines in its diversity.

These examples of experiential marketing campaigns demonstrate the versatility and impact of experiential marketing when executed strategically. They have exceeded goals, engaged audiences on a deep level, and left lasting impressions. But they are just a glimpse of what’s possible when you harness the Science of the Streets and partner with experts like Street Attack.

In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, experiential marketing has emerged as a powerful strategy to connect with audiences on a personal level. Street Attack’s expertise in this field, coupled with their unique approach to decoding cities and engaging communities, has led to a series of remarkable success stories.

Whether it’s crafting immersive experiences in Tokyo, launching products with street-level media tactics, or expanding a bank’s presence through mobile banking experiences, Street Attack has consistently delivered results that exceed expectations. Our approach, grounded in cultural mapping, innovative design, and data-driven decision-making, sets them apart in the world of experiential marketing.

We here at Street Attack are at the forefront of experiential marketing, with over 20 years of experience in producing experiential events and brand activations. With a proven track record of successful campaigns with our Science of the Streets, we look at cities as vibrant canvases filled with opportunities for engagement and inspiration.

As you embark on your own experiential marketing journey, remember that it’s not just about campaigns; it’s about creating meaningful connections and leaving lasting impressions. Street Attack has proven time and again that with the right strategy and expertise, the possibilities in experiential marketing are endless, making us a valuable partner in creating unforgettable experiences for your brand.

Explore our case studies, learn more about our capabilities, and take the first step toward making your brand a memorable part of your audience’s story. If you liked these experiential marketing examples and want to unleash the power of experiential marketing for your business, connect with us at Street Attack today.

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17 Best Experiential Marketing Examples

The hardest part of planning a great experiential marketing campaign is finding the right idea. It has to achieve marketing goals, immerse and engage customers, and fit your budget.

That’s why we’ve compiled 17 of the most creative and successful examples of experiential marketing to help get your creative juices flowing. In our list there’s something for everyone—including examples of event marketing, virtual events, product launches, stunts, pop-up stores, virtual reality, augmented reality, and more.

We also break down exactly why each campaign was so successful and a key takeaway to inspire your next experiential idea.

1. Snapchat Spectacles Launch 🕶

Snap Inc. took a unique approach to launching their high-tech sunglasses in 2016. Instead of following a classic digital playbook like opening a waitlist or publishing new online store pages, they put a cartoonishly on-brand yellow vending machine outside their headquarters on Venice Beach. Hundreds of people lined up for hours to virtually try on the colors (using augmented reality at the kiosk) and buy a pair.

And then it moved around. After a day on-location, the machine would vanish, just like the disappearing photos and videos sent through Snapchat. People had to check the website for clues as to where it would pop up next.

The news and early-adopters went crazy for it.

Why it’s effective: Sure, Snap could have got more sales on day one through an e-commerce launch strategy, but limited availability and barriers to buying sent hype skyrocketing and made people want what they couldn’t have. When they finally got their hands on a pair of spectacles, you bet they shared it on social media.

Consider this: In a world of abundance where consumers can order whatever they want in one click and get it dropped off within hours at their door, sometimes the most captivating strategy is to make your product hard to get. 

2. Virtual Concert in Fortnite 🎧

What business does the battle-royale video game Fortnite have hosting a live, in-game, virtual concert? On the surface, it sounds like a gimmick. In reality, it may go down in history as one of the greatest examples of experiential marketing ever . This virtual event attracted over 12 million live attendees and then racked up hundreds of millions of follow-up views—and that is just one of the performances from the concert series.

The reach and reviews of this overall marketing campaign are absolutely stunning, to a level that traditional advertising can’t touch. This brand activation was so influential that it changed the rules for both the gaming and music industries forever.

Why it’s effective:  In April 2020, the world was stuck at home due to pandemic lockdowns. People were spending a lot more hours inside and open to new forms of virtual entertainment. Most importantly, the technical and artistic execution was incredible. Fortnite created a true-to-life CGI avatar of the artist, fully embedded in the game world with dancing and special effects throughout.

Consider this:  How can you leverage visual media to publish content that will continue to rack up views and marketing engagement long after your activations ends?

3. Rides in the Selfie-mobile 🚖

New York Fashion Week can an incredible opportunity for brands to reach sophisticated clientele that love fashion, but also extremely competitive. Uber and Smartwater teamed up for a unique brand activation where they installed light-up selfie machines in a fleet of black SUVs. They gave free rides along with premium bottled water to a list of influencers who were delighted to snap and share selfies while Uber-ing around town to fashion events.

The result was a ton of social media traction under their #ElevateYourEveryday hashtag and a successful partnership for everyone involved.

Why it’s effective:  Having a selfie station at an unexpected place turned an uneventful car ride into a fun, shareable experience. Influencers were able to try both Uber and Smartwater products, capture it, share it, and have fun while earning tremendous social media reach for the brands.

Consider this:  Photos are tangible proof of a great experience. Selfie stations can make a valuable addition to any experiential activation, significantly boosting the possibility of social media sharing. What kind of selfie experience would be an easy win with your target audience?

The Secret to Amazing Selfies

Uber hired Simple Booth, a leader in digital photo experiences, to provide the car-mounted HALO selfie stations for beautifully-lit selfies and the software platform to brand photos, tag hashtags, and track analytics. Experiential marketers leverage our products across the world for user-generated content.

4. Build a Burrito in the Metaverse 🌯

Chipotle and other brands are claiming turf and launching virtual experiences in the metaverse. On April 7, 2022 for National Burrito Day, Chipotle launched a Burrito Builder game on Roblox that lets players roll burritos and earn Burrito Bucks, an in-game currency. The first 100,000 players to roll a burrito got to earn the equivalent of a free entree in the Chipotle app.

“We’ve tapped into play-to-earn, an emerging engagement model in the metaverse, to launch our newest experience on Roblox that celebrates the iconic Chipotle burrito,” said Chris Brandt, Chief Marketing Officer. “We’re blending the metaverse and real-world elements of our brand to take the Chipotle fan experience to a whole new level.”

Why it’s effective: Chipotle is meeting young people where they’re at (online gaming), and at the same time, creating an association with exciting technology that keeps their brand as fresh as their food. Plus, it’s hard to roll a virtual burrito without getting hungry for a real one.

Consider this: While the “metaverse” may be a bunch of overblown hype, there is no denying that video games and online experiences are on a long-term growth trajectory. The average video game hours played per week in the US increase to 16.5 hours in 2021, actually driven by growth in gamers age 45–64. Connecting virtual experiences to the real-world (like a mouth-watering burrito at your local Chipotle restaurant) is an up-and-coming strategy for top brand activations.

5. Kit-Kat’s “Free No WiFi Zone” 🙅‍♀️

We’ve all heard of “free WiFi, but what about “Free No WiFi?”

In Amsterdam, the iconic confectionery brand KitKat created WiFi-free zones in outdoor spaces by blocking all signals within a 5-meter radius of branded benches. People in need of a break could sit down, and chat with friends, read a book or newspaper, or just relax and be human for a moment.

Why it’s effective:  The presumption in today’s world is that everyone wants to be connected all the times. More connectivity = better, the telecom and tech companies tell us. The reality is that many people want to disconnect but don’t know how. KitKat’s Wifi-Free Zone both reminded people to take a break and gave them the space to do so. Finally, the experience ties in perfectly with KitKat’s slogan: “Have a break…have a KitKat.”

Consider this:  An experience can be the absence of something. Taking a contrarian stance can grab people’s attention and be very memorable. How can you brand get consumers to think differently about the things we instinctively do all the time?

6. Burgers 4 Clowns 🤡

In a twist on a classic Halloween promotion, Burger King offered free Whoppers to the first 500 fans who came dressed to select Burger Kings in cities in 30 countries around the world. Countless clown-garbed burger-lovers, in some cases entire families, descended upon the royal burger joint.

Watch the following video at your own discretion.

Why it’s effective:  You either love clowns or you hate them, there is no middle ground. The fact that clowns are so polarizing and yet entirely goofy and harmless, makes a clown night the perfect experiential stunt to get people talking. Plus, Burger King got troll McDonald’s for their clown mascot—showing America they aren’t afraid of no clowns.

Consider this:  Trolling competitors can be a lot of fun and themed events are a great way for even small experiential marketing teams to create high-leverage activations. By dressing up for your event, customers effectively create the experience for themselves and each other. What kind of a theme would allow your brand to engage customers and publicly poke at competitors in a silly way?

7. Let’s Paint a Mural Together 🎨

Coca-Cola pulled off a  successful stunt  for its Deep Spring water brand when it invited people on the street to help paint an enormous black-and-white mural. Brand ambassadors started to ask people if they wanted to paint and soon attracted such a crowd that people had to wait in line to have a turn.

The heart of the mural featured Deep Spring’s tagline, “Sip. Relax. Repeat,” along with a branded hashtag #AllThatsNeeded. Naturally, as each participant finished painting, they received a bottle of Deep Spring.

Why it’s effective:  The mural became a local piece of art that the community had painted together . When people walk by, they will remember the experience of painting it with a sense of pride, connected to Deep Spring. In addition, the mural was extremely photographic. During the painting and beyond it makes a perfect selfie backdrop to promote the brand.

Consider this:  A collective experience not only connects people with your brand, it can connect them with each other. That goodwill and sense of community directly reinforces your brand identity. How can your experiential marketing strategy invite customers to participate and create something beautiful together?

8. Weigh-in on Your Own Terms ⚖️

Seeking to shift their image away from weight loss and toward healthy living, Lean Cuisine went on a quest to ask real women to weigh their most meaningful accomplishments instead of their physical weight on a large scale in Grand Central Station. A professional sign painter then painted 244 of the responses on mini-bathroom scales, which was turned into a massive installation at Grand Central Station.

The brand parlayed the project into an internet phenomenon by asking women on social media to share the ways in which they wanted to be weighed under the hashtag #WeighThis. Their experiential campaign was so successful that it drove a 428% increase in brand conversation and a 33% increase in brand perception.

Why it’s effective:  Lean Cuisine did an incredible job identifying the intrinsic needs of their target audience and creating an experience that answered those needs and connected with their emotional core–without once spotlighting the product.

Consider this:  People want to feel good about themselves. How can your activation help participants to see the best in themselves—or others?

9. World’s Coldest Fitting Room ❄️

The outdoor brand Globetrotter put ice on the competition when it commissioned its marketing agency to build an in-store “bad weather chamber” for customers to test out gear in bad weather conditions. It could simulate driving rain, storm-grade winds, and body-numbering -30C temperatures (plus wind chill).

Why it’s effective:  Globetrotter puts their money where their mouth is by demonstrating that their products could protect them from the elements. Customers could buy with confidence and have fun at the same time. Trying on clothes transformed into a true consumer experience that beckoned adventure and stimulated word-of-mouth marketing.

Consider this:  Proving your product quality in an out-of-the-box way can strengthen trust between the consumer and the brand. How can you craft an experience that demonstrates your complete confidence in your product or service?

10. Beer Me That Selfie 🍻

A startup called Ripples manufactures a specialized printer called the Ripple Maker that can print food-grade text, images, and graphics on top of foam. The legendary beer brand Guinness enlisted their expertise and unique technology for an experiential activation on International Stout Day in Dublin.

Guinness helped consumers to snap real-time selfies that could immediately be printed on a fresh pint of beer . Guests were delighted to see their own frothy faces floating atop the thick, creamy foam. These fun and unique images were shared nearly 2,000 times on Instagram under the hashtag #stoutie in the seven months after the event.

The activation was so successful that Guinness made it a mainstay at global locations , including their flagship Dublin Storehouse. Over 50,000 pints have been personalized since. Sometimes, the creativity that experiential marketing unleashes can be so powerful that it unlocks new possibilities for overall marketing strategy.

Why it’s effective:  Everyone has heard of latte art. Beer art? Not so much. Guinness was able to pair new technology (or technology no one had seen before—just as good) with its product in a seamless way that increased the appeal and resulted in a highly shareable, memorable experience.

Consider this:  How can you pair technology with your product to personalize it in a way that makes it unexpected and more shareable? Is there a partner you can team up with that creates a win-win for both brands?

Partners Make All the Difference

Simple Booth® is the modern photo booth platform that ensures your brand and hashtag go out with every photo. With in-person and virtual products, our cutting edge software allows you to capture contact data, track sharing analytics, and much more.

11. The Great Sensitivity Test 🦷

The toothpaste brand Sensodyne teamed up with an agency to create a multi-sensory experience when they held an enormous event in the famous Potter’s Field in London. The event had three different zones that allowed people to engage with the brand in different ways:

• In Zone 1, consumers could get a 10-minute sensitivity dental check with a dentist, win prizes with a “How Sensitive Are You” buzzer game, or get free samples and advice from Sensodyne Brand Reps.
• Zone 2 offered guests a photo opp with a 13-foot molar, strategically placed with the iconic Tower Bridge in the background. (The photos could be retrieved online after the event.)
• In Zone 3, participants gathered to break the Guinness Book of World Record for the largest oral hygiene session—which included live entertainment along with the lesson.

Why it’s effective:  Location was key for this activation, drawing working professionals from office buildings all around during the lunch-hour. People are known to procrastinate going to the dentist, so why not bring the dental hygiene to them?

During an otherwise uneventful day, Sensodyne gave consumers the opportunity to practice self-care and also participate in fun activities—there was something for everyone.

Consider this:  An experience can have multiple facets as long as it presents a coherent message and brand identity. Might your brand or demographic require a diversity of experiential options?

12. Bay Area Impact Challenge 🏡

Lots of brands “give back,” but it becomes more personal and real when the community is given an opportunity to decide how . Google turned their commitment to local causes into a consumer experience when they activated their Bay Area Impact Challenge Campaign.

In this drive, they pledged to donate $5.5 million to non-profits in the Bay Area. Instead of simply donating the money, they asked Bay Area locals to vote on a selection of non-profits through illuminated, interactive ads placed at bus stops, food trucks, restaurants, and other places. They collected over 400,000 votes in just four weeks.

Why it’s effective:  The experience informed consumers about Google’s community outreach program in an interactive way. It made a clear statement about how much Google values the actions and opinions of the local community. Moreover, by placing the ads where ordinary people could access them, the experience touched a large part of the local community.

Consider this:  How can you involve your local community and make people feel heard in a meaningful way?

13. Parachuting Apple Sauce 🪂

The Goodness Machine was a traveling, interactive experience that shot GoGoSqueeze products up with parachutes for participates to catch. It traveled to popular landmarks, including the Mall of America and New York’s Madison Square Park.

A kid could walk up and smack the big “Push” button, starting a countdown for maximum anticipation, and culminating in a visible burst of air that catapulted the juice squeezer high above the landing zone. It was fun to participate and fun to watch, too.

People enjoyed the interaction so much, it earned GoGoSqueeze over 200,000 walk-by impressions and 300,000 thousand social media impressions.

Why it’s effective: The machine and the flying applesauce worked exemplified the “on-the-go” nature of the product. Since it could travel to different locations, GoGoSqueeze was able to re-use it in different markets and replicate their success.

Consider this: Is there a crazy way to deliver your product to consumers that would turn it into a novel experience?

14. Test drive.  The Stroller Test Drive by Contours

Contours identified a huge challenge in shopping for strollers—children can’t give user feedback. In a comical and engaging move, they created an  adult-sized replica  of one of their bestselling strollers so that adults could try it out for themselves.

Why it’s effective: It gave parents a chance to take a break from adulting and have a nice laugh instead. Contours allowed parents to sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride—just like their kiddos do when they’re in a Contour stroller. Plus, the stroller was actually comfortable.

Consider this: What creative experiences would become possible if your created a huge (or tiny) replica of your product?

15. TV Show Set Replicas 🤩

In advance of its launch of the revival of Gilmore Girls, Netflix converted over 200 coffee shops across the country into pop-up store replicas of the beloved Luke’s Diner from the show.

The pop-ups invited viewers to step into the iconic Stars Hollow coffee shop for a free cup of coffee. It was wildly popular among fans.

Why it’s effective: Netflix reaped the rewards of experiential marketing by tapping into nostalgia. The diners delighted everyone who ever liked Gilmore Girls, and encouraged its audience to check out the relaunched series. Plus, it was a great photo opportunity for social media.

Consider this : Does your company have a history that your target audience is nolstalgic for? What aspects of that past would they love to relive?

16.  The Furniture Climbing Challenge 🧗‍♂️

IKEA has made a name for itself in Swedish meatballs and also experiential marketing , with activation examples that include  showrooms for rent  in partnership with Airbnb and  sleepover parties  to test mattresses in its stores.

This time, IKEA celebrated France’s opening of the country’s 30th IKEA store with a furnished vertical rock-climbing wall. The marketing firm, Ubi Bene, worked with IKEA to install the wall in the center of the city of Clermont-Ferrand. It was a hit attraction.

“As Clermont-Ferrand is a sporty city, IKEA wanted to give to the inhabitants an event that perfectly suits their needs,” explained Vanessa Vannier.

Why it’s effective: People in the area loved climbing! IKEA understood their target audience and designed an experience that would attract eager participants and stand out.

Consider this: What are the interests of your target audience and how can you piggyback on them to design something entirely new?

17.  VR Space Experience 🌎

National Geographic’s Space Projection Helmets were an immersive virtual reality experience designed specifically for the release of its new show, One Strange Rock.

The helmets allowed viewers to experience space through an astronaut’s perspective. And wow did they deliver. The ingenious and totally immersive experiential marketing campaign earned National Geographic  over 35 marketing awards .

Why it’s effective: Working with real astronauts brought credibility and authenticity to the product design, and viewers who would be interested in the show may have grown up with dreams of seeing space someday—this provides the next-best thing.

Consider this: Are there professionals, experts, or celebrities you can work with to make your activation more authentic and impressive?

Read On: How to Avoid Experiential Marketing Fails

Landing the perfect idea for your next activation can be hard, but making it super shareable is easy with Simple Booth®.

Case Study Analysis: Top Experiential Marketing Campaigns of the Last Decade

The Standard Marketing

By: thestandardmarketing.com

In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, experiential campaigns have emerged as a powerful tool to create lasting impressions on consumers. Over the past decade, several brands have executed campaigns that not only captivated audiences but also significantly impacted brand perception and sales. This article delves into some of the most successful experiential marketing campaigns, analyzing their strategies, execution, and outcomes.

1. Red Bull Stratos: Touching the Edge of Space (2012)

Perhaps one of the most daring experiential marketing stunts of the past decade was Red Bull’s Stratos project. In this campaign, Felix Baumgartner made a record-breaking skydive from the edge of space. The live-streamed event captured global attention, aligning perfectly with Red Bull’s brand image of pushing limits and supporting extreme sports.

Key Success Factors:

• Innovative Concept: The idea of a space dive was unprecedented in marketing, creating immense curiosity and engagement.
• Brand Alignment: The stunt was in perfect harmony with Red Bull’s brand identity of adventure and high adrenaline.
• Global Reach: The live streaming of the event attracted millions of viewers worldwide, creating a global conversation.
• Red Bull saw a significant increase in sales following the event, with a reported 7% rise in the United States alone.
• The campaign reinforced Red Bull’s image as an innovative and daring brand.

2. Coca-Cola: Share a Coke Campaign (2011–2014)

Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign, which started in Australia and later expanded globally, replaced its iconic logo on bottles with people’s names. The campaign encouraged sharing and created a personal connection with the brand.

• Personalization: By personalizing bottles, Coca-Cola created a unique, personal connection with its consumers.
• Social Media Integration: The campaign encouraged sharing on social media, creating a viral effect.
• Global Scalability: The concept was effectively adapted in different markets worldwide.
• Coca-Cola reported a significant increase in sales, especially among young adults.
• The campaign rejuvenated the brand, making it more relevant to a younger demographic.

3. IKEA: Sleepovers in Showrooms (2011)

IKEA’s innovative idea of allowing customers to spend a night in their showrooms was a brilliant experiential campaign. It originated from a Facebook group titled “I wanna have a sleepover in IKEA” and was turned into reality in several countries.

• Customer Engagement: The campaign directly engaged customers in a unique brand experience.
• Social Media Buzz: It generated considerable social media interest and publicity.
• Brand Experience: Customers could experience IKEA products in a real-life scenario.
• The campaign enhanced IKEA’s image as a fun, customer-centric brand.
• It generated extensive media coverage and social media buzz, increasing brand visibility.

