Today was a special day. I learned more about experiential marketing than ever before… and it’s all thanks to Max Lenderman (author of Experience The Message – How Experiential Marketing Is Changing the Brand World and Creative Director at GMR). Max and I met through email a while back, and since then he’s been a great ally and good friend. As part of the organizing committee for this conference, I thought that Max’s presentation would be critical in understanding what’s truly “next” (the theme of this year’s CMA conference).
Max did not disappoint.
His keynote – Experience the Message: How Experiential Marketing is Changing the Brand World kicked off with a full-screen shot of ass-vertising… and it was all a blur from there.
Lenderman weaves magical campaigns and tactical tips on how to make an experiential marketing campaign come to life. His message was simple: integrate experiential marketing into your marketing campaign or risk extinction. The best part was Lenderman’s ability to demonstrate how silly marketers can sound when using words like “online” and “offline” or “integrated.” Take one look at Axe’s Gamekillers‘ campaign and you’ll see how the channels are not nearly as important as what you feel after you’ve been involved in the Axe deodorant campaign (personally, I felt a little dirty). Lenderman showed case study after case study of how a good experiential marketing campaign (or any marketing campaign for that matter) should be channel agnostic. Make the experience count by using the channels that your consumers use.
Unfortunately, I could not stay to see Lenderman’s finale. I was off to pick up the Regis to my Kelly, the new marketing guru and the next day’s keynote, Joseph Jaffe. That being said, I still have images of urinal soccer every time I go to the bathroom (thanks Max).