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The underpriced attention of experiential marketing and why its authenticity has 10x the rewards of paid digital advertising or why computers suck.

HighLife Productions February 24, 2019

Have you noticed the growing presence of advertisements online? The computer or cell phone has become a device whose sole purpose is to show you ads. Wherever your attention seems to be an ad will follow. Marketing has corrupted email, Facebook, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and more. But I wonder sometimes about whether this pervasive advertising is damaging brand identity. How annoying is a pop-up ad when all you want to do is read the article from Variety or ESPN. How annoying is the now required YouTube pre-roll advertisement when what you really want to do is watch the video. Personally speaking I have never once purchased an online course about “growth-hacking” because it showed me an advertisement before a Casey Neistat video. In fact the overwhelming influx of digital advertising has just made me less and less confidant in what I am seeing online is actually true. (isn’t that appropriate though? Shouldn’t we take what we see/read online with a grain of salt? At what point did we start believing things that we read online?) In fact more and more articles, blogs etc are actually just written by computers with the sole purpose of getting key words onto the internet so that it will come up once someone searches them in the hopes of converting a sale, gaining a follower, or influencing a political ideology. Don’t get me wrong I feel some types of advertisements are wonderful and let your fans know what you are doing and to remind them of cool stuff that is up and coming. But most of the intrusive digital advertising is just that intrusive and makes me like that brand/person/company/organization a little less. Did you know there is a reason why those little “x’s” on pop-up ads are so small and hard to find. Because every time you click on the ad instead of the “x” the computers read that you clicked on the ad because you liked it. This kind of thing makes me believe the true value of online advertising to be declining. On the other hand if you read or see online that your friend, family, or someone you follow posted about something recommending it/praising it you are way more likely to consider it. Hence the rise of influencer marketing and mirco-influencers. This new ‘word-of-mouth’ is the next frontier (that is until we read that our favorite influencer was paid XXX amount of dollars to trick millennials into going to a ridiculous EDM concert on an island in the exumas.)

To my point. The combination of a real experience with a carefully selected amount of micro-influencers of a specific genre/category creates the prefect storm of everything you hope to achieve with your marketing dollars and more. Creating authentic experiences around a brand that allow the consumer to taste/feel/see/understand and then share it with their following is the ultimate in marketing. Frankly it’s just good business. Being Authentic. Being truthful, Being real.

It’s my belief that as the internet matures we will see less of an ROI from google adwords, banner pop-ups, paid FB & IG and more of an ROI in experiential marketing and the importance of creating an ‘experience’ around a brand that can be shared and not just some staid photo of a brand on scroll endorsed by bots and fake followers.

Authenticity and integrity is always the best policy.

• Advertising
• Experiential Marketing
• Marketing
• Digital Marketing
• Branding

HighLife Productions