4. GoPro: Be a Hero Campaign (2013-Present)

GoPro’s “Be a Hero” campaign leveraged user-generated content to showcase the capabilities of its cameras. Customers were encouraged to upload their adventurous videos, some of which were used in GoPro’s marketing.

• User-Generated Content: Leveraging content created by real users enhanced authenticity and relatability.
• Community Building: The campaign fostered a community of GoPro users, sharing experiences and adventures.
• Brand Identity: It reinforced GoPro’s identity as a brand for adventurous, action-oriented individuals.
• GoPro saw a substantial increase in customer engagement and brand loyalty.
• The campaign helped establish GoPro as the go-to brand for action cameras.

5. Spotify: Wrapped Campaign (2017-Present)

Spotify’s Wrapped campaign, an annual summary of users’ listening habits, became a cultural phenomenon. It provided users with personalized data stories that they could share on social media.

• Personalization: The campaign provided a highly personalized experience based on user data.
• Shareability: The design of Wrapped summaries was optimized for sharing on social media.
• Engagement: It created an annual event that users looked forward to, enhancing brand loyalty.
• Spotify reported increased user engagement and social media presence.
• The campaign solidified Spotify’s position as an innovative and user-centric music streaming service.

These case studies demonstrate that successful experiential marketing campaigns hinge on innovation, brand alignment, and customer engagement. By creating unique, memorable experiences, these campaigns have not only boosted sales but also enhanced brand perception, proving the power of experiential marketing in the contemporary digital age. As we move forward, the creativity and impact of such campaigns will undoubtedly set new benchmarks in the marketing world.

Written by The Standard Marketing

Our vision is to be the leading force in the marketing industry, recognized for our unwavering commitment to excellence and innovation.

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Gradient Team

Experiential events: the most powerful marketing tool.

Experiential events are immersive brand experiences that create lasting memories and emotional connections with the target audience.

Experiential events have become the most powerful marketing tool due to their ability to cut through the noise and leave a lasting impact.

With expertise in planning, designing, and executing experiential events, GRADIENT Experience helps businesses create unforgettable experiences that captivate their audience, drive engagement, and elevate their brand to new heights.

In today's fast-paced and competitive business landscape, capturing the attention and engaging consumers has become increasingly challenging. As a result, traditional marketing methods often fall short in creating lasting impressions and fostering genuine connections with the target audience. That's where GRADIENT Experience comes into play, as a full-service, creative experiential marketing agency with innovation at its core. In this blog post, we will explore the concept of experiential events, their impact on marketing strategies, and how GRADIENT Experience can help you leverage this dynamic approach to elevate your brand.

What are Experiential Events?

Experiential events, a specialty of GRADIENT Experience, are immersive brand experiences that aim to create lasting memories and emotional connections with the target audience. These events go beyond traditional marketing tactics by offering participants a multi-sensory experience that engages them deeper. Whether a live event, a digital experience, or a hybrid combination, experiential events are designed to leave a lasting impression and generate a visceral human connection.

The Power of Experiential Events in Marketing

Experiential events have gained immense popularity among marketers due to their ability to cut through the noise and leave a lasting impact. Here are some key reasons why experiential events have become the most powerful marketing tool:

Memorable Experiences: Experiential events create memorable experiences that stay with participants long after the event is over. By engaging multiple senses and offering unique interactive elements, they leave a lasting impression, making your brand more memorable. Participants are more likely to recall and associate the experience with positive emotions, enhancing brand recall and recognition.

Emotional Connection: Experiential events foster emotional connections with your audience. Experiential activations create opportunities for participants to experience your brand values, story, and products personally and meaningfully, evoking positive emotions and building brand loyalty. People with a positive emotional experience with a brand are more likely to develop a deeper connection and become brand advocates.

Increased Engagement: Unlike traditional advertising methods, experiential events actively involve participants, encouraging them to interact, explore, and participate. This high level of engagement leads to a deeper understanding of your brand and message. Participants become active participants in the experience rather than passive consumers. This active engagement drives higher levels of brand engagement, interaction, and conversion.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Experiential events generate buzz and excitement, leading to positive word-of-mouth marketing. When attendees have a remarkable experience, they are more likely to share it with their friends, family, and social networks, extending the reach and impact of your brand. This organic word-of-mouth promotion can significantly enhance brand visibility, credibility, and reach.

GRADIENT Experience: Your Partner in Experiential Event Planning and Design

When planning and designing experiential events, GRADIENT Experience is your trusted partner. With expertise in live experiences, digital experiences, and content creation, we have the skills and creativity to bring your brand to life through unforgettable experiences.

Live Experiences: GRADIENT Experience offers a range of live experiences, including IRL (in-person), Livestream, and hybrid events. So whether you're looking to host a large-scale corporate event, a curated pop-up, an influencer trip, or a product launch party, our team will provide the right strategy and seamless execution to exceed your expectations. We ensure that every aspect of the live experience, from venue selection to entertainment and production, is meticulously planned and executed to create a memorable and impactful event.

Digital Experiences: In today's digital age, GRADIENT Experience understands the importance of engaging consumers through digital channels. Our digital experiences leverage cutting-edge technologies such as VR (Virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality), Web 2.0 & 3.0, Metaverse, NFT, and our proprietary technology, I'MPULSE™. We help you create immersive and interactive digital experiences that captivate your audience, drive engagement, and deliver your brand message effectively.

Content Creation: At GRADIENT Experience, content production is crucial to successful marketing campaigns. Our in-house teams excel in creating branded campaign, commercial, documentary, social, and live content that amplifies and extends the impact of your experiential events. From conception to completion, we handle all aspects of content creation, ensuring that your creative concepts are transformed into breakthrough ideas that resonate with your audience.

Case Studies: Examples of Successful Experiential Events

To further illustrate the power of experiential events, let's explore some of our case studies:

L’Oréal Paris - Cosmetics Launch 2023: GRADIENT Experience partnered with L’Oréal Paris Cosmetics to organize an influencer trip in New Orleans, LA. The event focused on three essential experiences, each centered around a major product launch. By combining entertainment, education, and content creation optimization, the trip generated 122 million earned impressions, 529 original pieces of earned content, and 9.5 million consumer engagements. It was an adventure of a lifetime that showcased the artistic beauty and culture of New Orleans while strengthening the bond between the influencers and the brand.

Giorgio Armani My Way Pop-Up: GRADIENT Experience created a captivating pop-up experience in New York, immersing participants in the world of Giorgio Armani's "My Way" fragrance. The event featured an engaging journey, including a hot air balloon, rose petals, and an enchanting infinity room. The pop-up exceeded its target impressions by reaching 115% and generated over 40 million social media interactions, showcasing the power of experiential events in driving engagement and brand awareness.

Christie's 20th and 21st Century Evening Sales: GRADIENT Experience collaborated with Christie's to enhance their marquee auctions through innovative technology and immersive experiences. With live-streaming capabilities and virtual skyboxes, the sales attracted a global audience of 1,390,270 viewers across multiple platforms. In addition, the enhanced viewing experience allowed guests to engage with the auctions in real time, creating a sense of excitement and exclusivity.

Variety's Power of Women Luncheon: GRADIENT Experience conceptualized and produced Variety's Power of Women luncheon, creating a powerful and feminine environment that reflected the event's theme each year. From hyper florals to sharp geometrical lines, each event surprised and delighted attendees while seamlessly incorporating event sponsors. The ever-changing design and attention to detail ensured that each luncheon was a unique and unforgettable experience.

Learn How to Improve Your Marketing Strategies Today!

Ready to unlock the full potential of experiential events in your marketing strategy? Visit GRADIENT Experience's website to explore our comprehensive range of services in experiential event planning, design, and content creation. Discover how we can help you create unforgettable experiences that captivate your audience, drive engagement, and elevate your brand to new heights.

Take advantage of the most powerful marketing tool available today. Partner with GRADIENT Experience and let us guide you on a journey of experiential marketing excellence.

Elevate your marketing strategies with the transformative power of experiential events. Contact GRADIENT Experience today and let us help you create extraordinary brand experiences that leave a lasting impact.

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The Event Marketer’s Guide to Experiential Marketing

• Published: October 30, 2023

With the rise of digital marketing, experiential tactics provide a unique way for brands to stand out from the online noise and connect with consumers on a personal level.

For event marketers, experiential marketing opens up countless creative possibilities. 

From pop-up shops to large-scale festivals, events provide the perfect vehicle for delivering immersive brand experiences. 

By thinking outside the box, event marketers can craft memorable happenings that attendees will rave about long after the event is over.

This guide will teach you everything you need to know about planning successful experiential marketing events . 

You’ll learn what experiential marketing is, why it’s so effective, and how you can use it to meet your event goals. 

We’ll also walk through the key elements and strategies for pulling off a buzzworthy experiential activation from start to finish.

Follow our tips and you’ll be on your way to creating the type of events that consumers can’t stop talking about. Let’s dive in!

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What is Experiential Marketing?

Before we get into the nitty gritty of planning, let’s start with the basics – what exactly is experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing is a form of advertising that engages consumers by giving them the opportunity to interact directly with a brand, product or service. 

The goal is to create a memorable brand experience that forges lasting emotional connections with consumers.

Other names for experiential marketing include:

• Event marketing
• Live marketing
• Participatory marketing
• Engagement marketing
• Immersive marketing
• Experiential advertising
• Experiential PR

No matter what you call it, the purpose is the same. 

Experiential marketing aims to build relationships with consumers by staging unique, branded interactions that people can see, touch, hear, feel and engage with.

These experiences can take many forms, but typically experiential marketing involves:

• Interactive brand installations or exhibits
• Pop-up shops, restaurants or displays
• Product sampling opportunities
• Guerrilla marketing stunts
• Event sponsorships or brand activations
• Immersive, multi-sensory experiences
• Virtual or augmented reality interactions

The goal with any experiential marketing program is to immerse consumers within a branded environment in an engaging, memorable way. 

Rather than pushing a sales agenda, the focus is on letting people interact with the brand on their own terms.

Done right, experiential marketing delivers immense benefits for brands including:

• Increased brand awareness & visibility
• Positive brand associations & affinity
• Enhanced consumer loyalty
• Brand interaction opportunities
• Direct consumer engagement
• User-generated content & social buzz
• First-hand data collection

In many cases, experiential marketing also provides instant gratification opportunities for consumers.

This could mean anything from receiving free giveaway items to enjoying fun entertainment or exclusive access to something desirable.

With so many benefits tied to experiential marketing, it’s no wonder this strategy is growing increasingly popular. 

So how can event marketers capitalize on this trend ?

The great news is events naturally lend themselves to experiential activations. 

As an event pro, you have the perfect platform to dream up immersive experiences that will wow attendees and leave a lasting impact.

Why is Experiential Marketing So Effective?

What makes experiential marketing so much more effective than traditional ads or digital marketing?

There are several key reasons this strategy works so well:

It’s personal – Experiential marketing removes the barriers between brands and consumers, allowing for direct, one-on-one interactions. This personal approach helps brands forge emotional connections with consumers.

It’s tangible – Unlike ads, experiential marketing allows consumers to physically engage with your brand. Experiences are tangible and memorable.

It’s shareable – Experiential marketing fuels social sharing and word-of-mouth buzz. Consumers naturally want to talk about interesting experiences.

It’s immersive – By immersing consumers within branded environments, experiential marketing makes a big impact. It’s a sensory, interactive experience.

It’s targeted – Events allow brands to directly engage with their core target audience. The right consumers receive the right messaging.

It’s trackable – Experiential marketing makes it easy to collect consumer data and measure campaign success from impressions to sales impact.

It’s flexible – This strategy is endlessly customizable to suit brands of all kinds, big or small. The possibilities are limitless.

It builds loyalty – By focusing on connections over promotion, experiential marketing improves brand sentiment and drives loyalty.

It boosts reach – With consumers and influencers sharing experiences online, it expands brand exposure beyond just event attendees.

It drives sales – Experiential marketing gives brands the chance to put products directly in front of consumers to drive on-site or post-event sales.

Thanks to these inherent advantages, an experiential marketing strategy can take your events to the next level when it comes to reaching business goals. 

You’ll boost brand exposure, interact with your target market, inspire social conversations, and have data to back up your event marketing ROI.

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Developing a Successful Experiential Marketing Strategy

Now that you know what experiential marketing entails, let’s talk about how to develop an effective strategy.

Follow these steps.

1. Define your goals

Like any marketing effort, you need to start by defining what you want to achieve. Potential experiential marketing goals include:

• Increase brand awareness
• Generate leads
• Educate consumers
• Launch a new product
• Promote a special offer
• Boost social engagement
• Collect consumer data
• Drive event attendance
• Encourage product trials
• Improve brand sentiment
• Inspire online buzz & conversations
• Sell more products on-site

Get clear on your priority goals so you can craft experiences tailored towards those aims. 

Align goals with your overall marketing and brand objectives.

2. Identify your target audience

Once you know your goals, get ultra-specific on who you need to reach. 

Define your target demographic and psychographic attributes. 

Also determine your existing brand advocates – those already familiar with your company.

Crafting personas for each audience segment will help inform your experiential plans. 

Know who you want to attract and what matters most to those consumers.

3. Choose your experience

This is where you brainstorm the types of experiences that will resonate most with your goals and audience. 

Consider your brand identity, products, budget and other factors as you ideate.

Pick something unique that will capture attention and play to what makes your brand special. 

The experience should align seamlessly with your brand story and image.

4. Plan the logistics

Now it’s time to map out the nitty gritty details of your experience. Consider key elements like:

• Overall theme & design aesthetics
• Specific activities & levels of interaction
• Technology needed
• Venue requirements
• Staffing roles & training
• Rules for engagement
• Entertainment features or special guests
• Food & beverage ideas
• Merchandise or giveaway items
• Length of activation & timing

Script out exactly what you want attendees to see, hear, taste, touch, feel and do at each step of the experience.

5. Promote & amplify

Don’t keep your experience under wraps – get the word out! 

Promote through channels like social media, email, influencer marketing, paid ads, website, PR and more.

Create anticipation and excitement leading up to the event. 

Provide teasers and behind-the-scenes sneak peeks .  Enlist influencers and media to help tell your story.

6. Execute flawlessly

Pull out all the stops when go-time arrives! 

Have an on-site team ready to manage the activation and engage with consumers. 

Document the experience through photos, videos and consumer testimonials.

Be prepared for anything and have protocols in place to quickly address issues. 

With thorough preparation and training, you’ll wow attendees!

7. Measure & optimize

Post-event, analyze key metrics tied to your goals like brand lift, online buzz, lead gen and sales.

Survey consumers for feedback. 

Identify what worked well and where improvements could be made for future events.

Continually refine your experiential strategy based on data insights and lessons learned. 

The more events you run, the more skilled you’ll become at delighting your audience!

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Creative Experiential Marketing Ideas & Examples

Now for the really fun part – coming up with innovative experiential marketing ideas!

The possibilities are endless, but here are some awesome examples to spark your creative genius:

Immersive Brand Environments

Transport consumers into a branded world where they can explore products and interact with your brand on a sensory level. 

Famous examples include the Heineken Experience in Amsterdam and Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.

Pop-Up Shops

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Table of Contents

What is experiential marketing, how to create experiential marketing, modern, immersive experiential marketing examples, short on time here are some key takeaways, boost event roi: modern, immersive examples of experiential marketing.

Connect with your audience in a more meaningful and fun way with experiential marketing, which brings your brand to life with unique, immersive experiences. We’ve got examples of experiential marketing from White Castle, Airbnb, and more.

After being separated by screens, consumers and business buyers are ready to engage all their senses while interacting with brands. Experiential marketing can be part of your overall event marketing strategy or it can be something entirely different. We’re here to guide you as you brainstorm your next activity.

Experiential marketing is all about direct engagement with consumers through creative, memorable interactions. It’s also known as engagement marketing, live marketing, or participation marketing, and is often lumped into event marketing—even if it’s a far cry away from traditional conferences.

Though some experiential strategies involve live events as we typically think of them, others can be one-off installations that only last for a few hours. Whatever the format may be, experiential marketing has proven to boost event ROI and is a crucial strategy for marketing executives.

Experiential marketing typically happens in a physical setting, but with the acceleration of hybrid and virtual experiences, marketers began incorporating online elements into their experiential marketing strategies.

Examples of Experiential Marketing

At a glance, experiential marketing can include:

• Business events, festivals, award ceremonies
• Activities and kiosks at trade shows
• Samplings or demos
• Unique experiences that fit with the brand
• Ways for brands and loyal customers to do social good together

Experiential marketing is all your brand driving memorable experiences that will create brand awareness and affinity.

The Benefits of Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing can take place anywhere along the customer’s journey. Experiential marketing helps your team build:

• Brand awareness: Get your name out there! Brand activations are a great avenue for this.
• Brand affinity and loyalty: People purchase products based on their emotions — building positive experiences moves them closer to conversion.
• Offer a way for prospects to try your product: Not all channels let prospects touch, feel, or taste products. Experiential events do.
• Expand cross-channel efforts: Give people something to talk about on social media with a fun activity and a hashtag.
• Lead generation: Gather contact information and data on future prospects.

Experiential marketing is such a sweeping approach to driving brand awareness and conversions that there is no one exact way to plan and execute your event. But at the most basic level, you need to create goals, a budget, and then a cross-channel marketing plan.

And just like any other marketing campaign, it needs to be centered around your unique audience and be measurable with KPIs that make sense for your brand. Promote your event on social media or via your email list.

For event planning, promotion, registration, and measurement, it’s best to use an end-to-end event planning solution to make your event run smoothly. We can’t tell you what event will make the most sense for your brand — but we can share these interesting examples to give you inspiration.

1. KFC and Hip-Hop Artist Jack Harlow

You’re probably wondering what America’s favorite fried chicken brand, popular hip-hop artist Jack Harlow, and experiential marketing have in common. In 2021, KFC began working with Kentucky-based multicultural Agency Nimbus on a year-long partnership to attract younger, more diverse consumers to the chain of restaurants.

KFC x Jack Harlow launched on December 13, 2021, with a food truck outside the Grammy winner’s first hometown show in Louisville. Then, large trucks played Harlow’s tracks around the city December 15-16.

In March 2022, the next phase of the partnership launched, with guests being given the opportunity to order Jack’s favorites through KFC’s Quick Pick-Up option on the app or website in select locations. Once guests get to the restaurant, they can park in dedicated VIP parking spots and head inside to KFC’s new Quick Pick-Up shelf.

With more coming throughout 2022, we can’t wait to see what types of immersive experiences KFC and Nimbus come up with.

Key takeaway: It’s important to deliver experiential opportunities for your existing customers, but don’t forget to be aspirational and look at your future customers. Want more millennials or Gen Y folks? Make sure your experiences hit the right notes.

2. Tinder Pride Slide

In 2019 at Pride events in New York City, Tinder put up a 30-foot “ Pride Slide ,” with “Slide Into Your Senators” written down the side. The length of the slide represents the 30 states that didn’t have anti-discriminatory laws protecting the LGBTQ+ community. For each person that rode the slide, Tinder donated $10 toward passing  the Equality Act . Throughout the same summer of this event, they also offered free advertising to nonprofits that supported the LGBTQ+ community.

(Note: The Equality Act passed the U.S. House in 2019 but is still waiting on Senate approval as of March 2022.)

Key takeaway : Experiential marketing can be fun, while also supporting a value your company has stood by for years. Be thoughtful, though. Consumers know when your team is being genuine or when you’re just putting on a show.

• Want more tips on championing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I)? Read this article .

3. Cheetos at SXSW

Orange dust all over your fingers? That’s called Cheetle and Art Basel Miami even created  Cheetle-infused art  in December 2021. The brand took it even further at SXSW 2022 with the Hands-Free House, asking the question: “Did Cheetle inspire hands-free technology?”

The house featured different rooms to show how tech can power hands-free activities, from something as simple as entry into the house to voice-controlled experiences with Amazon Alexa. After touring the house, visitors were asked to head to the backyard for more hands-free, Cheetos-inspired fun, including food and a hands-free vending machine.

Coudn’t attend in-person? Visit amazon.com/CheetosHandsFreeHouse on March 28 to explore a 360-degree digital version of the Hands-Free House.

Key takeaway : Consider industries that your brand/product would normally be unassociated with and think of creative ways to join forces to create an unexpected experience. And don’t forget your virtual audience!

