ARCHIVE - Howard Luck Gossage: Pioneer of Experiential Marketing

January 30, 2009 In By Advent

Pop Up Shops: The New Horizon of Experiential Marketing

A new arti­cle in Busi­ness Week notes the rise of ‘Pop Up Shops’ around the coun­try. Ever watch­ful for a new way to con­nect with audi­ences, brand mar­keters have devel­oped the con­cept of the ‘Pop up Shop,’ (a short run­ning retail space strate­gi­cally placed to be most acces­si­ble to the store’s core demo­graphic). Mix­ing the cen­tral ideas of a tradeshow (show­case new prod­ucts to the most enthu­si­as­tic of con­sumers) and a retail space, pop up shops are the newest and bright­est of expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing efforts.

Pop up shops are about sur­pris­ing con­sumers with tem­po­rary ′per­for­mances.′ In effect, retail­ers guar­an­tee exclu­siv­ity of prod­ucts because of the lim­ited times­pan in which they are avail­able. Retail­ers from Brazil­ian cos­met­ics firm Oceanic to low end chic retailer Tar­get have opened such shops across the world tar­get­ing their own spe­cific markets.

Oceanic didn’t have the funds to build a brick and mor­tar store­front but wanted to have a real world pres­ence for it’s busi­ness. As such, they decided to go mobile, equip­ping most of their fran­chisees with Fiat Doblo mini­vans, which are both deliv­ery vehi­cles AND shops. These mobile stores make it easy to tar­get prime con­sumer loca­tions such as uni­ver­si­ties, schools, hos­pi­tals, parks, and trade shows. Not to men­tion cus­tomiza­tion: the mobile store′s inven­tory can be cus­tomized for dif­fer­ent loca­tions (i.e. if a frachisee parks near a beach, he or she′d bet­ter stock up on sun­screen and sun­tan lotions!).

Tar­get, on the other hand, wanted to pro­mote the launch of Isaac Mizrahi’s new wom­ens cloth­ing line with the fran­chise. To do so they opened up a tem­po­rary 1500 sq. feet store in Rock­e­feller Cen­ter to cel­e­brate Mizrahi′s styl­ish new looks. The glossy store was open from 4 Sep­tem­ber to 15 Octo­ber 2003 only. Fur­ther, last year, Tar­get actu­ally housed a tem­po­rary float­ing store on the Hud­son River for the Christ­mas season.

January 23, 2009 In News By Advent

Experiential Marketing In 2009

We at Advent like to think of our­selves as experts in expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing, and if there ever was a time to dive into that world, this would be it. Mar­ket­ing on a whole has taken a more per­sonal, casual turn in the last year or so, encour­ag­ing you as a com­pany to engage more with your cus­tomer, which is pay­ing off big for those who are embrac­ing the change. Inter­act­ing with your cus­tomers on a casual level lets them know that you are really lis­ten­ing to what they have to say and truly care about them as an indi­vid­ual, and not just a number.

Expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing plays into this in a num­ber of ways with the three core ten­ants of the con­cept: branded spaces, events and cus­tom exhibit design. Each one of these things give you the abil­ity to con­nect with your cus­tomer on a more per­sonal level. With all three you’ve got the abil­ity to bridge the gap between you and your con­sumer in a unique way that will really show­case what makes your com­pany spe­cial. Show­ing off who you are as a com­pany in the most effec­tive way pos­si­ble will go a long way to help­ing your cus­tomers under­stand who you are. Show off that more per­sonal, casual part of your com­pany and take your cus­tomers along for the ride. Any of the options in expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing or even a com­bi­na­tion of them can help you start con­nect­ing with your cus­tomers in a whole new way.

January 22, 2009 In News By Advent

D1 Little Rock highlights Advent′s brand spaces work

D1 Sports Fit­ness asked Advent to design and fab­ri­cate brand­ing ele­ments for their Lit­tle Rock loca­tion. The goal was to clearly define the D1 brand and com­mu­ni­cate it through ele­ments that could eas­ily cre­ate brand awareness.

Advent designed var­i­ous treat­ments and meth­ods to imple­ment the D1 brand into their Lit­tle Rock loca­tion. Stand-off graph­ics, vinyl appli­ca­tion, and Image­Walls cus­tom wall­pa­per were used to help D1 truly com­mu­ni­cate their brand mes­sage.

The video below is a show­case of the D1 Lit­tle Rock location.

Enjoy.

January 16, 2009 In By Advent

Our Gallery Of Experiential Marketing

Have you had a chance to check out our expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing gallery yet? In it you’ll find some of our work when it comes to cus­tom exhibit design, events, and brand spaces. If you are in the mar­ket for any of these things, take a good look through our gallery and see some of our pre­vi­ous work.

Within the gallery is a wide range of projects that we have worked on in the past, we’ve got the atti­tude of “if you dream it, we can build it”. We’ve worked with many com­pa­nies help­ing them achieve their vision for their spaces or trade show booths from health care com­pa­nies to faith based orga­ni­za­tions to local uni­ver­si­ties. Every sin­gle busi­ness is unique, even those in the same indus­try, so why shouldn’t your space be just as unique as you are? If you’re look­ing to brand your office space, need­ing a trade show booth to stand out above the rest, or look­ing to wow your clients with your next event, we would love to talk to you. Let us help you take your expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing to the next level!

January 12, 2009 In By Advent

Howard Luck Gossage: Pioneer of Experiential Marketing

Some­where around the age of 36, Howard Gos­sage fell into the field of adver­tis­ing. His first job was at San Francisco′s Brisacher, Wheeler and Staff. Of his hir­ing, he noted, “I got into adver­tis­ing, actu­ally, because there wasn′t any­thing else I knew how to do.” While there, he would rise to the posi­tion of Vice Pres­i­dent before the firm was bought out by Cun­ning­ham and Walsh, a com­pet­ing agency. In 1957, he joined forces with Joe Wiener and at that point began his self employment.

From his hall­mark adver­tis­ing offices in San Francisco’s Orig­i­nal Fire­house #1, he cre­ated a num­ber of clas­sic ads through which he sin­gle hand­edly devel­oped the field of Expe­ri­en­tial Mar­ket­ing. In his first adver­tise­ments for Eagle Shirt­mak­ers, he asked cus­tomers to send in to the com­pany for their com­ple­men­tary Eagle Label, thus insur­ing that their store label shirt would be for­ever iden­ti­fied with it’s maker (Eagle, at the time, was a white label pro­ducer of store brand shirts). Thou­sands of read­ers sent in for the free label and the adver­tise­ment was an imme­di­ate suc­cess, mak­ing the steady brand a house­hold name.

In his later work, Gos­sage would implore read­ers to write in for ‘Pink Air’ from Fina Gaso­line sta­tions (on the idea that since every­thing else at a Fina sta­tion had already been per­fected with addi­tives, mak­ing the air that goes in tires pink was the only addi­tional improve­ment they could think of) and to send their paper air­plane designs to the Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can headquarters.

Every time Howard Gos­sage ran an ad with a tiny coupon in the lower right cor­ner, thou­sands of peo­ple would cut it out, put it in an enve­lope with a stamp and mail it in. This idea of involv­ing the con­sumer in the mes­sage was one of Gossage’s pri­mary con­tri­bu­tions to our craft, and has been car­ried on to the present day in the form of expe­ri­en­tial marketing.