The Art of Experiential Marketing: Insights from Sheila Rondeau

So again, there are so many different ways of using it, but AI can one help you identify the opportunities, help you identify some of the events and the pain points, the messaging, but then go through and be the voice of reason and look for those things that you hadn't so that it pushes back and says, okay, this is great for this demographic.

You are opening yourself up for this and this in a very politically charged environment, people are still making those mistakes.

Mmm, that's good.

And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

And I'm your host, Brett Deisser.

If you please subscribe to this podcast, it really does help with the rank and let me know how I'm doing.

But this week we'll be talking about experiential or yeah, we're going to be saying I can't even say the word but experimental or marketing where we get into a little bit of the benefits of it because we all should be experimenting on something.

And with me as a guest is Sheila and she is a driven and experienced executive and marketing person.

As well as providing efficiencies or unsuppressed leadership and revenue growth and dynamic fast paced competitive business market, fully capable of leading a full array of enterprises, marketing responsibilities as well as a general business operation, building foundations, enabling the company to scale for growth.

But welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

And the first question is all my guest is, are you a coffee or tea drinker?

Coffee all day, every day.

Any like specific things do you like or you just, just give me whatever is in the coffee pot.

Whatever's in the coffee pot.

But I want it black and I want it fresh.

That is fair.

Black is always the healthiest and not fresh is never the best.

Anyways, I gave a brief summary of your expertise.

Can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do?

Yeah.

I own an experiential marketing company.

So what I do is I bring consumers and brands together in what I call memorable moments when we can create experiences, create a surprise and delight that allows consumers to try brands, whether it be a physical tangent, tangible item, something they can eat or drink or smell or taste, any of those things versus a service where they get to know people and understand how a service works and how it fits the their lives.

And so I have spent the last over 30 years bringing brands and consumers together.

And so what are some of the key advantages of doing experiential marketing?

Like the experience of or having customers experience whatever that you wanted them to experience?

There's a couple.

The first one is you take away risk when you allow people to try something, smell it, taste it and interact with it to be able tangibly feel it and engage with it.

They know if it fits their life.

They know if they like the taste of it, they know if they like the smell of it, of the feel of it, any of those types of things.

The other is that people do business with people they know and trust.

So when you have brand ambassadors out in the field for you who understand your product and connect with the consumer walks away.

One, liking your brand, liking your product, but also liking the people who work there.

And they build a trust and it changes buying habits better than any other form of marketing.

And is this for a specific industry, for this type of thing?

Or can any marketer do it in any industry?

I've done it across the board, so I have done it with consumer brands.

Things like I worked with Procter and Gamble for years, so Tide, Charmin Puffs, Gain, you name it, any of those types of products.

I worked with Kellogg's, so I've done Krave cereal.

I've done, worked with Frosted Flakes, I've worked with Special K.

I've worked with across the board in those types of products.

I've worked with chick companies.

I have worked with the auto industry and consumer electronics.

Sony, I worked with Activision to help launch Guitar Hero.

And Active.

Oh, I'm trying to remember the little creatures they had.

I can't even think of the particular brand.

There have been so many over the years, but we have, we've done a ton of the consumer space, but we also work in the B2B space because most marketers forget that the buyers for businesses are also consumers.

They want to trust the people they're working with.

They want to take the risk out of it and importantly in an environment where, where they're really asked to reduce risk and offer more.

So the best way to do that is to know the people you're doing business with, build a relationship.

And you do that through experiential because it allows you to create memorable moments.

You have connections.

One of the programs I did was for a charity on behalf of Rite Aid, Unilever, Nestle and Johnson.

And we did a hot air balloon.

It is one of those things very few people ever truly get an opportunity to do.

But people fell in love with the balloon when they heard the story.

It was called the Dream Ship.

And we asked the children who are the recipients of scholarships from Folds of Honor to draw pictures of what they wanted to be when they grew up.

And we put them on the balloon and people got to see the pictures of the kids and they understood that of those kids represented a dream and a child whose parent either has become disabled or was lost in combat.

And what a story to tell.

The emotional connection is there.

And you can again, you can do it with a charity, you can do with a service, you can do it with a consumable package.

And was the game you couldn't figure out, was that Skylanders or something like that?

Was that one?

Yes.

We did Skylanders, we did DJ Hero and Guitar Hero for Activision.

It seems like a lifetime ago.

