So, what does an event centered around social media have to do with experiential marketing? Everything.
Experiential marketing offers audiences unique engagement with a brand. Social media enhances experiences by adding elements of interactivity and user-generated content. In turn, brands can build deeper relationships with the audience in-person and online. Additionally, they can gather valuable assets for continued marketing initiatives.
To showcase the powerful combination of the two channels, we activated a three-dimensional chalk art installation at Social Media Day. The piece depicted a cutaway of the cobblestone sidewalk exposing a bird’s-eye-view of the Philadelphia cityscape and historic landmarks.
Viewers had the opportunity to stand on the sidewalk or on top of Philadelphia City Hall’s William Penn statue and overlook the LOVE statue, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Broad Street and more. People were encouraged to take pictures with the installation and share them on social media using #PhillyLovesBilly and #SMDayPHL.
The Social Media Day event was attended by more than 600 marketers. Our single-day experiential activation saw participation and interaction from approximately half of all attendees. As you’d imagine, attendees were extremely active on social media, further amplifying the live interaction metrics: the event hashtag #PhillyLovesBilly saw nearly 78,500 impressions with a reach of about 13,765 users.
The engagement that resulted from the activation contributed to the success of the overall conference, too. The event organizer and event social channels, @SliceComm and @SMDayPHL, respectively, saw combined impressions of 62.4k on Instagram and more than 2,200 engagements on Twitter. The main event hashtag #SMDayPHL received 902 mentions on Twitter and 339 engagements, with a calculated potential reach of more than 927k.
Want to learn more about the integration of experiential and social media? We’ve partnered with Slice Communications to develop an eBook about this topic, called Engagement Marketing.
Read about the benefits of combining the two channels, steps for building an internal team and partner network, and overcoming common barriers to success. Download Engagement Marketing.
Let us know show you the value of experiential and social!