4. The Peacock Playground at SXSW

You know what adults love? To feel like kids! NBC’s Peacock streaming service showed up with a pop-up lounge at SXSW 2022 to encourage visitors to get to know Peacock’s newest shows, including “Bel-Air” (a darker remake of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”), “Girls5eva,” and “Joe vs. Carole.” The Peacock Playground featured a music video maker with neon-filled spaces and the opportunity to shoot your own 1990s-style music video plus mazes, seesaws, an open bar, interactive displays, an oversized chessboard, custom T-shirt station, and more.

Key takeaway: Experiential marketing should be fun! There’s a fine line between campy and fun, though, so be thoughtful and intentional about your activities. Make sure that they tie in clearly with what you’re marketing so the experience doesn’t feel like a gimmick.

5. JetBlue and the Ultimate Ice Breaker

In the dead of winter, there’s nothing more enticing than a trip to a warm and sunny destination. JetBlue knew this all too well and devised a clever way of promoting their new direct flights from New York to Palm Springs. They placed a number of summer accessories inside a six-foot by six-foot ice block and told New Yorkers that anything was up for grabs. People had to use whatever they had on their person to chip away at the ice to claim their prize. Prizes included summer accessories such as beach attire, golf clubs, and, of course, free tickets to Palm Springs.

This activation was done in partnership with the Greater Palm Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau , helping to bring more tourism to the beautiful California city. A full social media campaign was executed in tandem with the experiential strategy and the result was powerful online buzz for JetBlue.

Key takeaway : Consumers always love free things. Add another layer by gamifying the experience and creating a vibrant social media campaign around the experiential strategy.

6. Doc McStuffin’s Check-up

Source : Kelseyads.com

Doc McStuffins is a popular Disney Jr. television show that is geared toward children ages 2-10. The show revolves around a 6-year-old girl named Doc who heals toys from her own backyard clinic. The team at Disney Jr. decided to recreate this same scenario of healing toys for the millions of fans who watch the show every day, giving them the chance to be in Doc’s shoes.

This experiential campaign consists of a nationwide tour of Doc McStuffins check-up clinics in which children are invited to conduct 10-minute check-ups on larger-than-life-sized teddy bears in need of a diagnosis. While waiting their turn to play doctor, children are given Doc McStuffins toys to play with, along with coloring books and puzzles. After each child completes their diagnosis, they’re awarded a Doc McStuffins certificate and given a free “Doc Is In The House” door hanger.

Key takeaway : For experiential campaigns that are targeting children, make sure you include as many opportunities to “play” as possible while also keeping in mind the parents’ experience as well. The goal should be to make both of them happy.

7. Immersive Experiences With Spatial

Source : austin360.com

The key to powerful experiential marketing is immersive experiences. Spatial, an audio brand, created an immersive Spatial Holodeck experience that attracted more than 2,000 SXSW attendees over four days in 2022. Here’s what Spatial delivered:

• Guided demos
• Interactive installations
• Hands-on opportunities to explore the tech
• Collaborative installations with Meow Wolf
• QR-code tech to activate visitors

Spatial also presented panels with industry experts in the fields of design, wellness, immersive entertainment, and the future of work. With light- and sound-embedded art installations powered by Spatial tech, the entire experience was dynamic, powerful, and creative — perfect for the SXSW crowd.

Key takeaway: Think about powerful, immersive, and futuristic experiences that encourage people to use their hands and dive into a product or service.

8. “Slider Lover’s Point” at White Castle

During the pandemic, that romantic, candlelit dinner became a dream rather than a reality as indoor dining slowed to a near halt. White Castle saw the writing on the wall and got creative with Slider Lover’s Point , transforming 300 of its locations into “classic drive-ins, complete with carhop service.” Guests were invited to book a spot on OpenTable or the brand’s app and, once they arrived, they were directed to a parking spot where White Castle employees would take their order and deliver fresh, hot food to their car.

The campaign not only created a vintage experience, but the “Slider Lover’s Point” event marked the chain’s 30th anniversary of Valentine’s Day celebrations.

Key takeaway: Whether you create an immersive virtual experience or get creative outdoors, be sure you have a plan to keep marketing alive when a crisis hits.

9. Airbnb and “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”

Experiential marketing doesn’t always have to be about participation numbers. You can deliver intimate experiences that generate extended media reach. We saw this when Airbnb, Will Smith, and the owner of the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” house teamed up for the show’s 30th anniversary. The Fresh Prince house was decorated with Fresh Prince gear and made available for only $30 per night for a few nights.

It was a very limited event that maintained pandemic safety guidelines, but the media coverage received for Airbnb and “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” was extensive.

Key takeaway : With a great idea and the right team to pull it off, a small experience can be a real hit using other marketing channels.

10. Cafe Bizzabo at IMEX 2021

Can you taste the future of events? At IMEX 2021, we sought to deliver a fully immersive experience for attendees. With free coffee, treats, pedicab rides, and more, Cafe Bizzabo was our take on experiential marketing. We even set up billboards pointing attendees in the direction of our cafe. With full stomachs and an easy way around, attendees were able to hear about the future of event experience and carry on with their IMEX adventures.

Key takeaway: Think outside the box and figure out a way to bring people to your experience. Pedicabs, scooters, you name it … if you build it, they will come.

As a quick recap, here’s a look at some of the main lessons we learned from these stunning experiential marketing examples.

• The experiential strategy does not always have to involve the product. As long as the result is a powerfully positive brand association, the strategy is worth it.
• Be mindful of the pop culture trends and think of ways to incorporate them into your experiential strategy.
• Experiential marketing is all the more impactful when it offers something of actual value to the consumer, whether it be a free product or newfound knowledge.
• Never be afraid to think big and push the boundaries. Experiential marketing is meant to leave an impression so constantly push yourself and test the limits of your creativity.
• Remember that an experiential campaign can consist of multiple forms of engagement. Don’t restrict yourself to only one channel of interaction with consumers.

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How Experiential Marketing Events Can Skyrocket Your ROI Here's how your brand can plan and create successful experiential marketing events and how these events can significantly boost your ROI.

By Natasha Miller Edited by Chelsea Brown Oct 6, 2023

Key Takeaways

• Defining experiential marketing events

Why experiential marketing events matter

• How to plan and conceptualize the events
• How to measure the success and ROI of experiential marketing events
• The importance of post-event follow-up and analysis

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Are you looking for innovative ways to connect with your target audience and drive real, measurable results? Experiential marketing events might be the answer you're looking for.

In this article, we will explore the world of experiential marketing events, including their definition, importance and how they can significantly boost return on investment (ROI).

Understanding experiential marketing events

Experiential marketing events, also known as engagement marketing or live marketing, involve creating immersive and interactive experiences for attendees. Event marketing is now firmly placed within integrated marketing plans. These events go beyond traditional marketing methods by establishing a two-way dialogue between the brand and the consumer. Through engaging all the senses and creating unforgettable experiences, experiential marketing events have the power to generate real results and increase ROI.

Related: Experiential Marketing - The Power of Experience UNLEASHED!

Experiential marketing events focus on creating meaningful and memorable experiences that connect with the emotions and senses of attendees. By going beyond product promotion and leaving a lasting impression, these events help brands stand out in a crowded marketplace. They increase brand awareness, recognition and loyalty by encouraging active participation and engagement from attendees.

Identifying the target audience and goals

Before planning and executing an experiential marketing event, it is crucial to understand the target audience and define clear goals and objectives. Tailoring the experience to the preferences and interests of the target audience ensures maximum engagement and impact.

Defining clear goals and objectives that align with the overall marketing strategy is equally important. Whether it's increasing brand awareness, generating leads, driving sales or strengthening customer relationships, well-defined goals allow event organizers to measure the success of the event and optimize future strategies.

Planning and conceptualizing the event

Planning and conceptualizing an experiential marketing event requires careful consideration and attention to detail. A step-by-step guide can help streamline the process and ensure a successful outcome.

The first step is to define the event theme and concept, incorporating the brand's messaging and values. By telling a compelling story , brands can establish an emotional connection with attendees, making the event more memorable and impactful.

Creating a unique and memorable experience is a key aspect of experiential marketing events. This can be achieved by thinking outside the box and incorporating interactive elements, such as virtual reality, augmented reality or gamification. These elements add an extra layer of engagement and create excitement and curiosity among attendees.

Designing immersive experiences

To captivate attendees and create a lasting impact, it's important to design immersive experiences at experiential marketing events. Immersive experiences transport attendees into a different world, capturing their attention and creating a sense of wonder.

There are various ways to create immersive experiences. One approach is to utilize sensory engagement. By appealing to the senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, brands can create a multi-dimensional experience that leaves a lasting impression . Incorporating visually stunning displays, using high-quality sound systems, offering interactive touch screens, providing unique tasting experiences and even incorporating brand-aligned scents can all contribute to an immersive experience.

Utilizing interactive elements like virtual reality, augmented reality or gamification can also enhance the immersive experience. These technologies allow attendees to actively participate and engage with the brand, creating excitement and intrigue.

Related: How to Use Experiential Marketing to Make Your Company Memorable

Creating engagement opportunities

Engagement is a key aspect of experiential marketing events. To encourage attendee participation, organizers can incorporate various strategies and activities.

One effective strategy is to leverage social media and hashtags. By creating a dedicated event hashtag and encouraging attendees to share their experiences on social media, brands can generate buzz and reach a wider audience. User-generated content serves as social proof and can attract new customers to the brand.

Interactive activities, workshops or demonstrations also provide opportunities for engagement. These activities can be designed to educate, entertain or allow attendees to experience the brand's products or services firsthand. By actively involving attendees in the event, brands can create a sense of ownership and foster a deeper connection.

"The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing." — Tom Fishburne, Founder/CEO Marketoonist

Measuring success and ROI

Measuring the success of experiential marketing events is crucial to understand their impact and optimize future strategies. Key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics can be used to track effectiveness.

KPIs may include metrics such as the number of attendees, social media engagement, leads generated, sales conversions or customer feedback. By analyzing these metrics, event organizers can gain insights into the event's performance and identify areas for improvement.

Calculating return on investment (ROI) is another important aspect of measuring success. ROI can be determined by comparing the event's costs to the tangible benefits, such as increased sales or brand recognition . Understanding the ROI helps brands evaluate the event's effectiveness and make informed decisions for future marketing strategies.

Real-life examples

To further understand the power of experiential marketing events, let's explore some real-life examples of successful campaigns.

One notable example is the "Coca-Cola Happiness Machine" campaign. Coca-Cola set up vending machines in various locations that dispensed not only drinks but also unexpected surprises, such as balloons or flowers. This campaign created a sense of joy and surprise among the participants, generating positive brand sentiment and viral social media buzz.

Another successful experiential marketing event is the "IKEA Sleepover." IKEA allowed customers to spend the night in their stores, transforming the space into a unique sleepover experience. This event not only created a sense of adventure for the participants but also showcased the comfort and functionality of IKEA products.

These case studies highlight the importance of creativity, storytelling and creating memorable experiences in successful experiential marketing events.

Case study: How a virtual reality experience boosted event engagement

Experiential marketing events have the power to create unforgettable experiences that leave a lasting impact on attendees. One such example is the case of Jameson Distillery, a renowned whiskey brand that leveraged virtual reality (VR) to enhance engagement at its annual whiskey-tasting event.

Jameson Distillery wanted to create a unique and immersive experience that would not only showcase its brand but also educate attendees about the whiskey-making process. They decided to incorporate VR technology to transport attendees to their distillery in Ireland, allowing them to virtually explore the facility and witness the craftsmanship behind their renowned whiskey.

During the event, attendees were guided into a specially designed VR booth where they put on VR headsets and were transported to the Jameson Distillery. Through the VR experience, they were able to virtually walk through the distillery, observe the whiskey-making process and even interact with virtual distillery workers. The experience was enhanced with sensory engagement, as attendees could smell the aroma of the whiskey and feel the warmth of the distillery.

The VR experience not only captivated attendees but also sparked conversations and increased brand awareness . The interactive nature of the VR technology allowed attendees to have a hands-on experience, making it a memorable and shareable moment. Attendees eagerly shared their VR experience on social media, using the event's designated hashtag, which amplified the brand's reach and generated buzz.

The success of the VR experience was measured through various metrics. The number of attendees who participated in the VR booth, the social media engagement generated and the increase in brand mentions and impressions were among the key performance indicators tracked. The event's ROI was calculated by comparing the overall cost of implementing the VR technology to the increase in brand awareness and potential sales generated as a result.

This case study highlights how incorporating immersive technologies, like VR, can significantly enhance engagement at experiential marketing events. By providing attendees with a unique and interactive experience, Jameson Distillery was able to create a memorable event that not only educated attendees about their brand but also left a lasting impression. This example serves as an inspiration for event organizers looking to leverage technology to drive engagement and maximize ROI at their own experiential marketing events.

Related: 3 Things You Can't Skimp on With Experiential Marketing

Budgeting and logistics

Budgeting and managing logistics play a crucial role in the execution of experiential marketing events. Creating a budget allows event organizers to allocate resources effectively and maximize the event's impact.

When creating a budget , it's important to consider various aspects, such as venue costs, equipment rentals, staffing, marketing materials and promotional activities. Careful planning and resource allocation ensure a smooth and successful event.

Managing logistics is also essential. This includes obtaining necessary permits and insurance, creating event timelines and coordinating with vendors and suppliers. A well-managed logistics plan ensures the event runs smoothly and attendees have a seamless experience. A well-planned event will take hundreds of hours of planning and skillfully mastering up to 1,000 tasks. Hiring an event production company like Entire Productions ensures that your event design, planning and production are done in a timely and excellent manner. It is not a good idea to have someone in your company who isn't a skilled event producer take on these events. It tends to take longer and can be more expensive as well.

Post-event follow-up and analysis

The work doesn't end once the experiential marketing event is over. Post-event follow-up and analysis are crucial steps to evaluate the event's success and gather valuable feedback .

Collecting feedback from attendees provides insights into their experience and highlights areas for improvement. Surveys, interviews or social media listening can be used to gather this feedback. Analyzing the data allows event organizers to identify strengths and weaknesses and make informed decisions for future events.

Post-event marketing is also important. Leveraging attendee data gathered during the event, brands can continue to engage with attendees through personalized email campaigns or targeted advertisements. This post-event marketing strategy helps maintain the connection with attendees and can lead to further brand loyalty and advocacy.

Experiential marketing events offer a unique and powerful way to connect with the target audience and drive real results. By creating immersive and engaging experiences, these events leave a lasting impression, increase brand awareness and recognition, and foster brand loyalty. With careful planning, execution and analysis, experiential marketing events can significantly boost ROI and contribute to the overall success of a brand's marketing strategy.

Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor

Founder/CEO of Entire Productions, WSJ Bestselling Author

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Experiential Events: 14 Innovative Ideas to Inspire You 

Experiential events are about taking risks, thinking up new, creative formats, and engaging your audience . But why should they be part of your event marketing strategy?  

Well, today’s audiences look for immersion and interaction. They don’t want to sit in a stuffy boardroom as someone reads off a PowerPoint presentation. Connecting with attendees on a deeper level is the goal, and as marketers , using experiential events can help us deepen the engagement with our audience. But that's easier said than done.   

To give you some inspiration, we’ve gathered 14 creative examples of experiential events that provide meaningful, unique, and memorable event experiences.   

What is an experiential event?

Types of experiential events, 14 memorable experiential events to inspire you, tips for creating successful experiential events.

An experiential event provides attendees with a unique and immersive experience that promotes a brand, product or service.

These events are designed to create a memorable and emotional connection between attendees and the brand, often through interactive activities, sensory stimulation, and storytelling. The goal is to engage attendees in a way that leaves a lasting impression and encourages them to become loyal customers or brand advocates. 

Experiential events push boundaries. They go beyond traditional event marketing tactics with interactive, hands-on experiences, and allow attendees to interact with your brand, products, and values in a fun, exciting way. 

Experiential events can take many formats, and while the goals of each event will differ, the overarching goal is to generate buzz, build brand awareness, and drive customer loyalty. 

Here are a few elements shared by experiential events:  

• Active engagement: These might include hands-on activities, interactive installations, workshops, and gamification.  
• Innovation and creativity: Experiential events favour novel formats, technologies, and unconventional strategies. 
• Uniqueness and memorable experiences: Unique or experiential event design , layouts, and activities make these events interesting and memorable.  
• Risk and adaptability: Experiential events mean taking calculated risks, testing new concepts, adapting to change, and embracing uncertainty to create something fresh and impactful. 
• Audience engagement and involvement: Attendees can contribute ideas, participate in co-creation activities, and influence your event elements. 
• Outcome and impact: The aim is to achieve specific outcomes, spark new ideas, collaborate, and wow your audience. 

Experiential events come in many shapes and sizes, including: 

• Brand activations: This is an event, campaign, or strategy designed to create direct engagement and interaction between your brand and your target audience. These experiences are all about bringing your brand, its values, and personality to life.  
• Innovation summits: These events showcase new technologies, trends, and innovative solutions within an industry.  
• Product launches: These events are designed to reveal your latest product or solution to prospects and customers.  
• Partner collaboration events: These events bring businesses together to co-create and explore partnership opportunities between their offerings. 
• Interactive workshops: These are interactive sessions where businesses can explore and learn about specific solutions, often involving hands-on demonstrations and practical use cases. 

1. Cvent CONNECT Europe

A whole host of immersive experiences

Cvent CONNECT Europe , one of the largest events for event professionals, offers a unique experience that goes beyond traditional conferences and trade shows.

This annual event includes experiential event experiences like virtual reality, where attendees can explore immersive experiences, and product showcases, which allow attendees to interact with the latest product features. Interactive workshops are another way in which attendees can gain hands-on experiences to help them learn new skills.

2. Adobe MAX The Creativity Conference 

Providing hands-on experience

Adobe MAX’s Creativity Conference introduced the Creative Park, an interactive area to explore new tools and features. Attendees could test emerging Adobe software in a hands-on environment, fostering creative experimentation and providing instant feedback to the developers. 

3. Salesforce TrailblazerDX 

Immersive learning experiences

Salesforce's TrailblazerDX is an immersive learning and networking experience. Attendees could earn badges through workshops and interactive challenges, emphasising skill-building and practical learning within a dynamic environment.  

4. Lululemon Sweatlife Festival 

Bringing your brand to life

Lululemon's Sweatlife Festival is a great example of bringing your brand to life. It featured a full day of yoga classes, workout sessions, wellness workshops, and interactive experiences. The event brought together fitness enthusiasts, wellness experts, and brand ambassadors for a day of physical activity, learning, and connection. 

Regular tickets also allowed attendees to attend two sweat classes, including boxing, spinning, or trampolining.  

5. IBM Think's Cognitive Studio 

Experiencing innovation

IBM Think featured the Cognitive Studio in 2016, an interactive zone showcasing AI and cognitive solutions. Attendees could explore real-world AI applications through interactive demos, discussions, and expert-led sessions, bridging the gap between theory and practice. 

6. HubSpot INBOUND's Deep Dive Workshops 

Interactive collaboration

HubSpot INBOUND ’s is a mainstay of the marketing industry's events.

Its intensive ‘Deep Dive’ workshops allowed attendees to explore specific marketing or sales challenges through collaborative problem-solving and direct application of strategies. 

7. Microsoft Ignite and Inspire’s Immersive VR Experience 

Incorporating virtual reality

Microsoft Ignite introduced mixed reality to their event with immersive VR experiences. Attendees used VR headsets to explore Microsoft's technologies virtually, bringing complex concepts to life tangibly and memorably. Keynote speakers also appeared on stages as 3D holograms. 

8. Splunk .conf 

Interactive workshops

Splunk .conf featured interactive workshops—from educational game shows to team problem-solving—to engage and delight attendees.

These sessions allowed attendees to discover product use cases, walk through real-life scenarios and demo as they went. Their ‘Hands-on labs’, hosted by Splunk instructors, also divulged their products’ best tips and tricks.  

9. IKEA’s sleepover event 

Thinking out of the box

In honour of World Sleep Day, IKEA announced a sleepover event available only for IKEA family members. Members could choose their own bed linen, and then experience immersive sleep-themed activities like ASMR experiences, a silent disco, sleep workshops, and more.  

As a B2B brand (and without access to large shops full of furniture), hosting a sleepover probably wouldn’t work. However, why not treat your most loyal customers to exclusive, themed experiences? 