Yes, because all those games are not around anymore.

They don't even make any new ones for those.

I know, but you know what?

They were cool in their time and we had a blast.

We took them on tour at malls all over the country.

We also took them on tour with American Idol.

So it was that teen and tween group that loves American Idol who ate up those games.

And so maybe for those that are don't know what they're, have never tried to do this, maybe are interested in doing this, how do you start to build to that, to that point where you actually do a campaign for your customer?

So you first have to decide who you want to talk to and where they are most receptive.

So for me, I ask clients a list of questions and it always starts with who is your consumer?

Not only who is going to use the product, but who is going to purchase.

Like in the example of Crave cereal or even Frosted Flakes, you're actually selling to mom.

You have to sell to mom on behalf of the kids.

So you have to speak to both of them in places where they are together if you're truly going to move the needle.

And then you figure out how do you want to engage with them.

So when you look at it, do you want to do a big tour?

So my thought behind doing big tours, it's great for a brand that is fairly generic, that has a very wide profile.

But when you're looking at cereal, you're looking at a five year age demographic.

So you don't want to go to a fair or festival that you are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach millions of people, because anybody at a fair or festival will take a free sample.

What you want to do is you want to be where your core demographics are in a very intimate setting and so you can have that conversation with them and you hand them their samples and they get to try them right there as a snack.

And in doing that, they like the flavor.

They see you at things that are important to them like youth soccer and youth cheerleading and flag football and all those types of things that lead to the kids really being engaged.

Another great example of it is Sony.

When Sony had the first, one of the first really good digital cameras we bought brought photographers out on the road to youth soccer.

And we taught parents how to take the photos.

So most parents stand in the stands and physically take their camera and take photos or use their phone instead.

We put spots on the ground for them to kneel on and the photographer to show them that they got a better angle if they were kneeling versus face head down into the zone.

We also were able to get much better shots.

You got experience on it and then you could give parents memories of their children.

So those are the types of things that you want to teach your clients or your brand in how to understand that it is about who they want to engage, what their message is, the location where people are most receptive.

Because if somebody needs your product but they're too busy to listen to you at the particular point of intersection, you're wasting your time.

You have three seconds to get a consumer to engage with you.

When you are someplace public and they are coming through, there are so many things that draw people's attention.

You have three seconds to make them stop and put a smile on their face enough that they want to come over and find out more.

So it's almost like the billboard thing where you can only put about 10 words before someone drives by.

So you can't put more than 10 words because if you do a long paragraph, no one's going to read it because it's too small print.

So it's a similar thing to that is what I'm saying.

It has to be compelling, it needs to be attractive, it needs to be eye catchy, but it also needs to be sensory.

So for me, when I work with clients, I do a day in the life of the client of the consumer.

So I look at how they got there, what do they see, what do they smell, what do they taste?

If any of those things are happening, how are they being engaged all the way up to where they meet me and my team and then how do we get them to walk into the experience?

How do we engage them?

Is there a surprise and delight?

And then what are the touch points?

So how long are they going to spend with us?

How often do they need to engage with us?

So the demographics between a young consumer and a much older consumer has to do with time and frequency.

Younger people want very frequent, very short amounts of time.

When you're talking about senior citizens, you can meet up with them once every couple of years.

But if you give them 30 minutes of knowledge or that true connection, you have them for years and you have to understand who your demographics are.

So it truly is generational thing because I think one of the common ones was that you needed to touch points was like around seven times to get people to actually commit to a sale.

But it seems like generationally it may be, maybe boomers may be a little bit less.

You just need to do like you said, 30 minutes of actual knowledge.

And then Gen Z needs to be like all the time.

So make sure that they can figure it out and walk through it.

So for me, it's the difference between sales and marketing.

So marketing should always lead to sales and they should reflect each other.

And when you're doing traditional sales, you have to look at 7 to 12 touch points.

But when you are doing marketing and you are creating engagements and you're creating relationships, you don't have to have as much many touch points.

We sold twelve hundred dollars cameras.

The first touch, you show them a need, you show them how to use it and you create an emotional connection and they will buy.

So this just helps cut down the touch points to sell for it.

Because seven, especially at this time age can be a lot.

It can be difficult to get seven different touch points because we got AI running around now that will, they won't even go to the website.

They'll just ask AI what it's all about, especially the younger generation.

And we'll fill them in what the AI thinks it is because it really is more what the AI thinks through data and everything.

