8 Experiential Activation Examples We Love
February 7, 2019
Warner Brothers Blade Runner 2049 Experience
About the Agency: Giant Spoon
Giant Spoon is an agency that was built to create culture, to find ways for brands to integrate seamlessly into the swirl of experiences that surround us.
About the Activation: Years after Blade Runner’s first debut, Giant Spoon was tasked with creating an immersive experience to build buzz for the film’s sequel. The activation included a VR theatre, live reenactments, simulated inclement weather, RFID vending machines, and food tastings.
Why we love it: Movies are already a powerful immersive experience. How often have you lost yourself in a film? But there is a separation between you (the audience) and the action (the movie). This experience allowed super fans to take a step away from reality, exercise their imaginations, and become a character in one of their favorite films.
Pringles Stack Shack
About the Agency: TH Productions
TH Productions is an experiential marketing agency founded in 2006 with a focus on brand strategy, event production and design. The agency was built under the philosophy that the way a brand interacts in the physical world is critical to forming lasting relationships with its customers. Because what we can see, touch, hear – experience – is what shapes our perception and ultimately our affinity for and participation in a brand’s success. TH creates those experiences, working with brands to find the perfect way to tell their stories. In real life. With real people. Ensuring visceral, meaningful connections and shareable experiences at every touch point.
About the Activation: This three-day pop up concentrated on encouraging participants to taste their way through a custom “Stackateria,” which highlighted some of Pringle’s most popular flavors. The entryway to their Time Square space was constructed to mimic the top of a Pringles Can. Once inside, guests were encouraged to try flavors, and customize their own stack complete with their name and customized flavor.
Why we love it: We like to say that experiences start the moment an event attendee leaves their driveway. We call it the “driveway to driveway” experience. TH Productions must have considered this methodology, because they knew it would be important for attendees to have a change of mindset when walking into the experience. The entry way allowed them to enter a different reality tunnel and experience the brand with a fresh perspective.
adidas NMD
About the Agency: Roundhouse
Roundhouse is a proudly independent, full-service creative agency that has the tenacity to take on challenges head first. Set on building the solutions you need, they offer strategic, branding & design, interactive & social media development, digital development, content studio, retail & environmental design, and experiential services. They live to make great work for brands they love.
About the Activation: adidas partnered with Roundhouse to develop two immersive spaces to be activated in LA and NYC. Their team wanted to capture the historic significance of this shoe launch by integrating camera obscura programming. Visitors experienced the intersection of the past (camera obscura) and the future by being photographed inside an analog projection of the outside world.
Why we love it: As it becomes more challenging for brands to develop memorable experiences for marketing activations, finding a creative way to touch the audience with an authentic message will become increasingly important. Roundhouse captured the heart of modern explorers by tying iconic urbanism to adidas’ shoe launch. And to top it off, each attendee left with an exclusive take away and an unbelievable chance to interact with this brand at the street level.
RX Bar
About the Agency: Boxman Studios
At Boxman Studios, we design, develop and deploy turnkey shipping container and purpose-built structures for food service, retail, and experiential marketing. We create remarkable experiences. You just add people.
About the Activation: As a new brand, RX Bar relies heavily on their field marketing campaigns. Although they started with tents, they discovered quickly they would be challenged to visually differentiate their brand against competitors on a similar circuit. Their structure is light, nimble, and the bold branding pops against the usual sea of tents. The flexibility of their space allows them to make size and programming adjustments based on each event’s unique footprint.
Why we love it: Experiential marketing activations can often fall victim to the “one and done” mentality. A brand drops a ton of dough on a single, iconic event and then trashes the whole concept to move on to the next big thing. RX Bar has found a way to evolve and optimize their events in a tour format. They’ll be able to provide a consistent brand experience, no matter where they’re activating.
Porsche Ride and Drive Experience
About the Agency: XD Agency
They are a strategic communications agency hyper-focused on experience design. They shape perceptions, memories, and desires to create transformative business value for their clients. They develop smart content and strategies to bring out the best in experiential programs and portfolios.
About the Activation: Porsche’s brand is known for precise design, performance and luxury. Their brand fans are enthusiastically loyal, and Porsche finds amazing ways to fan that flame. For this experience, Porsche invited some of their most loyal customers to a ride and drive experience which would allow attendees to test-drive some of their most powerful vehicles. To extend the luxury experience beyond the track, XD Agency commissioned a hospitality structure that would serve as a check-in, safety classroom, hospitality, and viewing area for guests.
Why we love it: Part of developing successful experiences is making sure that the programming, visuals, and environment align with your brand identity. Porsche and XD chose a design that would visually communicate the sleek aesthetic and eye for perfection that speaks to Porsche customer.
Walk with Jane Sponsorship Activation
About the Agency: City Eventions
You remember the ‘holy sh**’ experiences. City Eventions creates them. Diverse. Authentic. Collaborative. Passionate. Their family is made up of talented creatives, strategists and experiential producers from different walks of life. Working hard and playing hard, they value their personal passions as strongly as the experiences they create.
About the Activation: To celebrate optimism and empowerment, Jane Walker by Jonnie Walker brought Signs of Process Truck to the Women’s March in Washington DC. Programming included handing out Artist-created signs to marchers. Once the event was over, the truck collected hand-painted signs from marchers to be used at a future pop-up exhibit for the New York Historical Society- Center for Women’s History.
Why we love it: When you tie a brand to an important social movement, it can be risky. But Jonnie Walker is a risk-taking brand and they wanted to make their mark on this piece of history. By supporting women in this march, and collecting their words, not only did the brand make a big impression, but it empowered these women to make their own mark on history.
Netflix Altered Carbon at CES 2018
About the Agency: Kamp Grizzly
A full-service immersive studio
About the Activation:
To promote Netflix’s new show, Altered Carbon, Kamp concepted an idea intended to blur the lines between fiction and reality at 2018 CES. Pyschasec, a fictional technology company created by Kamp and Netflix arrived at CES to show off their technology that would allow humans to live forever in new bodies. To generate more energy around the concept, they hired actors and brand activators to pose as “anti-immortality activists” and protest outside of CES.
Why we love it: Although we preach the authentic experience, in this case a little deception was the key to generating a lot of excitement around this launch. Kamp developed a truly immersive experience, that gave attendees a chance to interact with the brand and concept before even knowing it existed. We love to see the fourth wall broken in experiential marketing, and this is an example of that done very well.
Bud Light House of Whatever
About the Agency: Hargrove inc.
Hargrove is a full-service producer of customized experiential environments. We are innovative storytellers, strategic planners and professionals who design and create immersive experiences for events, exhibits, expositions and experiential marketing activations around the world.
About the experience: Hargrove used Bud Light’s existing assets to convert an abandoned parking lot into an action-packed immersive party. The branded soiree was completed with two full days of engaging activities for nearly four thousand attendees.
Why we love it: What do you do with event assets once the event is over? If you rent, this is less of an issue. But sometimes leasing all those assets can be cost prohibitive. So, you buy them. Now what? You could sell them, but if they were custom built, finding a buyer is a challenge. You could put them in storage, but they’re just collecting dust. Hargrove had the right idea by reusing existing assets to create a completely new and unique experience. This mentality is the first step in developing truly sustainable events.