10. Qualtrics X4 Dream Team 

Interacting with attendees

Qualtrics X4’s Dream Team was a group of Qualtrics employees dedicated to making the X4 an experience to remember. Using their software, they took over 2,000 requests from attendees to improve their experience. These requests covered a range of things, including: 

• Delivered a birthday cake to an attendee celebrating their birthday 
• Helped a customer get their skateboard signed by Tony Hawk 
• Got prescription glasses for an attendee who forgot theirs  

11. Dell Technologies World  

Interactive experiences and training

Dell Technologies World brought its brand to life with hands-on labs and training courses, educational and interactive experiences, and 1:1 interaction with engineers in live Ask the Expert sessions.  

But that’s not all. The immersive Solutions Expo gave attendees an interactive experience of their latest products. Attendees could even turn themselves into a video advertisement using Dell technology.  

12. Juniper NXTWORK 2019 

Gamification

Juniper NXTWORK 2019 added gamification to a series of panel conversations called ‘Unpacking AI’ with theCUBE , a well-known media platform and interview series.

Panellists were scored on their contributions to the conversation, resulting in a final winner. Filmed in a professional studio, this experience allowed attendees to submit questions and comments during the livestream.  

13. ServiceNow's Knowledge  

Giving attendees the chance to unwind

ServiceNow's Knowledge event featured arcade games throughout the Expo hall floor, giving attendees a wonderful chance to unwind. Attendees could explore engaging mini-games related to IT, HR, and customer service solutions, making learning more interactive and enjoyable. 

14. LinkedIn Talent Connect Innovation Lab 

Showcasing innovation

LinkedIn Talent Connect , an in-person and online event, included an Innovation Lab. Attendees explored emerging talent solutions through interactive tech showcases, discussing how AI and automation impact HR practices. 

Understand your audience 

Before planning your event, thoroughly understand the needs, interests, and pain points of your B2B audience.  

Consider their industry, roles, challenges, and goals. This understanding will help you tailor the event experience to resonate with their preferences and provide meaningful solutions. 

Set clear objectives 

Define clear and measurable objectives for your experiential event. Are you aiming to showcase new technology, foster partnerships, generate leads, or educate attendees? Having well-defined goals will guide your event planning and help you evaluate its success afterwards. 

Prioritise engagement and interaction 

The essence of an experiential event is interaction. Incorporate interactive elements such as workshops, hands-on demonstrations, group activities, and networking sessions . Encourage attendees to participate actively, collaborate, and engage with your offerings and content. 

Innovate and think creatively 

Embrace innovation and creativity throughout the event planning process. Experiment with unique event formats, technologies, themes, and activities that differentiate your event from traditional gatherings. Offer attendees experiences they wouldn't find elsewhere, and push the boundaries of what's possible within your industry.  

Use technology to enhance the attendee experience 

Technology is a vital part of creating an immersive attendee experience. You could use artificial intelligence or augmented reality to create interactive brand activations or product demos.   

Or connect directly with your audience through a mobile event app . Give them easy access to content, networking, and important information all in one place. Chat, Q&A, polls, and surveys also bring another level of interaction to sessions.  

Experiential events: Plan memorable experiences 

Remember: The success of a B2B experiential event doesn't just come down to attendance numbers. Think about the quality of engagement , connections made, and the long-term impact on attendees' perceptions of your brand.  

Focus on creating memorable moments that resonate with attendees long after the event ends. Incorporate elements like immersive installations, surprise guest speakers, interactive challenges, and opportunities for hands-on learning.  

Consider how attendees will feel, what they'll learn, and the overall impact the event will have on their perception of your brand. 

With careful planning, creativity, and a genuine commitment to delivering value, you can create an event that stands out and leaves a lasting positive impression. 

Interested in learning more about creating in-person events your attendees love? Download our Ultimate Guide to In-Person Events . 

Olivia is a copywriter and content marketer specialising in hospitality, events, and retail. After five years of in-house experience, she now works independently, writing articles, eBooks, case studies, and more for a wide range of clients.

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9 Case Studies That Prove Experiential Retail Is The Future

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What is a pop-up shop? Everything you need to know to try short-term retail  > 23 Smart Pop-Up Shop Ideas to Steal From These Successful Brands > 9 Case Studies That Prove Experiential Retail Is The Future

What is experiential retail, and how can experiential retail benefit your business?

Experiential retail is a term used to define a type of retailing that aims to provide customers with a unique and memorable experience. Experiential retail is typically characterized by one or more of the following features: the use of unique and interesting spaces, objects, or experiences; high levels of customer engagement; and the use of technology to enhance customer interactions.

One key aspect of experiential retail is the ability to create an attractive and welcoming environment for staff and customers alike. This can be achieved through a combination of factors, including good design, cleanliness, and lighting . Another important factor is how well the store reflects its brand identity.

Although there are many different types of experiential retail outlets, they all share certain common elements: they are designed to provide a memorable experience for their customers; they are focused on creating an enjoyable atmosphere for staff members as well as the public; they offer an appealing mix of products and services, and they use technology to enhance customer interactions.

Finally, experiential retail is not just about selling products or services. It is also about building strong relationships with customers that go beyond transactions.

Experiential retail is the future. For years we’ve heard about the decline of physical retail and the rise of the internet. However, the desire for retail experiences is on the rise with 52% millennials saying of their spending goes on experience-related purchases. This introduces the concept of ‘retailtainment’.

Enter: retailtainment

Because of this, retailers have evolved their offerings. By focusing on so-called ‘ retailtainment’ and immersive retail experiences, brands are able to provide customers with fun, unique and in-person experiences that elevate shopping to new heights.

With retailtainment, the retail industry is shifting attention from a features-and-benefits approach to a focus on immersive shopping and customer experience . To be successful, retailers must offer consumers a desirable retail experience that in turn drives sales.

What is meant by Retailtainment?

The term “retailtainment” is used to describe the trend of retailers using entertainment to attract customers and encourage them to spend more time – and money – in their stores. This can take the form of in-store events, interactive displays, and even simply providing a comfortable and enjoyable environment for customers to shop in. The goal of retailtainment is to create a unique and memorable shopping experience that will keep customers coming back.

With the rise of online shopping and brick-and-mortar retailers have to work harder than ever to compete. By offering an enjoyable and entertaining shopping experience, retailers can attract customers who are looking for more than just a transaction. Retailtainment can be a powerful tool to build customer loyalty and drive sales.

How does retailtainment fit in today’s retail experiential strategy?

As shoppers’ expectations become more demanding, retailers are turning to retailtainment to create a more engaging and memorable shopping experience. By incorporating elements of entertainment into the retail environment, retailers can create a unique and differentiated customer experience that will help them stand out from the competition.

There are a number of ways that retailtainment can be used to improve the customer experience. For example, retailers can use interactive technology to create an immersive shopping experience that engages shoppers on a personal level. Additionally, retailers can use entertainment to add excitement and energy to their store environment, making it more inviting and enjoyable for shoppers.

Ultimately, retailtainment can play a key role in helping retailers create a customer experience that is unique, differentiated, and memorable.

What is the difference between retailtainment and experiential retail?

Both retailtainment and experiential retail are designed to make the shopping experience more enjoyable and engaging. However, experiential retail goes a step further by creating an emotional connection with customers. This emotional connection can lead to brand loyalty and repeat business.

Thus, while both retailtainment and experiential retail are important trends in the retail industry, experiential retail is more focused on creating a lasting impression and emotional connection with customers.

Here are our 8 favorite examples of Experiential Retail and retailtainment in action:

Marvel: Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N provides fans with interactive brand building experience

The Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. is an immersive exhibit that has toured the world since the first Avengers film. It has appeared in key retail areas such as New York Seoul Paris , Beijing, London and Las Vegas, and always pulls in huge crowds. Based on the global box-office film franchise, Marvel’s The Avengers, the store features real life movie props and interactive displays.

There are Marvel-branded items for sale but the goal of the project is not to shift T-shirts and mugs. It is about delivering an in-person experience to fans and bringing the brand to life.

The Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. is a great example of retailtainment and experiential retail in action. Visitors are fully immersed in the fictional world they adore, further cementing their affiliation and love for the Marvel brand.

For a brand as strong and iconic as Marvel, it would be easy to sit back and take popularity for granted. However, through the use of retailtainment they are continuing to delight their customers beyond the screen.

Farfetch: Creating a retail experience of the future

Image via Bloomberg

Farfetch is as an e-commerce portal for luxury boutiques. It’s successfully positioned itself as a technology provider for brands; combining technology and fashion to provide unique in-store experiences.

José Neves, CEO of Farfetch, has spoken about his concern that physical retail is diminishing; it accounts for 93 per cent of sales today, but by 2025 is predicted to account for just 80 per cent.

Enter: Farfetch’s Augmented Retail Solution

Neves’ vision for retailtainment includes advancements in technology to make the consumer experience more human. He produced Farfetch’s Store of the Future, an augmented retail solution that “links the online and offline worlds, using data to enhance the retail experience.” In its retail store in London, Farfetch provided connected clothing racks, touch-screen-enhanced mirrors and sign-in stations that pulled data collected online to use in-store.

Farfetch provided customers with a sign-in screen to search their purchase history and wish list, which provided valuable customer insight for the sales assistants. There was also a smart mirror to request different sizes, alternative products or pay without leaving the dressing room.

This innovation led them to be labeled as “ The Retailer of the Future ”, allowing customers to enjoy an effortless in-person experience that harmonizes the best parts of boutique shopping with the speed and convenience of online shopping.

Read More: Excess Inventory Post-Holiday? Open a Pop-Up Shop

Huda Beauty: Cosmic experience in Covent Garden

Huda Beauty , one of the world’s fastest-growing beauty brands, ran an immersive retail experience pop-up store right in the centre of Covent Garden, London, to launch a new product range and reach new customers.

Huda used the location ( sourced by Storefront pop up space rental ) to deliver a sci-fi themed experience in support of their new eye-shadow palette Mercury Retrograde.

The entire exterior of the pop-up resembled a multi-faceted, metallic mass of geometrical shapes. This was echoed inside with various ‘galactic’ elements, all manner of mirrored surfaces and shimmering fixtures and elements.

As part of the event, visitors could sit on the throne Huda used in her launch material, all set up to encourage as much social media activity and engagement as possible.

Huda Beauty caught the eye and wowed its visitors. Introducing a whole swathe of new customers to the Huda Beauty brand.

Read More: 4 Beauty Brands Who Successfully Launched A Pop-Up Store

Vans: A shopping experience to remember

Image via Skateparks

The House of Vans in London lives up to the company motto of being “off the wall”. A location where art, music, BMX, street culture and fashion converge, you can find almost everything you can imagine across the 30,000 square feet building. Amongst a cinema, café, live music venue and art gallery, the bottom floor holds the most unique feature of the building: the concrete ramp, mini ramp and street course.

Nothing better epitomizes the Vans brand than a space where young people can not only shop but spontaneously socialize. The House of Vans is the perfect example of how experiential retail can be used to empower a shopping experience.

Read More: How The Music Industry Is Making The Most of Pop-Up Stores

Ikea: Using social media to power a unique retail experience

Ikea brought 100 Facebook competition winners to one of its warehouses and let them stay the night. They were able to select the mattress, sheets and pillows to fully give them a fully tailored experience. A sleep expert was on hand with tips for getting a good night’s rest, including how to find the perfect mattress for any sleeping style.

This was a clever and unique way to obtain visibility and get fans to focus on what Ikea has to offer and try it out for themselves.

This idea came from understanding their consumer insights on social media. Lois Blenkinsop, Ikea’s U.K. PR and internal communications manager, said: “Social media has opened up a unique platform for us to interact directly with our customers. Listening to what they want is what we do best, and the Big Sleepover is just one example of how we’re using such instant and open feedback to better inform our marketing activity.”

From using social media they were able to apply experiential marketing to their retail strategy and provide their customers with a memorable event that brought the brand a ton of visibility and engagement.

Space Ninety 8: showcasing the art of retailtainment

Image via @Space90

As a spin-off from Urban Outfitters, Space Ninety 8 is a shared retail space that spans 5 floors, hosting retailers, galleries and even a rooftop restaurant and bar.

Scanning their Instagram, you can see the variety of what Space Ninety 8 offers beyond solely retail. Advertised next to yoga classes is an album signing by Big Boi, alongside pictures of art classes and Lady GaGa merchandise. By reflecting the flexible nature of modern life, the brand created a versatile store that emphasizes experience, perfecting the art of retailtainment.

TOMS: creating an immersive experience through VR

Experiences don’t have to be a permanent feature of a store in order to make an impact on customers. In 2015 TOMS’ placed VR headsets into 100 stores, enabling them to virtually transport players to Peru to see the impact of their One for One giving campaign on local people.

As you walk through the village stores with locals smiling and waving at you, it is impossible not to feel warmed by the friendly atmosphere. Not only did this retail experience improve awareness of their social corporate responsibility and promote their giving campaign, it also gave customers an unforgettable and immersive experience they were unlikely to forget.

[Check out Toms’ continued focus on immersive retail experiences here]

How to Provide Retailtainment that Drives Traffic and Sales

These case studies all stress the importance of providing an in-store experience. By exceeding expectations you drive emotional reactions. There are five consistent elements each use in their stores to ensure a remarkable customer shopping experience:

• Interactiveness: All of these retailers ensure that the senses are connected – memories of what we feel, hear, see, smell, and touch, may last a lifetime.
• Originality: These ideas were all authentic and natural, making the customer feel as if they entered a different world.
• Connectedness: Customers must feel that the experience has been created for them.
• Unexpectedness: These unique experiences are critical to ensure your brand is remembered.
• Reliability: The experience is executed through tested methods to achieve consistency and excellence.

The future of experiential retail

As the world of retail continues to evolve, so too must the way brands create memorable experiences for their customers. With the rise of digital and mobile technologies, consumers now have more choices than ever before when it comes to how they shop and what they buy. To stay ahead of the curve, brands must find new and innovative ways to engage with their customers and create unforgettable shopping experiences.

One way to do this is through experiential retail – using physical spaces to create immersive, one-of-a-kind experiences that cannot be replicated online. This could involve anything from in-store events and workshops to augmented reality and virtual reality experiences.

Experiential marketing isn’t about spending millions on fancy gadgets for your retail store. Sure it can help, but it’s mostly about a personalized shopping experience and providing an unparalleled retail experience for your guests and customers. The brands that delight their customers are the brands that drive loyalty and advocacy. Couple this with excellent customer service and you’re on to a winner. These case studies all demonstrate how it is possible to follow similar steps to overcome the challenges eCommerce has brought.

The brands that use their physical stores to focus on the customer experience are the brands that will do the best. The dynamic between physical and online retail has shifted and the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic has only accentuated this.

Planning your own experiential retail project and need some help? Drop us a note and we’ll help you out.

For more on launching temporary retail stores and one-off events, download our Ultimate Pop-Up Guide and make your ideas happen.

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Verizon Wireless: An Experiential Event Case Study

The annual Verizon Winner’s Circle incentive event for top retail sales associates plays a major role in rewarding and motivating employees.

Following a corporate restructure, four market events were merged into one Southeastern Regional event, and a 400-person event became a 1200-person event. Verizon needed an event partner that could effectively create and produce a new event that could accommodate and dazzle three-times the sales stars and executive staff in one location.

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• To seamlessly merge what was traditionally four market events into one regional event, including top sales and C-Level Executives from five states.
• To identify a location and venue that could accommodate the size of the event, but also allow for convenient travel by air and ground.
• To create an incredible and unforgettable one-day event for 1200 people to entertain and honor top salespeople.

"A 400-person event became a 1200-person event. Verizon needed an event partner that could accommodate and dazzle three-times the sales stars and executive staff in one new location Casey Reid "

• Eleven assisted in selecting and booking site location and host hotel in Orlando, FL, that allowed for group-friendly travel, tropical weather, and a variety of entertainment opportunities.
• Although the client asked for proposals for an event that would be hosted at the hotel, we suggested an exclusive “bucket-list” experience off-property for the winners.
• An arrival moment and outdoor reception at the hotel honored all winners.
• Eleven created and executed a private experience at Universal Studios Marvel Islands during which guests enjoyed an all-inclusive street party with five different themed locations and then were escorted along a VIP path to a private Marvel Island Experience.
• Live DJs and artists were booked and incorporated into programming.

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With the change in traditional programming, the 2017 Winners Circle event for the South Area became one of the most talked about events within Verizon. The event set a new standard for incentive trips and greatly enhanced employee excitement and engagement. Video of the event created incredible internal content that extended the life of the event long after the last guest departed Orlando.

Careful attention to detail and VIP treatment of each winner, along with execution of the first-ever event of its size, started the event standard that stands today.

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Bear Shadow: An Experiential Event Case Study

By Casey Reid

Highlands and the surrounding communities had experienced the power of successful live events to drive positive economic impact during shoulder seasons with the inception of Highlands Food & Wine. The festival not only resulted in sold-out lodging and record retail…

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Home » MyZone Marketing Blog » Case Study: The Rise of Experiential Events

Case Study: The Rise of Experiential Events

With so many events to choose from, customers and millennials are increasingly looking for something special that captivates their attention in a new way. This means event organizers stand to make big bucks if they know how to deliver an out of the ordinary event. To make sure you don’t miss out, we decided to investigate and collect some tips to create the perfect experiential event. 

What is an experiential event?

Experiential events focus on creating a unique, interactive and immersive sensory experience for the ticket buyer. A night at the club or a dinner at a favorite restaurant don’t count, but a pop-up dinner with a secret location, or a themed night at an underground, invite-only rave would qualify.

But what is it about these events that make them so special and so increasingly popular?What exactly gives an experiential event its touch of magic, and has guests raving to their friends for weeks and even months afterwards? We’ve taken a look at some of the world’s most successful experiential events and dissected them from every angle in order to see just what makes them tick, and what makes customers willing to spend big bucks on them again and again.

Some Successful Experiential Events

Tough mudder: a team building obstacle course.

Tough Mudder took the concept of team building and challenging oneself to a whole new level. It’s core values are simple: challenge yourself, work as a team, and have fun. Over the course of a grueling 10 to 12 mile obstacle course, participants form teams to help each other crawl through mud, climb over walls and under fences, and push themselves to their limits.

Instead of competing against each other, Tough Mudders work together to make sure everyone completes the course. By putting this unusual twist on a traditional marathon, the courses have become popular for groups of friends and corporate events alike.

What Tough Mudder teaches us: People want to experience something together. The social and communal aspect of experiential events is very important.

Then She Fell: an interactive theater experience

First launched in 2012, Then She Fell is the latest New York has to offer in terms of interactive theater. With performances designed for just 15 guests at a time, Then She Fell reimagines the way theater is meant to be lived; instead of confining the audience to their seats and performing onstage, the team behind Then She Fell occupies an entire warehouse space and invites visitors to walk through rooms and explore hidden spaces in no particular order.

Their website describes the experience as “inspired by the life and writings of Lewis Carroll, it offers an Alice-like experience for audience members as they explore the rooms, often by themselves, in order to discover hidden scenes; encounter performers one-on-one; unearth clues that illuminate a shrouded history; use skeleton keys to gain access to guarded secrets; and imbibe elixirs custom designed by one of NYC’s foremost mixologists.”

Lessons from Then She Fell: Guests love having the freedom to explore, and feeling like they have control over their experience.

Diner en Blanc: an invite-only takeover of the public space

Diner en Blanc is one of the oldest experiential happenings around. Clocking in at 25 years old, Diner en Blanc has only grown in popularity as the decades have gone by, partly because of their strictly exclusive policies.

The concept is simple: would-be guests must know a member of the organization in order to be allowed to participate. Guests dress entirely in white and convene in a public location, where they set up an elaborate picnic. The results are ephemeral and otherworldly, transforming a normally mundane and public space into a fairy tale scene.

Diner en Blanc’s forte: Creating a sense of exclusivity, while staying firmly in the public space, capitalizes on guests’ desire to be in the know. Limiting access with guest-lists or releasing the venue directions at the last minute can build a huge hype around your event.

Pop-up Restaurants: a different way to eat out

Many famous chefs have started creating experiential dinners outside of their traditional restaurant settings. These dinners usually involve smaller numbers of guests, buying tickets ahead of time, and set menus.

Guests can also be seated at a single large table to create an intimate, un-restaurant-like setting. Chefs answer questions about the food preparation and specific menu items, and often mingle with guests in a more casual atmosphere. The trend has caught on all over the world, and even ordinary people who like to cook have started inviting others into their homes to enjoy a special night in good company: In Buenos Aires, closed door restaurants are everywhere, and cookapp lets people create a personalized dinner experience from their home.