So this just helps cut down that, I guess miscommunication or loss of a sale, it could be as well.

Yeah.

The other part of that also is that with a young, younger demographic, they consume content so quickly that you want different types of touch points.

Like old fashioned was cold calling.

Then for a while it was all social media.

And the truth is they want multiple types of touch points.

They want to see you in different places, but more importantly, they want to discover you.

So you need to be where they are.

So you need to be in their social media, you need to be where they go, do their research on products, where they want to find out more.

They want you to be at the events that they go to and be part of the sponsorship and then they want you to follow up with them.

But they also want to be Able to follow up with you, give you feedback, and know you heard them.

Which means if you reach out, if they reach out to you via social media, so you put great content out, they grab it through their social media.

They reach out to you with either a suggestion or a question, you need to respond and you need to do it timely.

And they need to feel like it's real.

While they love AI, they want to know someone hurt them, not something.

Yeah.

I've contacted some brands and some of them have never gotten back to, like, my suggestions.

I'm like, apparently you don't really care what I think about your thing.

So this leads to my next question, like, what are things to avoid when you're doing this?

Because there could be.

You could have this great campaign and if you miss something like really important, you could basically sabotage your whole marketing campaign.

So first of all, you do a test.

I always suggest before clients invest a lot.

We do a pilot.

We also do a modeling.

So I go through myself and my team and look at all the touch points, what we're going to do, how we're going to do it again that day in the life of.

And we look at the media opportunities, the touch points, the messaging, all of those.

And we do an ROI model where you see what the value of the spend is before you spend the money.

Perfect example.

Years ago, I was with an agency where we were contacted by Totino's Pizza, the little pizza rolls.

And they asked us to do sampling, but they wanted to sample in a model that was not efficient.

And so what they had perceived the number they should be able to give away to be much greater than it could.

When you took into consideration the cost of keeping them frozen, microwaving them.

They wanted to do one microwave with one person handing out, instead of a bank of microwaves, one handling it.

The efficiency model just wasn't there.

And so in order to do that, it would have cost them way more than they expected.

But when we sat down and talked to them about what they really wanted to do, we could meet the same goals by doing teaser videos.

We worked with Second City out of Chicago.

We created these great scripts, we did beautiful videos, and they were fun and eclectic and it got out and they got great lift on them and they drew people to the brand.

And so the important part is knowing what you want to get out of it and then making sure that the model that you're looking at gets you there.

And if it doesn't have an agency or a partner that's going to be strong and Brave enough to tell you that doesn't get you there.

I can do the math ahead of time.

I've looked at other people's marketing programs, and they said, oh, we did this many samples in this amount of time with this many people.

And I'll say, what are the labor hours you spent on it?

And I'll physically go.

Go do the math on it and come back and say, okay, so where are the rest of your samples?

Did they dump them?

Did they give them away, like, in Mass?

Because there's no way they physically could have done it.

And I do the math, and they're like, oh, my God, what happened to our samples?

Because the samples cost money, the program costs money.

And then to find out that somebody literally gave you false numbers and told you what you wanted to hear instead of actually did what they told said they were going to do.

Yeah, the efficiency model probably is one of the best ones, because if you actually look at it, you're like, this doesn't sound right.

This doesn't look right to a lot of people that actually strive for efficiency like I do.

I always try to figure out how much more efficient I can be throughout the day.

And you want to be efficient, but not at the cost of the experience.

Sometimes you slow down the experience in order to have a better consumer engagement.

I did one with a program with Rite Aid years ago where we had trouble getting through the gatekeepers.

But once we did, we were able to spend longer with the people we wanted to.

And I asked the client, do you want to tweak this to get better throughput?

And they're like, no, because we love the engagement we're getting.

We're not as concerned about the sheer throughput as we are the level of engagement and how much we're learning from the people that we're speaking to so that we can market to them better.

And how can this type of marketing help with today?

With inflation and a bunch of businesses are tightening their belts now they're trying to be like, okay, where can we save?

And we all know businesses always cut the marketing budget first because they always think that it's the least important.

It's actually the exact opposite.

If you're going through a difficult time, the last thing you want to do is cut marketing, because then you're cutting revenue.

Instead, you want to look for a partner who can do it more efficiently and who will tell you what you need to know rather than what you want to hear.

So you pick a partner who's going to do the math.

And sometimes it isn't the big agencies.

