Tips: How Experiential Video Boosts Live Activations?

Several weeks ago, I attended SXSW and saw some amazing experiential activations, such as Game of Thrones and Amazon’s Garden of Earthly Delights. However, when I came back and tried to show my friends the videos of the experiences online, they struggled to reflect the scope, scale, and frankly fun that was had at the events. Needless to say my friends weren’t impressed, and I can’t blame them.

These brands offered amazing experiences to attendees, but they missed an opportunity to bring that to online viewers. The brands at SXSW could’ve brought my colleagues into the fold with  experiential video.

“Live activations are– or should be– an essential tactic in your marketing strategy. But the problem with activations and experiences is that they’re limited only to the people physically there. To enjoy them, attendees have to be at a specific geographic location at a specific time. If you’re not there maybe there are some photos from a blog post, but that’s it. That’s why creating an experiential video is so important, it scales your experience to millions of people online.”

After all, creating and sharing experiential videos brings these activation to a broader audience. This allows more people to participate in the experience, which ultimately helps your brand extend its reach.

At Denizen Company, we actually come up with a concept for video at the beginning of the process, then build a live experience around it. This creates a memorable video experience that at times is better (and offers a higher ROI) than the live experience itself (e.g. Jack Sparrow Surprise).

So, how can you use video to give your experiential marketing efforts a boost? These 5 tips will help make your next live activation a digital-video friendly event.

1. Create the Concept With The Experiential Video In Mind

When you begin concepting your experience, the experiential video should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind so that it can eventually reach as many people as possible. That means you need to consider how to integrate video before the event is planned, not as an afterthought.

To do this, have a clear idea of what story you’ll be telling to a remote reviewer. This story may be slightly different from what attendees take away, or you may need to alter how the message is being conveyed so it works well for both audiences.

And remember– it’s not enough to reach “an” audience– you need to reach the “right” audience. Knowing ahead of time what demographic or segments are being targeted will help you define the tone of the event, as well as what platforms will work for promotion.

2. Don’t Rely Exclusively On Influencers To Make And Distribute Your Video

Although influencers create epic content and have engaged followers, they’re not a surefire way to create video content that supports experientiaal marketing.

You should ask influencers to attend and record your event, but you should also make sure that you’re creating proprietary video content. You’ll have more control over this content, ensuring you have multiple high-quality production cameras in specific locations. You’ll also be able to make sure that everything is perfectly scripted just the way you want.

For example, here’s a video from an influencer and here’s one by Disney for the Mad Hatter experience. Both have value, but if the brand only had the influencer’s video, the experience wouldn’t have had the same reach.

3. Treat the Event Space as a Film Set

Your experiential marketing agency is not taking place on a film set. However, you should be treating it like one. At all times, you should consider how the experience will be filmed so that it has maximum impact.

The physical construction of the event space should encompass considerations including camera placement, obstacles that may hinder filming, how space will be viewed through the camera lens, what lighting is necessary, and more. This is as much a video production as it is a live event, so don’t sacrifice one experience over the other.

For 4th and 5th Points,  Visit at https://denizencompany.com/5-ways-to-boost-live-activations-with-experiential-video/