What pop-up restaurants do right: Guests get a chance to speak with the chef and experience their meal differently. The atmosphere is also often cozier than a regular restaurant, and fosters a sense of a special occasion. Making your guests feel special and important will encourage them to recommend the experience and come back for more. Creating one-off events capitalizes on guests’ desires to be part of the experience while it is available and not be left out.

Final Thoughts

Guests are increasingly willing to pay more for a unique experience, and event organizers stand to profit if they can capitalize on that trend successfully. Take inspiration from successful experiential events like those which we briefly analyzed above, and don’t hesitate to get in touch with myZone media if you have any questions.

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Experiential Events: The Most Powerful Marketing Tool

Events are one of the most powerful marketing tools because they center around an intentionally designed experience. And experience is in high demand. According to Eventbrite’s research , 77% of millennials say some of their best memories are from an event or live experience they attended. Additionally, they are much more likely to spend money on experiences rather than products.

Maya Angelou said that people will forget what you said and did, but never forget how you made them feel . This is great news for event marketers and planners who can plan experiential events – events that aim to evoke positive emotions in attendees and resonate with their values . After all, what makes an incredible event is not the stage and the logistics, but the atmosphere and the positive emotional state of the attendees.

Any event can be experiential: conferences, meetings, exhibitions, trade shows, and corporate events. At the heart of experiential events is the intention to include attendees in a meaningful, action-oriented way . It’s one of the most powerful forms of marketing. If done right, they boost ROI and strengthen the reputation of a brand .

What Is Experiential Marketing? 

As the name suggests, experiential marketing centers around creating an impactful experience that affects the consumer’s behavior by appealing to their emotions. That’s why it’s also known as engagement marketing . And since the designed experience is typically a part of a larger event, some consider event marketing a special type of experiential marketing. 

In a sense, all events are experiential. Whether event planners intentionally design them or not, attendees will have had an experience at an event. The job of an experiential marketer is to make that experience unforgettable and enjoyable, prompting the customer to develop an emotional bond with the product or brand.   In turn, such experiences boost event ROI and help marketers achieve their goals. 

The Benefits Of Experiential Event Marketing

The benefits of experiential event marketing highly resemble the benefits of event marketing itself. Here is why experience marketing should be the guiding light in your overall event marketing strategy:

• Boost brand awareness & loyalty. Brand activations and product launches can center around the actions of your end-users. Give them a chance to try your product or interact with it tangibly. By including your audience in your marketing efforts, your brand will connect with them in a much more effective way.
• Increase your presence on social media. Experiential events can be a goldmine for user-generated content. Create a memorable hashtag and give your audience a chance to participate in an activity they will want to share on their profiles (ie. social media wall).
• Highlight your sponsors in organic ways. Co-marketing is all the more impactful when it revolves around an experience. Think of ways you can join forces with your sponsors and have the attendees interact with both your products at the same time. Research shows that when your customers have a positive experience when interacting with brands, they are much more likely to purchase their products or services in the future.
• Improve your lead generation opportunities. Reframe your lead gen efforts into a fun experience. Make a game out of it. Incentivize customers to give their contact information with a giveaway, raffle, etc.
• Increase attendee retention. Attendees will be much more engaged at your event and have a better time if you follow an experiential marketing strategy. And happy customers mean returning customers. Make sure to measure attendee retention to prove the ROI of experiential event marketing.

How To Plan Experiential Events

When planning experiential events, you need to think about your specific target audience . What makes them tick? What makes them happy? How can you best create an emotional connection between them and your brand? What’s the kind of story they will like? Then, tell them that story .

For example, be mindful of pop culture trends or references that your target audience might appreciate and incorporate them into your experiential strategy. This marketing tactic is especially powerful if it provides true value to your customers , not just engagement for engagement’s sake.  Let these experiential marketing examples serve as inspiration; some offer free products while others use thought leadership .

Once you know what delights your audience, it’s time to tackle the ‘how’ of experiential design. Here are some of the most essential ideas in the events industry. Remember: event technology solutions alone are not enough to turn your event into a boundary-pushing experience. Design your events with the experience in mind and use technology to support you in that vision .

Engage All Senses

Unlike most other marketing strategies, experiential event marketing can make use of all five senses to create an impactful experience . Event planners can focus on the feeling they aim to generate by intentionally choosing the right food, music, colors, etc.

For example, if event planners aim to energize their attendees, they should play high-energy music, use strong and bright colors for event signage, and serve foods that will give attendees an energy boost. On the other hand, if the event is to put the audience at ease, planners should ensure the space is never too crowded, that the music is calm, and that the colors are soothing.

Experiential Events Have Gamified Elements

The best experiential events incentivize attendees to have fun and to actively participate in challenges, raffles, and games. This is a powerful lead generation tool at exhibitions and trade shows.

It is also a great idea to inject a healthy dose of creativity and imagination into the event. If there is an event theme, gamification offers a great opportunity to double down on it.

For example, Stella Artois set up a giveaway during tax season and added a flavor of experiential marketing by aptly calling participants “account holders” and the prize “investment vehicle” rather than simply a tandem bicycle. Their messaging was teeming with financial references, which served to increase audience engagement and boost their loyalty to the brand.

🔔 Last chance 🔔 to invest in life’s most memorable moments and sign up for Stella Mutual. RT with #StellaMutual #Sweepstakes for a chance to win exclusive account holder benefits. #TaxSeason pic.twitter.com/qDsGuQmC4H — Stella Artois (@StellaArtois) March 30, 2021

Have Event Staff Support Your Event Concept

Make sure your event staff is familiar with the concept of your experiential event and instruct them to make people feel a certain way. If you want them to feel excited, have onsite staff cheer for them. If you want them to feel like a VIP, assign them a personal concierge. 

Your speakers and emcees should also know about the experience you’re planning. That way, they can prepare their content accordingly. For example, they can make references to your event theme and promote your event games.

Experiential Events As Part Of Community Marketing

If events are to create a lasting impact, marketers need to create a powerful story before the event itself, tapping into the attendees’ emotions and excitement with teaser trailers, persuasive copy, and messages in the event app or platform. Similarly, the experience itself should stretch out beyond the event itself. Keep the emotions alive by posting an after-movie, a heartfelt message, and encourage others to share their thoughts and feelings as well.

And what better place to create an emotional setting for your event than your online community ? Building a strong community around your brand has become a big trend in the events industry. Marketers can keep their audience engaged year-round by providing value in terms of networking, content, and education. In a broader context, experiential events are seen as a culmination of excitement within that community. 

Elevate Attendee Experience With Event Personalization

Personalization is a key ingredient in the experience economy. After all, human experiences are deeply personal. Evergage’s 2020 research shows that 92% of customers are expecting to have a personalized experience with a brand. The personalization trend plays into the hands of experiential marketers: it boosts loyalty and drives ROI. 

Implement event personalization by:

• sending personalized emails with a targeted message (segment by name, company, title, and other registration metrics),
• setting up different workflows for different registration tiers, 
• offering attendees personalized agendas based on their interests or expertise,
• measuring the success of personalized marketing efforts. 

Experiential Virtual Events

Experiential marketing is not only reserved for in-person events. As AJ Williams pointed out in an #EventIcons episode, we can also translate experiential events into a virtual setting . She shared her experience with sending virtual attendees a so-called party-in-a-box or a meal with instructions.

Taking it a step further, a virtual attendee can also invite several people into their home and turn it into a small hybrid event venue. Thus, they are no longer a mere observer, but co-creator of powerful experiences . The main hub can then showcase such small gatherings on the main live stream and offer the event on-demand afterward. And that is sure to create lasting memories and excitement.

A Pinch Of Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality

Virtual reality and augmented reality are among the most exciting current event technology trends and will undoubtedly build buzz at your event. Many attendees might have never used a virtual headset before or used a custom event AR filter. This is a golden opportunity to give your audience an experience they’ve never had before. 

Additionally, VR and AR make for great user-generated content to be shared on social media and an attractive marketing asset for your future events.

Conclusive Thoughts

When you think back to that special event you attended or planned years ago, what do you remember? The precise answer often eludes us; it’s the positive emotion accompanying the memory that makes that experience so dear to your heart. Experiential events strive to evoke that feeling in attendees. And when events are successful in generating positive experiences, attendees will return year after year and become true brand evangelists. 

Endless Events is a full-service event management company that approaches every event as a unique experience. Leaning on technology-driven solutions, we help event planners and event marketers define and reach their goals. If you’re looking for a strategic partner to help you create meaningful event experiences, reach out to us. Our team is here to help you turn your event into a truly unforgettable experience. 

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Author Anja Grcar

Anja, Senior Content Writer at Endless Events, aspires to educate and inspire event planners with the power of the written word.

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The most successful cases in the organization of experiential events

If there is one thing that all event organizers agree on, it is that experiential events are one of the most effective tools for connecting with audiences. But let's start with defining what experiential events are. As their name suggests, experiential events are events based on experiences created by companies and brands to provoke a physical-emotional connection with consumers. This type of event combines the emotional with the 5 senses, resulting in a more attractive experience for the attendees.

Unlike events without that experiential component, where attendees contemplate the products or services, with the experiential event, attendees can have multiple experiences with the products, in such a way that the connection and interest in the brand is produced in them.

Today there are a large number of examples that allow us to learn more about experiential events , their tactics, implementation and the creativity behind them.

In this article we will get to know some of the most successful experiential events in recent years to take ideas and put them into practice.

Most successful experiential events

1.   twitter and its dating advice office:.

One of the experiential events that caught our attention in 2020 was the “Twitter Dating Advice Office”, a Valentine's Day pop-up shop set up in London's Covent Garden, where the company gave brought many real tweets of awkward dating conversations to life by giving them a fun twist with spaces like: the wheel of misfortune and the gallery of awkward silences.

In each space, Twitter included real user conversations, thus creating a physical place for visitors and users to experience what it would be like to be immersed within the social network.

2.   Launch of the Google Assistant at CES 2020

One of the most important appointments for large consumer and technology companies, without a doubt, is the Consumer Technology Association, CES, which year after year distinguishes itself by presenting the advances of the most innovative products worldwide.

Google, as expected, did not disappoint by presenting the new features of its Assistant in a very particular way. With a roller coaster and using animatronics placed along the route, CES 2020 attendees were able to enjoy an unbeatable experience while learning about the new features of the Google Assistant. Here we can see again a physical staging of something totally digital to make it easier to understand what happens inside our electronic devices.

3.   Hulu and its Hulluween event

Huluween is one of the custom sections of Hulu, the video subscription service, which covers all Halloween-themed horror movies and series. With COVID-19 on top, Hulu had to come up with it to promote Huluween in an interactive way, always taking care of social distancing. The Huluween Drive-in Theater was created, a drive-in where attendees had to drive through an immersive haunted forest before reaching the place where the giant screen was located.

Hulu took advantage of the space at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center to stage this event and play classics like Gooks of Blood, Beetlejuice, Carrie, among many other chilling tapes.

4.   YouTube Gaming and the retro game store

The E3 Games Convention that takes place in Los Angeles, California was attended by YouTube Gamimg, which set up its retro game store, including artifacts from old games, arcade machines, prizes related to old video games, food and drinks with the same theme and areas designed for business and relaxation.

To have a presence abroad, YouTube Gaming prepared a Japanese ice cream vehicle with the design of a video game repair vehicle, which travelled the main streets of Los Angeles, distributing free ice lollies with the YouTube Gaming logo.

An excellent way of marketing and experiential event to promote the brand.

5.   “Intersect” 2019 the AWS Music Festival

Amazon created the Intersect festival in 2019, in which it combined music and the experiential in a fantastic way. The Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Amazon cloud, combined: music, art and technology, with the participation of artists from multiple musical genres offering attendees diverse interactive experiences.

The festival had an attendance of 15,000 people, 2 megastructures and a giant tent, as well as a space for various "experiences" with activities such as: ball pool, retro games rooms, state-of-the-art lights and the surprising "Lost & Photon”, An immersive laser show that captivated more than one.

6.   The Brilliant Sound Experience by Sonos

Immersive takes attendees to another level. And this is what Sonos achieved in partnership with Google Assistant. The Brilliant Sound Experience included interactive installations that mixed sound, music, and light for the purpose of explaining the properties of sound.

The experience took place in New York, using music by artists such as The National and Holly Herndon, which explained, through various rooms, the dynamics of sound and how our brains process sound through visual and auditory signals.

In each room a particular song was played and through visual effects, lighting and sound, the attendees had different experiences. For example, in one of them, “I am easy to find” from the new album by The National was used, using five sculptures throughout the space. Moving forward, attendees could experience the song differently, making guitars independent from drums, keyboards, and vocals; the assistants walked through the space until they found the exact point where the ideal sound was perceived. A great way to implement the experiential.

Without a doubt, the experiential events are back in force after almost a year and a half where we have had to deal with the restrictions resulting from COVID-19. Brands seek to regain that emotional connection with their audience and an excellent opportunity opens up for those agencies that are capable of organizing differential events.

We recommend you to review the article " Street Marketing: how to organize a successful event "

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Experiential Design: The rising need for experiential spaces in today’s design scenario

We, as users, experience design every day without any second thought. We communicate with our built environment by the means of perceptive, sensorial, and intellectual stimulation. A journey that prioritizes such human interaction within a space is called an experiential design. Based on the fundamentals of a human-centric approach , it uses customer engagement and emotional connection to form its basic foundation. 

“The human experience must be the driving force behind every element of a space––from the design of physical space to the qualities of interaction, expectation, and intention.”

– Gensler

Usually created by identifying some signature moments, this engagement and connection are accomplished by aligning the elements of the space with certain narratives. In the case of a restaurant , for example, a designer needs to detail out moments that a customer will remember. Can it be the moment when the customer receives his food? Or can it be a moment while he is ordering his food? Could it be the taste of the meals, or could it be the ambiance in which he is sitting? Everything from the layout of the spaces to the way the food is packaged can radically transform the experience of the customer. Identification of such moments leads the way towards designing experiential, immersive, and intellectually stimulating physical spaces.

“An atmosphere, like a mood, impresses itself on experience…”

-(Leatherbarrow, 2009, 64)

What is the difference between Theme and Experience?

Theme and experiential design are both loosely defined and are often seen as very similar. However, these two areas of design become very different in terms of user engagement and interaction. Case in point, the introduction of Hard Rock Café, also known as the ‘pioneer of themed restaurants’, (Beck, 1999) in 1971. Themed as a hard rock diner, the Hard Rock Café provides an atmosphere with items on display that are not ordinarily seen on an everyday basis, thus making it a destination for eating and viewing rock-n-roll memorabilia. However, besides the theme of the visual items on display and the overall decor, there is no other experience in the restaurant. 

Thematic restaurants are designed with a certain style of a motif in mind, which is then applied down to almost every last detail. They intentionally create either another time, space, place, atmosphere or environment, to engage and transcend the participant’s everyday experience within the dining spaces . Experiential entertainment spaces are a step above thematic ones. Experiential spaces are designed with a theme, yet they are also designed with a memorable experience in mind. This memorable experience is encouraged by the highest level of engagement possible within the environment by provoking all five senses. 

The Jewish Museum in Berlin, for example, was designed by Daniel Libeskind as a symbolic gesture to express the oppression of Jews during the second world war in Germany. The museum uses architecture as a means of storytelling, that conveys feelings of absence, emptiness, and invisibility to its visitors – an interpretation of the dissolution of an entire culture. One of the most emotional spaces in the museum – the Holocaust Tower – is a cold, dark, sixty-six feet high silo with bare concrete walls and 10,000 coarse iron faces covering the ground. Visitors often experience a feeling of uneasiness and anxiety due to the massive scale of the tower where the only light is penetrated through a narrow slit at the top, showcasing that ‘even in the darkest moments where you feel like you will never escape, a small trace of light restores hope’.

Another attraction of the museum – The Garden of Exile – makes the visitors feel lost and confused amongst its massive pillars covered with plants, where the only vegetation is placed completely out of reach. A slanted floor adds on to the feeling of unsteadiness and disorientation and symbolizes the experiences of the Jewish people during the war.

These examples portray that the core of the experiential design is taking a deep and thorough look at how people interact with and respond to a space and at how a connection is formed between the user and the design in a multi-layered dynamic. The design needs to work systematically and in coordination with its human-centric needs to give the users a memorable experience which will make them want to come back.

What makes a design experiential?

Experiential designs strategically use their design elements to create emotional connections of the user towards the brand and immerse the user in its narrative. Other attributes of experiential entertainment design are:

1. Attractant | Experiential Design

Experiential entertainment spaces contain an initial attractant to gain the attention of future participants as they pass by. Rumjungle, in Las Vegas , Nevada, contains an exterior metal firewall backdropped with a water wall as its façade. The flame flickers against the glass and metal surfaces, emitting a pattern that attracts the eye and persuades the user to wander closer. The main entrance is designed with a large enough opening to provide glimpses of the dining atmosphere for outside viewers.

2. Additional Spaces/Entertainment

Experiential spaces use additional programmed spaces, such as retail, bars, rides, and/or games, along with a restaurant, as experiential cultivators in attracting users for initial visits, keeping them within the space, and attracting them for return visits. These additionally programmed spaces are designed to quickly grab the attention to keep them interested as they wait for further entertainment from their primary destination. For example, in the Mercedes-Benz Museum of Stuttgart , the only way for a guest to visit the chronological exhibits of the museum is through an elevator ride near the entrance, that plays recorded sounds of different automobiles throughout history, immersing the visitor in an auditory narrative.

3. Environmental Ambiance | Experiential Design

Spaces with successful experiences have as much to do with the lighting, music, and other such add-ons as they do with the overall design. Lasting impressions stay with people when the smallest detail has impacted their experience. When considering materials , lighting, and finishes for such spaces, often it’s not about using something unique but about using a common material in a unique way such as finding new ways to use stone, wood, and other natural materials. 

When designing Texas Spice, a farm-to-table American restaurant at the Omni Dallas Hotel, the designers drew their inspiration from the brand story, which captures the true flavor of Texas with an emphasis on local ingredients and Southern-style that offers a twist on hometown classics. The design of the main dining room offers guests a space to feel connected to the history of Dallas while enjoying the comfort of a home-cooked meal. The dining room’s rustic interior was designed with repurposed materials that include red brick walls, “garage” doors, and wood details.

4. Sensory Stimulants

Experiential entertainment spaces trigger all five senses. They use luminaries, electrical and mechanical devices, water systems, sound systems, fog machines, and other forms of technology to increase the sensory experience of the participant and make them feel as if they were located in that particular setting.

Experiential design is now becoming mainstream as more and more designers and architects are in favor of building human-centric spaces. As the modern lifestyle is progressively becoming eventful, people have started to discover, socialize and engage in more global dynamics. The advancement of technology has also led to an evolution in human behavior. Design these days is not about what is trending anymore but is about meeting all kinds of human needs. If the user feels connected to a space, he will want to come back. 

Quality experiences within a space make the user more engaged which further translates into more customers and more productive staff. In the context of businesses, such narrated spaces result in customer loyalty, better brand reputation, and better profits. As stated by Ada Louise Huxtable , more people “prefer to seek entertainment and escape from the disturbing or humdrum aspects of urban and suburban life.” With the desire for amusement and experiences among the population, “theme” and “entertainment” design have become a dominant factor influencing design and real estate development decisions.

Yamini Kathuria is an architect who has recently graduated with a masters in interior design from CEPT University, Ahmedabad. A strong believer of the notion that built-spaces directly influence how people live, connect and perform, she approaches design as a multi-layered process which involves creativity, analytical research and contextual awareness.

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Cracking the inheritance tax code: a case study in calculating IHT

Friday 20th September 2024

1 HRS 00 MINS

There’s nothing paraplanners love more than a case study to help bring a technical topic to life.

And that’s especially true when it comes to getting to grips with the complexities of inheritance tax (IHT) calculations.

Which is why you’re invited to join us online at 1pm on Friday 20 September 2024 for a case-study led online Assembly that’s all about calculating IHT.