Sometimes it's small down and dirty type programs that allow you to reach engagement and have those conversations with consumers that bring you the insights and help you get that lift that you might not otherwise.

And especially do it at a really affordable place.

So this type of marketing, can it help leverage just the more awareness part and the customer journey a lot better than the traditional way?

Because traditional way is a lot more advertising heavy it seems.

So my thought is think about the Super Bowl.

Over the years you've seen some amazing super bowl commercials.

Things that literally had you belly rolling and others where you have tears rolling down your face and I won't embarrass you or anything.

Some of them really grab your heart and you go the next day to tell your best friend about this great commercial you saw on the super bowl and you can't remember the brand.

You loved what it said, but you can't remember the brand.

That's a huge fail.

And it happens a lot because the advertisers get so in their head about creating this beautiful imagery or something so funny that it brings everybody in and it lightens everything up that they don't remember the number one rule in marketing and advertising, if it doesn't sell, don't spend.

If it doesn't allow you to sell the product, if it doesn't elevate your product in a consumer's eyes or bring an additional group of people to your brand, why are you wasting the dollars?

Yeah, it almost seems like, it almost seems like a pet project for the ad advertising company instead get awards.

So for me it's about let me take you places where your core demographics are going to be and where they will spend time with you and let's surprise them and delight them and let them enjoy your product.

Get to know your people and what you stand for and how you fit in their lives.

That's what experiential does for you.

And does this also go with how has technology innovations helped enhance that?

Because we have ar, we have VR, we have AI.

Now have all those helped?

Maybe in the more tech side, but anything has it helped create a better bond between customers and the brands?

Absolutely.

For me, before I propose something, I'll go out to AI and I'll find out who, if anybody has done the same type of program.

If they have any stats that are available on it, are there any, Are there things that I'm missing?

So I will ask what is the opposing view of this?

If I am going to use this as a strategy and this is my message.

How could someone look at this as a negative and ask it to give me those opportunities?

So that's the AI side of it.

But also we use VR to be able to enhance an experience by giving them a virtual reality that they couldn't have otherwise done.

We were talking earlier about the hot air balloon.

We have people that we simply can't get enough people up into the balloon or it's windy that day.

I still want you to have a great experience.

So we have a 360 of the balloon experience where you put on the goggles and you literally feel like you are in the balloon and you are taking that ride.

So again, there are so many different ways of using it.

But AI can one help you identify the opportunities, help you identify some of the events and the pain points, the messaging, but then go through and be the, the voice of reason and look for those things that you hadn't so that it pushes back and says, okay, this is great for this demographic.

You are opening yourself up for this and this in a very politically charged environment.

People are still making those mistakes.

It's true, it's easy to get caught up, especially in social media about all that stuff.

But is it wiser just to be more neutral?

Because every, as a company you're going to have customers on both sides of the spectrum.

There's no way of going around it.

You're going to have people that have more lean left, you're going to have people more lean or in the center.

It doesn't really matter where.

So should marketers tend to just be neutral about most things?

Because it's look it, our customers are our customers.

It doesn't matter what the, what their political views are.

We just really care about them, really caring about our brand and spending the money, basically.

Let me give you three examples.

The first one was Michael Jordan who said the left and the right both wear my shoes.

Okay, so he kept neutral.

You have Ben and Jerry's, who everybody knows where Ben and Jerry's is on any issue.

Ben and Jerry's is unapologetically leaning to the left, has always leaned to the left and again does not apologize for it and built their brand on it.

You know it before you ever buy it.

And if you lean to the right, you either accept it or you don't.

Now the third one is Bud Light.

Bud Light got themselves into trouble because they used to be Budweiser and the Budweiser folks moved to Bud Light because Budweiser lost market share.

They forgot their core, Their core is truck driving, flag waving, red, white and blue.

That's who they've always been.

Now, Bud Light early on was probably the first supporter of gay pride.

Like when it came down to supporting the pride events, Bud Light was there, but they were always the little sister or the little brother to Budweiser.

But when the brands really, identity wise combined, their money came from Budweiser and they forgot who they were.

And so a handful of people were making the decisions.

For a company that tends to be right leaning anyway.

And so my response is, whatever brand you are, be authentic.

Be authentic to who you are.

If Bud Light had come out and said, we took a stance and many of our consumers may not like it, but we believe that we are here for all people.

