Want to cut through the noise with your next campaign? Experiential marketing could be the solution.

As the name suggests, experiential marketing is all about creating unique, branded experiences for the customer. Get it right and you’ll enjoy increased brand awareness, word of mouth, and sales.

But what does effective experiential marketing actually look like? To help you out, we’ve rounded up 10 recent examples of impactful experiential marketing campaigns from brands like The North Face, Prada, and 818 Tequila.

Let’s get into it…

1. The North Face Places Iconic Backpack On Top of New York Public Library

Students are a key target audience for The North Face, so the outdoor clothing and accessories brand wanted to make a splash with its 2024 back-to-campus campaign. And experiential marketing offered the perfect solution.

Rather than launching yet another billboard campaign, the brand teamed up with Snap Inc to create an augmented reality filter that placed one of their most popular products — the Borealis backpack — on top of the New York Public Library.

Confused? Here’s what it looked like:

@thenorthfaceif you were the New York Public Library, would you put your columns through the backpack straps? or put the straps over your roof?♬ original sound – thenorthface

It certainly got people to sit up and take notice, with the above post notching up 2.1 million views at time of writing.

While this campaign looks impressive at first glance, it gets even better when you dig into the detail. For instance, it incorporates time-of-day and location-dependent real-time lighting — so the shadows on the backpack are actually based on its position in relation to the Sun 🤯.

💡 Key learning: Experiential marketing requires a little more planning than a standard ad campaign. Make it worth the effort by launching experiential campaigns at key times of year for your brand (like Black Friday or Valentine’s Day or back-to-school).

2. PrettyLittleThing Tours College Campuses

Just like The North Face, back-to-school season is a big event in PrettyLittleThing’s marketing calendar.

So big, in fact, that the brand planned a whole tour of US campuses in September and October 2024, incorporating a popup store on a specially designed pink school bus.

Image source

The campus tour also featured a “Spin the Wheel” prize station and a dressing room where people could snap pics of themselves in various PLT lewks. There was even a pale pink pickleball court (of course).

💡 Key learning: Rather than planning a big one-day event in a major city, take your experiential campaign on the road to reach more customers and capture attention over a longer period.

3. Shipt Runs Guerrilla Campaign at SXSW

With tens of thousands of people descending on Austin each year for South By Southwest (SXSW), the event is the perfect opportunity to make waves through experiential marketing.

Target-owned delivery company Shipt took advantage by staging a guerrilla campaign, in which street teams roamed around downtown Austin on “Cruizin’ Coolers” (drinks coolers on wheels) and “Shopper Choppers” (giant motorized shopping carts), distributing essentials like energy drinks and sunscreen.

They even teamed up with local influencer Rachel Lately (AKA Austin Things To Do) to capture some online engagement alongside all the offline action:

But Shipt didn’t have to drum up all the online attention itself — festival-goers did much of the hard work for them. In fact, the brand estimated that at least 50% of its social content from SXSW was user-generated.

💡 Key learning: Get more eyes on your brand and messaging by giving your audience a compelling reason to share content about your experiential campaign. For example, you could offer the chance to win a prize for people who use your campaign hashtag.

4. 818 Tequila Opens Coachella “Outpost”

Sticking with experiential marketing examples from high-profile music festivals, Kendall Jenner-owned tequila brand 818 rocked up to Coachella 2024 with a popup “outpost” offering food, music, and cocktails.

Matching the event’s desert setting, 818’s popup was styled like an Old West saloon:

As well as 818’s own drinks, the popup offered refreshments from partner brands like Chamberlain Coffee and Olipop.

It even featured co-branding promotions with dating app Bumble — which provided a cowboy hat customization station — and Anastasia Beverly Hills, which laid on a beauty touch-up station.

💡 Key learning: Co-branding can be an effective way to spread the risk of big experiential campaigns. Find some like-minded brands with similar audiences and join forces to grab even more attention!

5. HBO Promotes True Detective With Frozen Billboards

In the run-up to the release of True Detective’s fourth season, HBO went full experiential by installing icy billboards in Los Angeles and New York — a nod to the show’s Alaskan setting.

Feelings of unease are never far away in True Detective, and this campaign was no different. Throughout the day, the giant blocks of ice melted to reveal abandoned clothing, lines from the show, and a QR code that steered users toward an augmented reality experience.

In LA, the ice sculpture generated almost 90,000 impressions in a day, while the New York version generated 242,500 across two days.