Join Graeme Robb from M&G Wealth as he guides us through a case study in which he will break down each stage and address common misconceptions. During the lunch-hour Assembly, Graeme expects to cover:

• Nil rate bands: how nil rate bands come into play and their place in calculations
• Failed PETs: learn how to bring failed potentially exempt transfers (PETs) back into the equation
• Chargeable lifetime transfers: discover the impact of transfers requiring a 14-year look-back period
• Allowances on death: explore the various allowances that can be factored into calculations if unused
• Taper relief: how it actually works – it’s not what many think!
• Charitable gifts: unpack the 36% band for charitable gifts and find out how to calculate it correctly
• Deeds of variation: understand their influence on IHT calculations
• Tax responsibility: who’s actually responsible for paying the calculated tax

Because it’s an Assembly, you’ll have plenty of chances to ask questions, share examples and make suggestions.

How does that sound? If you fancy joining in, save your spot now.

Graeme Robb

Graeme Robb is a Senior Technical Manager in the technical team at M&G Wealth. He is a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Adviser, specialising in tax and trusts. Graeme joined Scottish Mutual's Technical Support Unit in 1996 providing taxation and trust expertise to its onshore and offshore operations. His role evolved to support other businesses under the Abbey National umbrella - Scottish Provident, Scottish Provident International, Cater Allen Bank and James Hay. Graeme also worked as a Technical Manager for Santander Private Banking UK and has held positions at accountancy firms Ernst & Young and Grant Thornton.

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• Published: 03 September 2024

A time-stratified, case–crossover study of heat exposure and perinatal mortality from 16 hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa

• Claudia Hanson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8066-7873 1 , 2 , 3   na1 ,
• Jeroen de Bont 4   na1 ,
• Kristi Sidney Annerstedt 1 ,
• Maria del Rosario Alsina 1 ,
• Federica Nobile 4 , 5 ,
• Nathalie Roos 6 ,
• Peter Waiswa 7 ,
• Andrea Pembe   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8090-3298 8 ,
• Jean-Paul Dossou 9 ,
• Effie Chipeta 10 ,
• Lenka Benova 11 ,
• Hussein Kidanto 3 ,
• Cherie Part   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3281-1671 2 ,
• Massimo Stafoggia 5 ,
• Veronique Filippi 2 &
• Petter Ljungman   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7815-2632 4 , 12  

Nature Medicine ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

• Epidemiology
• Risk factors

Growing evidence suggests that extreme heat events affect both pregnant women and their infants, but few studies are available from sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from 138,015 singleton births in 16 hospitals in Benin, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, we investigated the association between extreme heat and early perinatal deaths, including antepartum and intrapartum stillbirths, and deaths within 24 h after birth using a time-stratified case–crossover design. We observed an association between an increase from the 75th to the 99th percentile in mean temperature 1 week (lag 0–6 d) before childbirth and perinatal mortality (odds ratio (OR) = 1.34 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.01–1.78)). The estimates for stillbirths were similarly positive, but CIs included unity: OR = 1.29 (95% CI 0.95–1.77) for all stillbirths, OR = 1.18 (95% CI 0.71–1.95) for antepartum stillbirths and OR = 1.64 (95% CI 0.74–3.63) for intrapartum stillbirths. The cumulative exposure–response curve suggested that the steepest slopes for heat for intrapartum stillbirths and associations were stronger during the hottest seasons. We conclude that short-term heat exposure may increase mortality risks, particularly for intrapartum stillbirths, raising the importance of improved intrapartum care.

Globally, every year 1.9 million infants are stillborn—that is, born dead 1 . There are an additional 2.3 million newborn deaths: these are babies who are born alive but die within the first 28 d of life—the neonatal period 1 . Intrapartum stillbirths, babies dying during labor, comprise roughly 50% of the stillbirth burden in sub-Saharan Africa. Reducing the high burden of stillbirth and neonatal mortality is a main objective of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the World Health Organization’s Every Newborn Action Plan 2 , 3 . Although, in recent years, some progress has been seen in perinatal health and survival, hard-won gains could be further hampered by the effects of climate change 4 .

Temperatures are rising globally 5 . In Africa, average rates of warming increased from +0.2 °C per decade between 1961 and 1990 to +0.3 °C per decade during the 1991–2022 period 6 . Emerging evidence suggests that high ambient air temperature is associated with an increased risk of stillbirth 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 .

Scholars have hypothesized pathophysiological pathways, mainly informed by animal studies, broadly categorizing (1) indirect and (2) direct pathways (Fig. 1 ). Indirect pathways include macro-level factors, such as the negative effects of heat on health system responsiveness due to healthcare workers’ exhaustion or on agriculture affecting nutrition. Direct pathways include embryogenetic and fetal impacts as well as placental changes 11 . Physiological adaptation to high temperatures involves cellular changes and altered hormonal and immune systems that generate placental changes. This might increase the risk of hypertensive disorders 9 , 13 , 14 and placental abruption 15 , 16 or trigger contractions 10 , 17 that directly affect survival of the fetus. Heat can lead to epigenetic changes or altered imprinting that could result in birth defects 18 , a known risk factor for stillbirth and neonatal death 19 .

Direct effects of heat may include placental changes and embryogenic/fetal impacts. These may lead to epigenetic changes, imprinting and other molecular effects. In the second and third trimester, these changes may lead to physiological effects, such as fetal growth restriction, resulting in stillbirth and neonatal deaths. In addition, indirect impacts may have an effect through health system responsiveness or through psychological factors, including stress and nutrition.

Mechanisms at birth may include overwhelmed thermoregulation, which may reduce central blood flow, resulting in placental hypoperfusion 17 , 20 , dehydration, hypovolemia and other physiological effects 17 . Reduced placental capacity, oxidative stress and heat shock proteins may trigger preterm birth—that is, birth before 37 weeks of gestational age 7 , 9 , 21 . Preterm birth is a major risk factor for stillbirth and neonatal mortality 22 . Furthermore, heat stress may impair placental development and spiral artery remodeling and increase the risk of hypertensive disorders, another key risk factor for stillbirths 9 , 13 , 14 . Placental abruption has also been associated with ambient temperature, directly affecting survival of the fetus 15 , 16 .

Epidemiological studies conducted in high-income countries suggest that the risk of stillbirth is due to the acute effect of ambient temperature during the week before birth 23 , 24 . It is important to note that the underlying and immediate causes of stillbirth differ between settings, which is why the evidence from high-income countries can neither be generalized to sub-Saharan Africa nor fully inform the development of interventions for mitigation. In high-income countries, most stillbirths occur in the antepartum period—that is, before labor starts 23 , 24 , 25 . Causes of antepartum stillbirths are often multifactorial, and no single underlying condition or cause may explain the death 26 . In contrast, intrapartum stillbirths—the predominant type of stillbirth in sub-Saharan Africa—are more often caused by direct obstetric complications, such as prolonged labor or acute fetal distress. However, only two studies, both with a very limited number of intrapartum stillbirths and both from high-income countries, have evaluated the effect of heat by timing or causes of such deaths. The findings from these two studies were inconclusive 27 , 28 . Thus, there is insufficient evidence on the effects of heat on stillbirths as well as deaths immediately after birth specifically addressing the sub-Saharan African context 7 , 11 .

In summary, current understanding of the impacts of extreme heat on perinatal mortality is insufficient 7 , 11 , and disaggregating the effects of heat by time of death is crucial for designing specific public health interventions. For instance, if women and their infants are most vulnerable during birth, infrastructural and operational changes in childbirth facilities will need to be prioritized to address the increased risk 11 .

Within the context of (1) rapidly rising temperatures in Africa, (2) extremely high burden of perinatal mortality in sub-Saharan Africa and (3) lack of studies to investigate the effect of extreme heat on intrapartum stillbirths, our study investigated the association between heat exposure in the final week of pregnancy and perinatal deaths, disaggregated by timing of death (before and during labor). We combined ambient temperature data with a large clinical dataset including births from 16 hospitals in Benin, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, and we performed case–crossover analyses disaggregating associations between heat exposure and perinatal mortality and antepartum and intrapartum stillbirths.

Population characteristics

This study included 138,015 singleton births from four sub-Saharan African countries between 1 July 2021 and 31 December 2023 (Table 1 and Supplementary Fig. 1 ). Perinatal deaths included all stillbirths and neonatal deaths occurring during the first 24 h of life (5,542; 4.0%). Stillbirths constituted 4,886 (3.5%) of all births, of which 2,734 (56.0%) were classified as antepartum and 2,152 (44.0%) as intrapartum, based on skin appearance. The largest sample size of births was obtained from Malawi (accounting for 36.6% of the total sample), whereas Tanzania had the lowest sample size (17.3%). Benin had the highest rate of stillbirths and perinatal deaths, accounting for 7.2% and 8.0% of all births, respectively. Benin and Malawi showed the highest and lowest weekly mean temperature before birth of 26.9 °C and 20.1 °C, respectively (Table 1 and Supplementary Fig. 2 ). Tanzania recorded the highest average maximum temperature of 30.2 °C, and Benin had the highest average minimum temperature of 25.0 °C.

Association between temperature and perinatal mortality

We observed an association (odds ratio (OR) = 1.34, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.01–1.78, I 2  = 0%) between heat exposure and perinatal mortality with an increase from the 75th to the 99th percentile in mean temperature 1 week (lag 0–6 d) before childbirth (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Table 2 ). We found similar positive risk estimates for stillbirths with CIs including unity: OR = 1.29 (95% CI 0.95–1.77, I 2  = 0%) for all stillbirths; OR = 1.18 (95% CI 0.71–1.95, I 2  = 0%) for antepartum stillbirths and OR = 1.64 (95% CI 0.74–3.63, I 2  = 63%) for intrapartum stillbirths. Associations were stronger during the six hottest months of the year with OR = 1.91 (95% CI 1.13–3.25) for stillbirths and OR = 1.96 (95% CI 1.33–2.89) for all perinatal deaths (Extended Data Fig. 1 ). Tanzania, which had the smallest sample size, demonstrated more unstable effect estimates with wide CIs for antepartum and intrapartum stillbirths. Country-specific associations were otherwise consistent and showed positive associations, with the exception of antepartum stillbirths in Benin, which included one tertiary hospital with very high referral rates.

This figure depicts the country-specific and pooled estimates presented as ORs and 95% CIs (mean ± 1.96 × s.e.m.) obtained from conditional logistic regression models. The estimates show the association of an increase in temperature (from the 75th to the 99th percentile) the week before birth (lag 0–6 d) on stillbirths ( n  = 4,886) ( a ), antepartum stillbirths ( n  = 2,152) ( b ), intrapartum stillbirths ( n  = 2,734) ( c ) and perinatal deaths ( n  = 5,880) ( d ). In the case–crossover design, each case serves as its own control. We defined control days as the same day of the week within the same month as childbirth. The data were obtained from 16 hospitals in four different countries, including Benin (four hospitals), Malawi (four hospitals), Tanzania (four hospitals) and Uganda (four hospitals). The vertical dashed line represents the value of the OR obtained from the meta-analyses, and the size of the square corresponds to the weight contribution to the meta-analyses. Estimates with smaller CIs had larger squares and contributed with more weight to the meta-analyses.

Exploring the influence of modeling different exposure duration periods during the last week of pregnancy on the associations between temperature and birth outcomes, we observed similar associations between stillbirths and all perinatal deaths with exposure during the last two (lag 0–2) and the last seven (lag 0–6) days before birth (Extended Data Fig. 2 ). We observed the strongest evidence of an association using lag 0–2 d for antepartum stillbirths (OR = 1.50 (95% CI 1.04–218)) and lag 0–6 d for intrapartum stillbirths. By incorporating two or three knots at higher percentiles, we found results that were consistent with our primary approach (as shown in Extended Data Fig. 3 ). However, with fewer knots at lower-percentile locations (that is, less flexibility at high temperatures), we were unable to adequately capture the effects of heat. We found very similar associations using maximum and minimum temperatures 1 week before birth (Supplementary Table 2 ) but slightly stronger associations using minimum temperatures for all stillbirths and maximum temperatures for intrapartum stillbirths. When excluding births of women who were not referred, thus probably more similar to a general birthing population in the countries, results remained largely consistent, except for stillbirths, where the effect estimate was reduced, although the CIs overlapped with those of the main model results (Extended Data Fig. 4 ). In other sensitivity analyses, we observed similar associations using the 50th percentile as centered values (Supplementary Table 3 ), and, additionally, the effect estimates of temperature and perinatal mortality did not change after adjusting for relative humidity (Extended Data Fig. 5 ). Finally, we observed almost identical estimates using the higher (9 km × 9 km) and the lower (28 km × 28 km) resolution temperature models (Extended Data Fig. 6 ). Finally, we observed that an increase in mean temperature from the 75th to the 99th percentile in the third trimester was associated with a higher hazard ratio for stillbirths and perinatal mortality. No associations were found for the first and second trimesters (Extended Data Fig. 7 ).

Exposure–response curve

In the meta-regression, we observed a wide U-shaped exposure–response curve between mean temperature and stillbirths and all perinatal deaths, indicating an elevated risk of stillbirths going from the 75th (around 25 °C) percentile until the highest temperatures (Fig. 3 ). The steepest slope and highest risk were observed for intrapartum stillbirths. Consistent cumulative exposure–response curves were found using maximum and minimum temperatures, indicating that the strongest associations were for intrapartum stillbirths for both extreme sides of temperature (Extended Data Figs. 8 and 9 ).

The figure depicts the cumulative OR of stillbirths ( n  = 4,886) ( a ), antepartum stillbirths ( n  = 2,152) ( b ), intrapartum stillbirths ( n  = 2,734) ( c ) and perinatal deaths ( n  = 5,880) ( d ) and 95% CIs (mean ± 1.96 × s.e.m.) (gray shadings). In the case–crossover design, each case serves as its own control. We defined control days as the same day of the week within the same month as childbirth. The figure represents the OR of temperature against the cumulative 75th percentile of annual mean temperature. The corresponding 75th percentile temperature values of each country can be found in Supplementary Table 2 .

Effect modification

In effect modification analyses, we found slightly stronger associations between mean temperature and the different stillbirth outcomes in babies of younger women (<35 years) and multiparous women and in preterm births (Extended Data Fig. 10 ). Furthermore, the effect estimates for HIV-positive women, women with hypertensive disorders and women who gave birth to a preterm baby and extreme heat were higher for stillbirths, intrapartum stillbirths and all perinatal deaths combined but with wide CIs.

Among 138,015 hospital-based singleton births in four sub-Saharan African countries, we observed evidence to support associations between heat exposure in the week leading up to the birth and perinatal mortality. An increase in mean temperature from the 75th to the 99th percentile was associated with a 34% increased risk of perinatal mortality. Effect estimates for stillbirths were in the same direction although did not reach statistical significance but suggested the steepest increase for intrapartum stillbirth. Stronger associations were observed for stillbirths and perinatal mortality during the six hottest months of the year, further supporting these results. This study had a high number (44%) of stillbirths that occurred during labor. Our study adds evidence to a recent narrative review reporting positive associations between heat and stillbirth in 19 of 20 published studies 11 and previous systematic reviews 7 , 29 , increasing the number of studies reporting on the effect in sub-Saharan Africa to a total of four studies.

The present study took place in countries with high perinatal mortality. We included larger district or referral hospitals that bear a larger share of births with obstetric complications although with wide variations among the countries. The hospitals in Benin had the highest share of cases that were referred and had obstetric complications, thus a high-risk case mix. The hospitals of Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda had lower complication patterns, suggesting a more unselected case mix. A comparative study using population-based data described that about 30% of all live births take place in hospitals in Benin, 33% in Malawi, 32% in Tanzania and 37% in Uganda 30 , supporting the relevance of our findings despite the distinct case mix and higher-risk birthing population.

Comparing our effects of ambient temperature on stillbirth mortality with other estimates is challenging as studies are heterogeneous in terms of exposure metric, unit change and time period of effect. Generally, evidence is stronger for an acute effect of heat (that is, in the last weeks or trimester of pregnancy) 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 than for a delayed effect occurring in the first or second trimester 28 , 36 . Few studies have evaluated associations between temperature in the week before birth and stillbirths, as we did. A recent systematic review and meta-analysis 7 included two studies from high-income countries using the same analysis method (lag 0–6 d). This study reported an OR = 1.24 (95% CI 1.12–1.36) increased risk of stillbirth for extreme heat exposure in the week before birth, which is consistent with our estimate for all stillbirths 7 .

The higher susceptibility toward heat in the third trimester and the last few weeks of pregnancy 23 , 28 , 37 , 38 motivated us to specifically examine the last week before birth. The time-stratified case–crossover design adjusts for individual-level confounders that change slowly over time (such as maternal age, wealth, gestational age, education, lifestyle and socioeconomic conditions) as well as potential confounding by season and day of the week. This design is particularly efficient at capturing triggered health effects from short-term exposures and on outcomes that are temporally well defined. This might explain why we found the strongest effect on intrapartum stillbirth where we have the highest confidence of timing of death and, thus, least risk of exposure misclassification. The stronger effect may also reflect indirect effects of heat impacts on quality of healthcare delivery. However, our design did not allow analysis of longer-term windows of susceptibility to ambient temperature (for example, multiple weeks) as only short lags can be used with confidence in case–crossover analyses 21 . Thus, our methodology was not suited to capture the effect of heat in early pregnancy, such as on epigenetic changes, imprinting and direct placental changes, nor on prenatal effects of long-term exposure to temperature (Fig. 1 ) 39 . In our sensitivity analyses, we observed that longer-term exposure during the third trimester was associated with perinatal mortality, supporting the focus on the exposure during the last part of pregnancy. However, the long-term results should be interpreted with caution because we lacked key confounders, such as smoking, wealth and education, among others, that are important to adjust for when using analytical methods, such as time-to-event analyses of long-term exposure. Additionally, because we had no information on the residential addresses of the pregnant women, considering longer periods of exposure will introduce a high risk of exposure misclassification due to a lack of spatial contrast in exposure. Despite this, it is important to note that vulnerabilities that accumulate at birth—for example, placenta insufficiency caused by heat stress in early pregnancy—may be worsened by acute heat stress causing perinatal mortality.

We observed stronger estimates for associations between extreme temperature and intrapartum stillbirths compared to antepartum stillbirths or perinatal deaths. To our knowledge, only two previous studies, both from high-income countries, have attempted to report heat effects by timing of fetal death, and findings were inconclusive 27 , 28 . Ha et al. 28 reported similar effect sizes of extreme heat on antepartum versus intrapartum stillbirths across 12 clinical centers across the United States. Auger et al. 27 examined the effect of heat by cause of stillbirth in Canada and found some evidence that heat was more strongly associated with an ‘undetermined’ cause of death, which is more commonly seen for antepartum stillbirths 27 . However, this study also reported weak evidence of an association between extreme heat and maternal complications, such as premature rupture of membranes—a complication leading more often to intrapartum stillbirth 27 . Furthermore, in a study conducted in the United States, the risk of stillbirth associated with the effect of elevated temperature was higher among women with placental abruption 16 . In our stratified analysis, we found no evidence of an association between heat and women with antepartum hemorrhage, a possible sign and symptom of placental abruption. In addition, we also found no evidence of an association between heat and prolonged labor, another frequent cause of intrapartum stillbirths, thus not supporting the hypothesis that physical exhaustion and prolonged labor may be an important pathway. However, it is important to note that obstetric risk factors are interrelated. For example, hypertensive disorders, depending on severity, may lead to partial or full placental abruption, which may cause either an antepartum or an intrapartum stillbirth. Although recognizing the large uncertainty reflected by the wide CIs, we observed a tendency for higher risks related to heat on overall perinatal deaths, stillbirth and antepartum stillbirth in women with hypertensive disorders, supporting previous evidence of a potential causal mechanism 9 , 13 , 14 . However, it is important to note that our results consider heat effects only in late pregnancy. Some previous studies supported the hypothesis that heat exposure in very early pregnancy increases the risk of preeclampsia, which may then increase the risk of perinatal death (Fig. 1 ) 9 , 13 , 14 . Our results point to an additional effect in the last week of pregnancy, further increasing the fetal vulnerability to heat exposure. Results disaggregating the effect by HIV status were inconclusive in contrast with a study from Botswana that reported increased vulnerability to seasonal temperature changes in HIV-positive women 40 .

The main methodological strength of our study was the inclusion of a large number of stillbirths and perinatal deaths from an overall population of 138,015 singleton births. The observations were collected from diverse settings, including private and public facilities and community, district and referral hospitals from four countries in two different regions of sub-Saharan Africa with very different backgrounds. We used a prospective design to analyze the associations between extreme heat exposure and stillbirth and very early neonatal mortality from sub-Saharan Africa. The prospective nature reduces the misclassification error in determining the outcome and made it possible to disaggregate antepartum and intrapartum stillbirths and to expand the analysis to perinatal mortality. Although the data collection started in 2021 during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we think that the pandemic had no major impact. First, our data showed no change in the average number of births per hospitals—a pattern also reported by others 41 . Second, there were limited changes in care in our study hospitals, as reported elsewhere 42 .