So while we are supporting this group, we also still support all of the things that you know us for.

We still support Folds of Honor, which is again, a military charity.

We still support the NFL and NASCAR and all of those things that we have always supported.

But we also want to be inclusive of all people.

Instead, they tried to explain themselves of saying, oh, we're going to do what we think is right in this instead of just coming out and saying, this is who we are and we hope you will accept that we want to be things to everyone who wants us to be there with them, if that makes sense and if they are authentic, then they would have been fine.

The problem is they weren't authentic.

They didn't.

They had a couple of people making decisions who were trying to convince everyone to get on board with what they wanted to push for instead of saying, we support all people and we are inclusive.

From my recollection, it was the marketing executive that basically wanted to throw away all their existing customers and wanted new customers.

And in my head I'm like, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard of.

Because you never want to get rid of your existing customers.

Because it's a lot harder to actually get the new customers because you already have a group that wants to buy your product, don't throw that away because they may not think the right way.

You think that's what I got from her interviews on the media.

I was like, this is not going well.

Don't alienate people.

You're the number one one selling beer in the world and now you are down billions of dollars.

Not millions, billions of dollars.

Because you had someone young and inexperienced wanting to push their agenda instead of looking at how has this company been founded, who are our brands and can we talk through why we think we should include this group instead of only be focused on this group.

And that's where they lost their core constituents.

Because they didn't say, we still want you, but we want to broaden your horizon and accept more, not accept less, but turn everything one direction.

And they lost that and they are seriously paying for it again.

I worked for Anheuser Busch, part of their in house agency for over five years and I worked directly for the Bud Light and Budweiser brands for 11 years.

And I will tell you, it was painful to watch that happen because I know that when I was there, there were people at the helm who knew how to handle things like this and talk through them and knew who their constituents were, who their consumers were and who their base was and understood how to rally them to be broader, to be decisive and creating this havoc that, that literally crippled them.

Yeah, because I don't think most, they lost most of their customers.

I don't think they'll ever buy from them again.

Mainly because of who they chose to be their influencer was a main problem for a lot of people on the right.

I'm on Twitter, slash Z, so I know the dichotomy of where everything's going.

So that was the main problem also.

They said sorry, so they pissed off the other people and then they went back and said, no, we're not sorry.

And I'm like, okay, you lost everybody now because you couldn't pick a path.

Like you have to pick a lane and stick with the lane.

And that's why I say be authentic.

You can say, you know what, we want to include this group also.

But it doesn't change that.

We know who our core is and we are still here for you and we still believe all those things.

We just believe that we can be broader and we can be more open minded and we hope you'll join us.

But that's not what they said.

They apologized first and then said, oh, but we're not really sorry.

Instead of just being authentic and trusting that their consumers would listen to them and let them talk through it with them, they talked at them, not with them.

And so where is this all going for the future trends?

Is it becoming more just using technology innovations?

Is it becoming more, I guess, courageous in what your brand is?

Because I feel like right now people are starting to be less afraid of who they are, regardless of how unwanted one side or the other doesn't like what they say.

Is it going to become more of that or is it becoming more neutral as Michael Jordan?

Because Michael Jordan understood everybody buys from your brand doesn't matter what they think.

It really.

Again, I'll use the word authentic.

Brands need to be authentic and if they are not brave, they will be neutral.

And if they are truly authentic, they will step out and they hopefully can do it in a way where they do not alienate people.

They can talk about wanting to be broader, to open people's mind, to be open for discussion and be there to serve all people.

But at the same time, companies have to make decisions.

There have been companies who have refused to serve certain people for certain beliefs and others who have gone the exact opposite direction and they have both been penalized and rewarded.

And when you do it where it is authentic, you talk about your rationale and who you serve and where your heart is.

Most people get there eventually.

But be authentic.

Be who you truly are because people see through it and you can't keep up your behavior if it is not authentic long term.

So people are listening to this episode and they're wondering where can they find you online, maybe to learn more.

My website is mogxp.com I have a LinkedIn page which is Sheila Rondo and I have a book coming out next month which is the Art of Experiential Marketing.

All right, any final thoughts for listeners?

Thank you so much.

I believe that brands should be authentic.

They need to have conversations and engagements with consumers and the best way to do that is to create memorable moments through experiences.

Thank you Sheila for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and sharing your knowledge on experiential marketing.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it and thank you for listening to this podcast.

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