💡 Key learning: QR codes can join the dots between offline and online experiences, making your campaign even more shareable.

6. FX Produces “Symphony of Screams” To Promote Grotesquerie

FX is another TV network to harness the power of experiential marketing to promote an upcoming show — specifically horror drama series Grotesquerie.

Ahead of the show’s launch, FX stationed scream chambers — essentially oversized phone booths — in Los Angeles, Nashville, and New York. Fans were invited to enter the chambers, pick up the vintage phone handsets, and scream down the receiver, with responsive lights and a “scream meter” used to measure the strength of their output.

The campaign also had a digital element, encouraging people to submit their own at-home screams via Instagram and TikTok.

The results were used by Grammy-winning producer Blake Slatkin to create a “Symphony of Screams”, which dropped on social media and music platforms before the show’s premiere:

@fxnetworksListen to Symphony Of Screams now, available everywhere you listen to music. FX’s Grotesquerie all new Wednesdays on FX. Stream on Hulu.♬ Symphony of Screams – From “FX’s Grotesquerie” – FX Networks

7. Modelo Wows Football Fans With Personalized Trading Cards

Ahead of the 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship game in Houston, Modelo was one of several brands to offer in-person experiences at Playoff Fan Central, a three-day event at Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center.

There was all the stuff you’d expect of a branded football experience: merch, golden footballs, turnover chains, eye blacks, and even the chance to win free beer for the next college football season.

But the part that stood out to us was the chance for fans to snap images of themselves with all those props then turn them into personalized trading cards, which could be printed off at the event and shared online.

💡 Key learning: Personalization makes experiential marketing even more effective — especially when you’re targeting younger audiences. Indeed, 65% of Gen Z say content that is personally relevant to them is more important than content that lots of other people talk about.

8. Emergen-C Installs ASMR Popups at JFK

Let’s be honest: we’ve all felt overwhelmed at an airport before. So New York’s JFK was the perfect place for dietary supplements brand Emergen-C to host an ASMR popup.

The campaign, which promoted the launch of Immune+ Crystals, saw Emergen-C install a “Crystals Corridor” at JetBlue Terminal 5.

Travelers were invited to stroll through a brightly colored tunnel and take in a multisensory experience including popping sounds and berry-lemonade scents, all designed to replicate the feeling of taking Immune+ Crystals:

@emergenc✨immerse✨ your senses ahead of your adventure with our NEW Emergen-C Immune+ Crystals activation now open at JFK in terminal 5✈️♬ Feeling Good Vibes (60S) – Audiosphere

💡 Key learning: Take a leaf from Emergen-C’s book by giving away free product samples at in-person events so potential customers have something to take away with them. It’ll make the whole experience more tangible.

9. AARP Offers Fan Experiences at Rolling Stones Shows

Think experiential marketing is all about targeting Gen Z? Think again.

AARP, an organization with an audience that skews somewhat older, sponsored The Rolling Stones’ latest tour. Not only did AARP members get early access to tickets…

 

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A post shared by AARP (@aarp)

…but the brand also hosted in-person events at the concerts, allowing fans to pose in front of the legendary band’s “Hot Lips” icon or drum along to one of 15 classic rock songs — with a little help from a video that visualized the beat of each track. Kind of like a more immersive version of the game Guitar Hero.

💡 Key learning: Your experiential campaign should have an obvious tie-in to your brand and messaging. For example, at the end of its “drum-along” experience, AARP gave participants a quick fact explaining the important role music can play in brain health.

10. Prada Beauty Launches New Fragrance With Popup Flower Markets

When you’re a fashion brand dropping a new product during New York Fashion Week, there’s always a risk you’ll get lost amid all the noise — even if you’re a household name.

That’s why Prada Beauty decided to host popup flower markets across the Big Apple to mark the launch of its latest fragrance, Paradoxe Virtual Flower.

 

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A post shared by CNC Agency (@cncexperiences)

Throughout the campaign, Prada handed out 18,000+ floral stems and 14,000 fragrance samples, helping the brand generate a ton of engagement while raising awareness of the new product.

💡 Key learning: Be sure to display your branding prominently at experiential marketing events, just like Prada did on its elegant flower vans. That way, people are more likely to remember who you are and what you do after the event.

Want to learn proven social media strategies from industry leaders? Book your place at our next Social Media Strategies Summit Virtual Conference!

Featured image by Pexels.

 

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