This study conducted in sub-Saharan Africa disaggregated antepartum and intrapartum stillbirths and perinatal mortality to examine the effect of extreme heat. Intrapartum stillbirths have become rare in most high-income settings because of appropriate obstetric management, but they contribute to almost half of all stillbirths in sub-Saharan Africa, which is why we think that our analysis is of particular relevance 25 .

However, our study also had limitations. First, this is a hospital-based study and, thus, includes a selected birthing population with a relatively high proportion of childbirth complications. In Benin and Uganda, 53.8% and 14.5% of women were referred, respectively, suggesting a very high risk of adverse events. Other analyses of this sample highlight the association between obstetric risk factors and perinatal mortality 43 . Considering that our study includes births taking place only in hospitals, but not in lower-level health centers or at home, we caution against generalizing our findings to wider populations. Our analysis is representative of only about 30–40% of all births that take place in hospitals, and studies from sub-Saharan Africa indicate that poorer women living in remote and rural areas, as well as those women with many children, are underrepresented in hospital birthing populations 30 , 44 . However, such women may be more vulnerable to heat stress.

Although our data collection approach aimed to ensure quality reporting of clinical risk factors, potential low reporting of factors, such as milder hypertensive disorders, must be taken into consideration. However, these limitations are not likely to confound our results because the case–crossover design analyzes associations within individual comparisons, but they might overlook differences in susceptibilities in subpopulations. One of the assumptions of the individual-level case–crossover design is invariance of the individual-level baseline risk in the referent window (the month of birth, in our example). This is usually considered a reasonable assumption with outcomes such as mortality or hospital admissions, but it might not hold entirely for stillbirths, whose risk is expected to increase in the last weeks of gestation. Although we expect that the bi-directional approach of control selection would partially minimize this risk, we cannot entirely rule out residual bias in our effect estimates 45 . Furthermore, we did not know the exact time of death of the antepartum births, which might have introduced misclassification bias. The hospital-based data collection meant that we must assume that the temperature in the hospital was similar to the women’s home. Catchment areas of hospitals typically include a radius of 10–30 km as we described, for example, in Tanzania 46 . The granularity of the Copernicus Climate Data used included both 28-km and 9-km grids that gave similar results ( https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/ ), and, thus, we think that the potential bias introduced by using the hospital location instead of the mothersʼ place of residence is acceptable 47 . This is further supported by the fact that short-term temperature changes have higher temporal variability compared to spatial variability. In other words, relative changes in temperature will be similar across rather large areas. Moreover, mean temperature has typically been assumed to be the appropriate temperature metric relevant to health effects; we tested that assumption in sensitivity analyses and observed some evidence to indicate stronger effects using the maximum temperature, similar to some previous studies 31 , 33 .

Our findings are in line with previous studies and lead to an increased understanding of the effect of extreme heat on perinatal mortality; however, more research is required to understand the pathophysiology behind effects of extreme heat on intrapartum stillbirths versus antepartum stillbirths. Large datasets with clinical, physiological, socio-demographic and behavioral data are required for this type of analysis. Indirect pathways, although hypothesized, have not been well established 4 . We do not know the effect of heat on maternal stress or on health system functioning, both of which are important in sub-Saharan Africa. The effect of ambient temperature on healthcare workers’ performance in sub-Saharan Africa has received little attention but could also contribute to stillbirths. A recent study from Australia points to increased fatigue in surgeons exposed to temperature of 31 °C even with limited exposure of 2–3 h (ref. 48 ). Heat exposure of healthcare workers may, thus, exacerbate further quality-of-care deficiencies in these settings where labor rooms are not temperature controlled.

Our findings highlight the need to consider improved protection of pregnant and laboring women from adverse effects of rising temperatures. Early warning systems and health promotion recommendations are warranted, such as use of shaded environments as outlined by experts 4 , 11 . We would like to highlight that appropriate and timely obstetric management has the potential to nearly eliminate intrapartum stillbirths, which is why this study underscores the importance of quality intrapartum care. In response, the concept of respectful, responsive and high-quality intrapartum care is even more relevant to mitigate heat-related deaths. Additional measures may include re-designing clinics and labor wards to reduce heat impacts through improved construction, allowing air flow and roof insulation, combined with the creation of green spaces near the labor ward 49 .

Our results provide support for an increased risk of perinatal mortality with heat exposure during the last week of pregnancy in sub-Saharan Africa. Although our findings are not conclusive for all estimates, we provide much-needed evidence from a region where, to date, few empirical studies are published but where climate change and increasing temperatures are of particular concern. Increased efforts are needed to improve the quality of intrapartum care to ensure that hard-won improvements in mortality in sub-Saharan Africa are not reversing due to heat exposure. Furthermore, implementation research is needed to develop appropriate interventions to protect pregnant women from the negative effects of extreme heat.

Ethics and inclusion statement

The ALERT study was approved by local and national institutional review boards with details provided in our protocol paper 50 . It was approved by the following: Karolinska Institutet, Sweden (Etikprövningsmyndigheten—Dnr 2020–01587); Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST)—(HS1324ES); Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) Research and Ethics Committee, Tanzania (MUHAS-REC-04-2020-118); Aga Khan University Ethical Review Committee, Tanzania (AKU/2019/044/fb); College of Medicine Research and Ethics Committee (COMREC), Malawi—(COMREC P.04/20/3038); Comité National d’Ethique pour la Recherche en Santé, Cotonou, Bénin—(83/MS/DC/SGM/CNERS/ST); the institutional review board at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp; and the Ethics Committee at the University Hospital Antwerp, Belgium—(ITG 1375/20. B3002020000116).

Approval from all participating countries exempted the study from requiring individual informed consent from women and their fetus, as only routinely documented and abstracted data were collected in the ALERT perinatal e-registry. This is a common approach also done in high-income countries, such as Sweden 51 , to address difficulties to obtain consent during labor 52 . Data were de-identified and did not include any socio-demographic information of wealth, education or place of living, which would have required consent. This guaranteed meticulous protection of privacy and confidentiality for all participants.

The ALERT consortium is committed to equitable inclusion and authorship. The authorship list includes all ALERT members who conceptualized the trial and supported the data collection, including quality assurance and processing of the data. Authorship and contributions are discussed during monthly consortium meetings, which include all members. All publications are internally reviewed before submission as outlined in our ALERT publication and data use policy. Authorship of key analysis papers involving all four countries are discussed within the ALERT steering committee meetings involving the country principal investigators and work package leaders. Our ALERT consortium includes three postdoctoral researchers, six PhD students and over 15 MSc students, supporting our strong capacity-building commitment. Most MSc students, PhD students and postdoctoral fellows are from low-resource settings and are female. Local knowledge is taken into consideration throughout the study implementation through co-design and work package meetings. An increasing number of papers are being published on issues relevant to ALERT members—see https://alert.ki.se/ .

The idea of this study was born out of the increased recognition and interest of the effect of climate change and increasing temperature within the ALERT consortium. Conceptualization and methodological approaches of the present study were discussed during Zoom meetings including all authors and has sparked further discussions and development of academic work.

Data source and study population

This study included singleton births from a prospective observational study in 16 hospitals in Benin, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, which were collected as part of the Action Leveraging Evidence to Reduce perinatal morTality and morbidity (ALERT) study 50 . Benin, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda are low-income and lower-middle-income countries facing a large perinatal mortality burden 1 . They are categorized as low-income or lower-middle-income countries with real gross domestic product per capita of between US$1,500 (Malawi) and US$3,300 (Benin) (Supplementary Table 1 ). Uptake to antenatal and childbirth care in facilities is improving, but health systems are weak. Childbirth care faces larger out-of-pocket expenses, particularly in Benin and Uganda, restricting preventive uptake of hospital care.

In each of the countries, four medium-size hospitals were included with more than 2,500 births per annum. Hospitals were typically district or regional public and private-non-profit (faith-based) facilities, although the national referral hospital in Cotonou, Benin, also took part in the study. In this analysis, we included all mother–baby pairs admitted for childbirth in any of the hospitals between 1 July 2021 and 31 December 2023. We excluded mother–baby pairs who were referred to the hospitals after giving birth. Data were entered daily by data clerks who were nurses or midwives in the maternity ward of each hospital. An initial 2-day training, subsequent regular on-site supervision and a WhatsApp group supported the data collection. Data were abstracted from standardized paper-based case notes and abstracted into a pre-programmed harmonized perinatal e-registry using the Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) platform. The application had in-build checks for completeness, ranges and consistencies. Initially weekly, later monthly, Zoom calls checked for completeness of the data entry. Furthermore, prepared do-files preparing initial analysis allowed the follow-up of a larger number of indicators to critically review face validity; protocol details are published elsewhere 53 . Observations with missing outcome ( n  = 85) and exposure ( n  = 145) data were removed from the dataset (Supplementary Fig. 1 ).

ALERT is registered (17 June 2020) in the Pan African Clinical Trial Registry at 202006793783148. The ALERT study was approved by the Swedish Ethical Authority and in each participating country, with details provided in our protocol paper 50 . Approval from all participating countries exempted the study from informed individual consent from women and their fetuses, as only routinely documented and abstracted data were used in the ALERT perinatal e-registry, and data were de-identified.

Outcome assessment

Our main outcomes were stillbirths (including both antepartum and intrapartum deaths) and very early neonatal deaths documented in REDCap by nurses or midwives in each hospital 53 . Stillbirths were defined as the death of a fetus before birth, weighing at least 1,000 g, and which could not be resuscitated after birth. Perinatal deaths included both stillbirths and deaths within the first 24 h (very early neonatal deaths). We chose 24 h as a cutoff as mothers were usually discharged the day after birth. Data collectors and nursing staff in the study hospitals were trained to distinguish antepartum and intrapartum stillbirth based on skin appearance rather than in relation to onset of labor. Because skin disintegration is considered to begin 12 h after death, macerated stillbirth is assumed to have occurred before the onset of labor, and fresh stillbirth after, and these were used as a proxy for antepartum and intrapartum stillbirth, respectively. Training protocols followed national standards. Our investigation into the data confirmed that data are more reliable when using the physical appearance. First, fetal heart rate is more often not reported for macerated stillbirths; health providers may be unsure if the fetal heart rate is not present and then decide not to document at all. Second, women often reach the hospital late in labor, particularly if they are referred, which is why a negative fetal heart beat at admission cannot be used as a clear indication that the baby was already dead when labor started.

Other obstetric variables for stratified analysis

For the stratified analysis, we considered obstetric variables that were collected as part of our perinatal e-registry. Information was abstracted by nurses or midwives from antenatal care cards (for example, maternal age and HIV status), retrieved from admission files (for example, complications such as hypertensive disorders and antepartum bleeding) or clinical files (for example, babies’ sex and birth weight) and entered into the electronic REDCap perinatal e-registry form 53 .

Exposure assessment

We obtained daily mean temperatures at 2 m from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) at a 9 × 9-km resolution (0.1° × 0.1°). Data were freely downloaded from the Copernicus Climate Data store ( https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/ ). We linked the daily mean temperatures at the specific grid of ECMWF within which each hospital was located and estimated the daily mean temperature for each day during the last week of each pregnancy (lag 0–6 d). We further extracted 24-hourly data from the ECMWG to estimate the mean, maximum and minimum values. In addition, we included daily dew point temperature at 2 m obtained from the ECMWF to estimate relative humidity using the Magnus formula, which incorporates both air and dew point temperatures 54 .

Statistical analysis

We estimated the association between multiple short-term air temperature metrics the week before birth (lag 0–6 d) and perinatal mortality using a case–crossover design. This design has been widely used in short-term studies, including for the association between temperature and perinatal mortality 55 . The major advantage of the case–crossover design is that each case serves as its own control, allowing for precise adjustment of individual-level confounders that remain constant or change slowly over time, such as age and obstetric risk factors 55 . In our study, we adopted a bi-directional asymmetrical time-stratified strategy to select control days for each case that has been shown to provide unbiased estimates 45 . This strategy involves defining control days as the same day of the week within the same month as childbirth. By employing this approach, we can effectively control for day of the week and other short-term temporal trends, as the cases and controls are closely matched in time. Additionally, the separation of cases and controls by 7 d helps reduce serial autocorrelation in exposures and outcomes 55 . We first applied country-specific distributed-lag nonlinear models with the conditional logistic regression to evaluate the association between temperature metrics the week before birth (lag 0–6 d) and perinatal mortality. Previous studies found consistent nonlinear relationships (U-shaped and J-shaped) between temperature and mortality outcomes 56 , 57 . To account for this nonlinearity, we applied a natural cubic spline with three internal knots placed at the 10th, 75th and 90th percentiles of country-specific temperature distributions and the lag-response curve with a natural cubic spline with three internal knots placed at equally spaced values in the log scale. This selection was based on previous literature to capture the effect of warm temperatures 37 , 58 . We then summarized the risk for heat, computing the ORs and 95% CIs and comparing the 99th percentile versus the 75th percentile of the annual temperature distribution. We applied this percentile to accurately reflect the warm season, as the estimated minimum mortality temperature (MMT) in some countries was set at very low levels of the temperature distribution. The MMT was evaluated as the lowest point in the temperature range from the country-specific temperature–perinatal mortality curves 59 . We considered the week before the birth period (lag 0–6 d) as our reference exposures because previous studies indicated this to be the period of highest susceptibility 23 , 28 , 37 , 38 . In the second stage, we applied a random-effects meta-analytical model to pool the country-specific estimates of associations of temperature and perinatal deaths. We applied meta-analyses rather than pooled analysis to account for country-specific differences, such as demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, healthcare infrastructure, environmental conditions, cultural practices and levels of perinatal mortality, all of which can influence the magnitude and direction of the observed associations. We calculated I 2 statistics and used Cochran’s Q test to evaluate the between-country heterogeneity. To obtain the overall shape of the association between temperature and perinatal mortality, we applied a multivariate meta-regression to pool the country-specific exposure response using a validated approach used in previous studies 58 , 60 . Statistical analyses were performed using R software (version 3.6.2).

To evaluate the robustness of our results, we applied several sensitivity analyses. First, we evaluated the effect of temperature 1 week before birth (lag 0–6 d) on stillbirths during the six consecutive hottest months for each country to capture extreme heat events. Second, we explored different lag patterns, including single lag of same day (lag0), 2-d lag (lag 0–1) and 3-d lag (lag 0–2), to identify different windows of vulnerability. Third, to validate our initial selection of knot placements at the 10th, 75th and 90th percentiles, we conducted an evaluation of the heat effect by applying a varying number of knots and adjusting their locations (one knot at the 50th and 75th, two knots at the 25th and 50th, two knots at the 50th and 75th, two knots at the 50th and 90th, two knots at the 75th and 90th, three knots at the 10th, 50th and 90th and three knots at the 25th, 50th and 75th). Fourth, we evaluated the associations of maximum and minimum temperature the week before birth (lag 0–6 d) on perinatal mortality. Fifth, we excluded women who were referred, as the patients may have traveled much greater distances. This non-referred subpopulation may also be closer to the general birthing population. Sixth, we used the 50th percentile as our reference value (in comparison to the 75th value) to evaluate a consistent increase in temperature across countries. Seventh, we adjusted for relative humidity the week before birth (lag 0–6 d). Eighth, we compared our 9 × 9-km resolution temperature values with the coarser 28 × 28-km resolution model, also from the ECMWF, to account for a larger coverage area, as we did not have information about the proximity where the mothers were living from the hospital. Finally, because acute exposures may potentially also be correlated with longer-term exposures, we further evaluated the association between trimester-specific mean temperature exposure and the development of perinatal deaths by applying a time-to-event approach considering gestational age as the time axis. We applied a proportional Cox model adjusted for month of birth, year of conception, sex of the child, maternal age and number of pregnancies. We did not consider this as our main analysis, as our initial hypothesis and analysis plan focused on short-term exposures.

We further stratified the analyses by some key effect modifiers that could potentially modify the associations between short-term exposure of ambient air pollution and still births. The key modifiers included maternal age, HIV status, hypertensive disorders, number of pregnancies, sex of the child, preterm births, low birth weight, labor complication and antepartum hemorrhage.

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

The perinatal e-registry data will be made publicly available 3 years after the finalization of the trial—thus, as of 31 December 2027—as outlined in our data management plan and publication policy. The data are available earlier upon reasonable request, and any person wanting to use the data before this date will need to request to the ALERT steering committee headed by the corresponding author. Access will be restricted if ALERT members are carrying out or planning a similar analysis. The ALERT steering committee will handle the request and provide a response within 1 month. If the ALERT steering committee gives a positive decision, data will be released promptly. The temperature data are freely available from the Copernicus Climate Data store ( https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/ ).

Code availability

The codes are uploaded on GitHub: https://github.com/jdebont/Heat_stillbirth_Hanson_deBont_NatureMedicine_Rcodes .

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported through an implementation science grant (Horizon 2020, no. 847824). C.H. was supported by a fellowship grant from the Swedish Research Council (2019-01906). C.P. and V.F. were supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/T013613/1 and NE/T01363X/1), coordinated through a Belmont Forum partnership. Our deepest gratitude goes to the women, babies and families as well as the health providers, managers and policymakers in the 16 hospitals and four countries involved in the ALERT study. We thank our data safety and monitoring board (J. Hall, E. Lampa and Z. Qureshi) and the ALERT study team: C. Hanson, H. Mölsted Alvesson, K. S. Annerstedt, R. Unkels, S. El Halabi, N. Orsini, A.-B. Nygaard Moller, M. Straneo, A. Månsson, M. del Rosario Alsina, V. Tirado, H. L. Kidanto, M. Abeid, T. Mwansisya, Z. Julius, J.-P. Dossou, A. Sognonvi, A. Vigan, C. Boyi Metogni, G. Houngbo, G. Agballa, C. Agossou, H. Akpovi, E. Akpi, L. Benova, V. Castellano Pleguezuelo, R. Snijders, T. Delvaux, B. Marchal, P. Waiswa, E. O. Ayebare, G. Nalwadda, J. Babirye, P. Wanduru, J. Akuze, G. Namazzi, M. Gross, A. B. Pembe, F. M. Alwy Al-Beity, D. Mkoka, L. T. Mselle, B. Mwilike, E. Chipeta, B. Kandeya, S. Meja, W. Stones and Y. Z. Nyirenda.

Open access funding provided by Karolinska Institute.

Author information

These authors contributed equally: Claudia Hanson, Jeroen de Bont.

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Claudia Hanson, Kristi Sidney Annerstedt & Maria del Rosario Alsina

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

Claudia Hanson, Cherie Part & Veronique Filippi

Centre of Excellence for Women and Child Health, Aga Khan University, Nairobi, Kenya

Claudia Hanson & Hussein Kidanto

Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Jeroen de Bont, Federica Nobile & Petter Ljungman

Department of Epidemiology, Lazio Region Health Service/ASL Roma 1, Rome, Italy

Federica Nobile & Massimo Stafoggia

Clinical Epidemiology Division, Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Nathalie Roos

Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

Peter Waiswa

Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Andrea Pembe

Centre de Recherche en Reproduction Humaine et en Démographie (CERRHUD), Cotonou, Benin

Jean-Paul Dossou

Centre for Reproductive Health, Kamuzu University of Health Science, Blantyre, Malawi

Effie Chipeta

Department of Public Health, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium

Lenka Benova

Department of Cardiology, Danderyd Hospital, Danderyd, Sweden

Petter Ljungman

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Contributions

C.H. and J.d.B., with support from C.P., N.R., M.S., V.F. and P.L., conceptualized this analytical study. C.H., K.S.A., M.d.R.A., P.W., J.-P.D., E.C., L.B., H.K. and A.P. led and supervised the data collection and processing. All ALERT country members supported the collection and processing of the perinatal dataset. F.N. and M.S. processed the temperature data. J.d.B., with support from C.H., M.S., V.F. and P.L., carried out the statistical analysis. All authors reviewed and approved the final version of the paper and were part of Zoom conferences to discuss the methodological approaches and limitations.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claudia Hanson .

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Extended data

Extended data fig. 1 associations between mean temperature the week before birth (lag 0–6) and perinatal mortality during the 6 hottest consecutive months..

Sensitivity Analysis: The figure depicts the pooled estimates for the whole year (grey line, main analysis) and during the 6 hottest consecutive months (black line). The estimates are presented as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals obtained from conditional logistic regression models. The estimates show the association of an increase in temperature (from the 75 th to the 99 th percentile) the week before birth (lag 0–6) on stillbirths, antepartum stillbirths, intrapartum stillbirths, and perinatal deaths.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Associations between mean temperature the week before birth (lag 0–6) and perinatal mortality by different lags (0, 0–1, 0–2 and 0–6).

Sensitivity analysis: The figure depicts the pooled estimates for increasing numbers of lags: 0, 0–1, 0–2, and 0–6 (with the last being our main approach). The estimates are presented as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals obtained from conditional logistic regression models. The estimates show the association of an increase in temperature (from the 75 th to the 99 th percentile) the week before birth (lag 0–6) on stillbirths, antepartum stillbirths, intrapartum stillbirths, and perinatal deaths.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Associations between mean temperature and perinatal mortality by number of knots and their location.

Sensitivity analysis: The figure depicts the pooled estimates evaluating heat effect by applying a varying number of knots and adjusting their locations (1 knot at the 50 th and 75 th , 2 knots at the 25 th and 50 th , 2 knots at the 50 th and 75 th , 2 knots at the 50 th and 90 th , 2 knots at the 75 th and 90 th , 3 knots at the 10 th , 50 th , and 90 th , and 3 knots at the 25 th , 50 th , and 75 th ). Our main model included 3 knots at the 10 th , 75 th and 90 th percentile. The estimates are presented as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals obtained from conditional logistic regression models. The estimates show the association of an increase in temperature (from the 75 th to the 99 th percentile) the week before birth (lag 0–6) on stillbirths, antepartum stillbirths, intrapartum stillbirths, and perinatal deaths.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Associations between mean temperature the week before birth (lag 0–6) and perinatal mortality comparing the main exposure model and excluding the referral births.

Sensitivity analysis: The figure depicts the pooled estimates from our main analysis (black line) and excluding the referral births (grey line). Women referred as the patients may have travelled much greater distances. This non-referred sub-population may also be closer to the general birthing population The estimates are presented as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals obtained from conditional logistic regression models. The estimates show the association of an increase in temperature (from the 75 th to the 99 th percentile) the week before birth (lag 0–6) on stillbirths, antepartum stillbirths, intrapartum stillbirths, and perinatal deaths.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Associations between mean daily temperature the week before birth (lag 0–6) and perinatal mortality adjusted by relative humidity.

Sensitivity analysis: The figure depicts the pooled estimates adjusting (black line) and not adjusting (grey line, main approach) for relative humidity. The estimates are presented as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals obtained from conditional logistic regression models. The estimates show the association of an increase in temperature (from the 75 th to the 99 th percentile) the week before birth (lag 0–6) on stillbirths, antepartum stillbirths, intrapartum stillbirths, and perinatal deaths.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Associations between mean temperature the week before birth (lag 0–6) and perinatal mortality comparing the main exposure model (resolution 9 × 9 × m) and lower resolution model (28 × 28 km).

Sensitivity analysis: The figure depicts the pooled estimates comparing the main exposure model at a 9 × 9 km spatial resolution (grey line) and lower 28 × 28 spatial resolution model (black line). The estimates are presented as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals obtained from conditional logistic regression models. The estimates show the association of an increase in temperature (from the 75 th to the 99 th percentile) the week before birth (lag 0–6) on stillbirths, antepartum stillbirths, intrapartum stillbirths, and perinatal deaths.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Associations between trimester-specific mean temperatures (99 th vs 75 th percentile) during pregnancy and perinatal mortality.

Sensitivity analyses: The figure depicts the pooled estimates comparing trimester-specific mean temperatures (99 th vs 75 th percentile) during pregnancy and perinatal mortality. The estimates are presented as hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals obtained from a Cox proportional hazard model. Models were adjusted for month of conception, year of conception, sex of child, maternal age and number of pregnancies. The estimates show the association of an increase in mean temperature (from the 75 th to the 99 th percentile) during the first, second and third trimester on stillbirths, antepartum stillbirths, intrapartum stillbirths, and perinatal deaths.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Cumulative exposure-response curve between maximum temperature the week before birth (lag 0–6) and perinatal mortality with 95%Cis.

The figure depicts the cumulative odds ratio of ( a ) stillbirths, ( b ) antepartum stillbirths, ( c ) intrapartum stillbirths, and ( d ) perinatal deaths, and 95% CIs (grey shadings). The figure represents the odds ratio of temperature against the cumulative 75 th percentile of annual mean maximum temperature. The corresponding 75 th temperature values of each country can be found in Supplementary Table 2 .

Extended Data Fig. 9 Cumulative exposure-response curve between minimum temperature the week before birth (lag 0–6) and perinatal mortality with 95%Cis.

The figure depicts the cumulative odds ratio of ( a ) stillbirths, ( b ) antepartum stillbirths, ( c ) intrapartum stillbirths, and ( d ) perinatal deaths, and 95% CIs (grey shadings). The figure represents the odds ratio of temperature against the cumulative 75th percentile of annual mean minimum temperature. The corresponding 75th temperature values of each country can be found in Supplementary Table 2 .

Extended Data Fig. 10 Stratified analyses of effect modifiers in the associations between high temperature the week before birth (99 th vs 75 th percentile) and perinatal mortality.

The figure depicts the stratified pooled estimates by some key effect modifiers that could potentially modify the associations between short-term exposure of ambient air pollution and still births. The key modifiers included maternal age, HIV status, hypertensive disorders, number of pregnancies, sex of the child, preterm births, low birthweight, labour complication and antepartum haemorrhage (APH). The estimates are presented as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals obtained from conditional logistic regression models. The estimates show the association of an increase in temperature (from the 75 th to the 99 th percentile) the week before birth (lag 0–6) on stillbirths, antepartum stillbirths, intrapartum stillbirths, and perinatal deaths.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information.

Supplementary Tables 1–3 and Figs. 1 and 2.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary data 1.

Analysis codes—descriptive analysis.

Supplementary Data 2

Analysis codes—results.

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Hanson, C., de Bont, J., Annerstedt, K.S. et al. A time-stratified, case–crossover study of heat exposure and perinatal mortality from 16 hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa. Nat Med (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03245-7

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Leveraging the use of a social media app as a collaborative medical information and knowledge sharing tool—insights from experiential use and survey of a CME WhatsApp community

• Nagendra Kumar Singh 1 ,
• Akashkumar N Singh 2 ,
• Bijay Patni 3 ,
• Ajoy Tewari 4 &
• Sanjeev Phatak 5  

BMC Medical Education volume  24 , Article number:  960 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Background and aim

Continuing Medical Education (CME) is crucial for physicians to stay current in the rapidly advancing field of medicine. A WhatsApp (WA) based community of physicians was initiated in 2016 ‘WhatsApp CME India Group’ to facilitate learning, knowledge sharing, and discussion among physicians. Due to participant size constraints of the technology, it evolved into seven distinct WA groups, overseen by a central administrator. A survey undertaken in the group’s 7th year aimed to evaluate its effectiveness in achieving its goals, measure participant engagement, and uncover the primary factors driving its usage.

The survey questionnaire was distributed to 3500 members across the 07 WhatsApp CME groups for voluntary participation. Data collected was analysed using SPSS version 24.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) and reported using descriptive statistics.

Among the 581 survey respondents, the study found 43% of physicians use the WhatsApp academic groups for CME content, with 32% accessing their group over four times daily. The primary motivation for 77% was to discuss challenging cases and to gain knowledge updates from fellow physician (70%). Medical websites (57%), referral books (49%), and Google (43%) were other significant resources. Every participant (100%) found the WhatsApp CME India group the most beneficial resource for daily medical science updates. A significant portion (57%) of the respondents found the group valuable for real-time information exchange. Over 78% stated it kept them current with knowledge and guidelines. Notably, 94% viewed WhatsApp CME as complementary to physical conferences, not a replacement. The post-conference/webinar summaries were appreciated by 81% participants. Case discussions (31%) and update posts from fellow physicians sharing their insights and learnings (24%) were noted as activities of great academic interest.

This study underscores the potential of digital platforms like WhatsApp in supplementing CME in India and potentially other comparable settings. The blend of digital and traditional resources suggests a balanced learning approach. While real-time engagement is a strength, challenges like information overload and privacy concerns require careful management. Striking a balance is crucial for ensuring content quality, structured discussions and privacy. As the digital age advances, professionals must critically assess shared information on these platforms to guarantee evidence-based and reliable knowledge dissemination.

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Introduction

The proliferation of mobile technology, particularly the widespread adoption of smartphones, has had a profound impact on how professionals’ access and share information through social media (SM) as “a collective term for the different interactive platforms, websites and applications intended for digital networking, that allow individuals and organizations to create and share user-generated content digitally.” [ 1 ] Most of the research done regarding the acceptance and use of SM for professional activities is that of public SM presence such as Facebook and X (previously Twitter) or LinkedIn (LI). Hameed et al. [ 2 ] reported SM presence among approximately 70% of physicians in a US based survey though SM activity was low, with approximately 90% of physicians posting 0 times per month. SM presence and activity do not always correlate with the study reporting female and younger physicians’ higher odds of SM presence, while surgeons and older physicians had higher SM engagement and followers. The links to most social media handles for sharing content on websites and online journals are for LI, Facebook, X and increasingly Instagrams.

WhatsApp is a popular instant messaging digital platform ( https://www.whatsapp.com/contact)  [ 3 ] available in 180 countries. As of June 2023, there were approximately 2.78 billion unique active WhatsApp users globally with the highest number in India. The platform allows for an easy-to-use interface and generating and sharing content in real time therefore finding significant traction within various professional communities.

WhatsApp groups have emerged as focused communication hubs for professionals, including those in the medical field. These platforms offer a democratic space for discussing cases, sharing knowledge, seeking real-time peer expertise, and collaborating on best practices. However, the use of WhatsApp for professional purposes among large groups has its limitations. The high volume of messages and the potential for false narratives can create noise, causing important information to get lost amidst the medium. Effective moderation and adherence to clear guidelines are essential to ensure that the intended message is conveyed effectively, and the group remains focused on its primary objectives.

Continuing medical education is a formal requirement and one of the key drivers of physician engagement with their peer community and other allied groups in various in-person and virtual modes and essential in keeping up with the rapidly expanding field of medicinal research and treatment evolution.

The ability and access to sift through focused good quality content, attend medical conferences/webinars/workshops/podcasts live case discussions is valuable, but may not always be feasible to all physicians, particularly those in remote areas or in very busy practices [ 4 ]. While a lot of content is now delivered and accessible online, going through several different websites or publications requires a disciplined daily engagement, which may not be in everyone’s realm of ability.

If the community were to be able to follow a well-defined protocol or rules of the group and therefore allow it to function as a live interactive platform and not restricted as a broadcast group or a one-way communication platform, its use as a CME tool could be better leveraged and over a period, such platforms could integrate themselves as formal mechanism of verified information and expertise exchange.

We present here the experiences of one such professional community using WhatsApp as a CME tool and the results of a cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey that was undertaken to assess its impact and effectiveness amongst the 3500 physicians.

The WhatsApp CME India, a cluster of 07 WA groups is a rapidly growing community currently of 3500 registered medical professionals largely from internal medicine and allied branches across the world, majority from India (including rural areas), and Indian origin NRI medical professionals. This professional WA platform cluster was founded seven years back as a single group by a physician with the aim of being a platform for exchange of expertise and experience in the speciality of internal medicine.

The primary engagement of this cluster of groups is to share and deliberate on interesting cases, offer, and seek real time expert opinion, discuss publications, medical guidelines or topics in current focus. To keep it interesting and engaging, medical quiz, history in medicine and similar engaging topics constitute part of daily updates. The cluster is constantly reminded of the need to keep the communication focused only on the key objective of being collective experiential knowledge sharing professional community. The administrator ensures that the group engages strictly on topics or cases related to internal medicine and all distracting communication is discouraged.

While each of the group is an independent WA group by itself, the administrator and a core team are part of each group who herd the conversations towards common themes, post updates, guidelines and enable fostering discussions on complex cases that are put up by the group participants. The community therefore engages parallelly on several similar themes and cases with the administrator threading these conversations and cross disseminating them in each of the 07 groups.

This prospective observational survey questionnaire was developed to quantitatively assess the utility and value of this knowledge sharing and learning platform for the group members. It aimed to examine attitudes towards engagement in group interactions by the participants, the determinants, or drivers of WhatsApp CME India group usage among healthcare professionals. Through a comprehensive assessment, the survey sought to understand its impact on enhancing knowledge, its reach, engagement levels, and the benefits and challenges faced by its members.

The questionnaire for the survey was created using Google Form (Google LLC, Mountain View, CA, USA) and shared amongst the WhatsApp CME India groups between May and June 2023. The survey instrument was developed by the authors, and vetted by an expert committee, which included two specialists, a statistician, and the authors of the current study. The questionnaire sought to understand the impact of the group and the member engagement activities qualitatively and quantitatively as a learning and teaching tool. Specifically, the questions were related to the quantum of daily engagement, the value of the group in the hierarchy of available learning options, the comparative utility of the various offerings in the groups and staying true to its objective in being a platform aiding CME.

The questionnaire was shared as a link in each of the groups as well individually, leveraging the innate messaging feature of the platform.

The objective of the study and an invitation to voluntarily participate was also stated with the shared link. These links were sent thrice (once every 2 weeks) to all potential participants during the study period, starting May 2023. A response could only be submitted once by each participant. After the closure of the survey, the data were analysed using SPSS, version 24.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) and reported as descriptive statistics.

Participation in the survey was voluntary and limited to members of the 07 groups. No identifying data or participants demographics, except country of residence were collected. The study protocol stated that providing response to the questionnaire implies informed consent and willingness to participate. The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the ACE Independent Ethics Committee, Bangalore (DCGI Reg. No. ECR/141/Indt/KA/2013/RR-1).

Among the 3500 medical professionals from the various WA groups under CME India n  = 581 (16.6%) participants responded, 25% of the responders were from North America and rest from India.

As per the responses every respondent accessed the group messages daily, with the majority of the respondents (43%) accessing it between 1to 4 times a day, while 32% accessed it more often (Fig.  1 ).

Percentage and Frequency of people relying on WhatsApp CME India group in a day to access CME content

Multiple avenues that are available as information and knowledge resources were all sought by the doctors, where 48% of the participants considered the WhatsApp CME India group as a valuable resource for seeking inputs while dealing with challenging cases, at par with other significant resources such as specific medical websites (57%), closely followed by referral books (49%) and the information accessed through the Google search engine (43%) (Fig.  2 ).

Valuable Resources Accessed for Information

While all the attributes of the WhatsApp CME India group were cited to be of significant value, group discussions on medical cases (77%) and fellow physicians sharing their insights and learnings (70%) were the most attractive attributes of the group, with shared summaries of recent publications, ongoing CMEs and conferences following closely (Fig.  3 ).

Most Attractive Attributes of the WhatsApp CME India Group

All the respondents concurred that the WhatsApp CME India group was a powerful tool for medical education. According to them, it provided a means of continued medical education by providing a platform for keeping current with evolving knowledge and evidence-based guidelines (78%), a world view of current medical practices (57%), and channel for professional communication across a wider geographical network (Fig.  4 ).

Useful Objectives of the WhatsApp CME India Group

As a platform for promoting CME activities, the ability to supplement knowledge and the attributes of functioning of the group, namely staying focused on medical communication with restriction of non-medical messages (68%), continuous moderation of the group allowing for meaningful discussions (70%), and the provision of a larger canvas of learning, facilitating collaboration in research and clinical trials (49%) were all well regarded (Fig.  5 ).

Most Attractive quality of the WhatsApp CME India Group Functioning

A large majority of respondents (94%) felt that while the WhatsApp CME India group was a supplement to physical conferences and not a replacement, the post-conference/webinar summaries (81%) shared on the group were well appreciated. Case discussions (31%) and update posts from fellow physicians sharing their insights and learnings (24%) were noted as activities of great academic interest (Fig.  6 ).

Activities of Most Academic value in the WhatsApp CME India Group

The use of social media is expanding globally and increasingly these platforms are being integrated with traditional forms of learning. CME offering such as conferences and webinars have often utilised Facebook and Twitter to expand their reach [ 5 ]. In our understanding, a professional community utilising WhatsApp as CME platform such as ours, providing learning and knowledge sharing opportunities on a daily basis over seven years is one of its kind.

The appeal and value addition as a modality for CME is reflected in the sustained growth of the WhatsApp CME India group from a single group to seven groups (limited by the application’s restriction of number of participants per group until recently) and its potential for further growth is limitless, given the technological advances in the platform itself, such as larger groups and the forming of Communities.

The results of the survey provide a valuable insight into this potential of using a social media messaging platform for CME activities. The user interface, existing user experience and ease of use of the platform when coupled with adherence to group guidelines and effective moderation have the potential for it be used a powerful educational tool.

In this survey, all elements of the group's activities were regarded as key academic components, including case discussions, case queries, discussions on recent guidelines, new therapies, and summaries of key publications or takeaways from conferences. These activities seamlessly integrated with traditional information resources, such as medical websites, referral books, and search engines like Google, to form a comprehensive and crucial CME modality. This finding demonstrates that medical professionals are receptive to using blended learning methods, combining both digital and traditional resources to access information and enhance their knowledge.

The high prevalence rate of case discussions (77%) and updates from fellow colleagues’ (70%) sheds light on the collaborative learning culture which is uniquely possible only in a democratic real time platform such as WhatsApp.

Among 3500 members, 581 (16.6%) returned the survey, a number lower than the average rate of survey responses [ 6 ] is however reflective of how any of these group’s function where a small minority of members are usually its most active participants. This insight into the reality of most social media groups, wherein most participants remain inactive, and social communication and therefore the flavour of the knowledge sharing is driven by the active members. The administrator plays a pivotal role in introducing new topics or steering away from ones that have outlived their potential.

The reach of the platform which is agnostic to geography of the region is of immense importance as an educational tool. While information on some of these elements were not specifically sought from the survey itself, they have been discussed in the group’s own discussions as advantages especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the groups real-time nature and its reach across geographies is an advantage, an overwhelming inflow of information can soon lead ennui [ 7 ]. Additionally, limited group size, difficulty in tracking of responses across the groups, data retrieving and archiving, delivering structured content, privacy, and ethics considerations, potential to be overused or misused with information (overload or false narratives) etc. that may cause distractions, unstructured discussions, and the potential for misinformation, are inherent challenges that need to be addressed [ 8 , 9 ].

For administrators and educators, these limitations can pose significant challenges that they need to overcome to analyse the study outcomes. However, the results from this study showed that the administrators and educators can overcome these limitations and efficiently use WhatsApp which was primarily built as a social media messaging platform as an interactive learning tool with the use of right protocol and processes.

The successful use of this medium requires a trifecta of an easy-to-use digital platform, development and adherence to group guidelines and most importantly active administrators and moderators continuously moderating and helming the group which is a mammoth task. The survey did not inquire about the limitations of using WhatsApp as an educational modality or seek suggestions on how to improve it. This represents a potential gap in the research, as understanding the limitations and exploring ways to enhance the effectiveness of WhatsApp as an educational platform would provide valuable insights for future studies and educational interventions.

The study acknowledges the limited response rate and the possibility of not capturing the perspectives of all group members. It highlights the importance of considering individual learning behaviours’, the need for discipline-specific investigations, and the necessity of exploring the limitations and potential improvements of using WhatsApp as an educational tool.

In summary, the sustainability and growth of this WhatsApp CME India group highlights the potential and opportunity for using social media for professional knowledge sharing in an integrative and interactive manner. Survey results underscore its role in peer-based learning, aided by user-friendly features. However, challenges like information overload, propensity to digress require careful moderation which is time and effort intensive. Understanding WhatsApp's limitations and seeking member input for improvement are essential for maximizing its educational potential. Overall, while promising, continued research and refinement are needed to enhance its effectiveness in professional education.

Availability of data and materials

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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NKS and AKNS—conducted the study. BP, AT and SP—Monitored the study. 1–5—All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Singh, N.K., Singh, A.N., Patni, B. et al. Leveraging the use of a social media app as a collaborative medical information and knowledge sharing tool—insights from experiential use and survey of a CME WhatsApp community. BMC Med Educ 24 , 960 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05941-x

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