Rinse And Repeat

In 1952 a bunch of scientists were studying the behaviour of macaques monkeys on the Japanese island of Koshima.
According to their research, one female monkey seemed to have discovered that sweet potatoes, which were their main source of nutrition, tasted better once they’d been rinsed in the sea.
As the scientists observed, this activity spread through the monkey population on the island, through observation and repetition.
Then something amazing happened.
Once critical mass had been achieved, the behaviour which had previously been learned, spread instantly across the water to monkeys on nearby islands.
The “Hundredth Monkey Effect”, as it became known, is now a universal reference point for the transmission of positive behaviours without direct instruction.
That’s how great ideas spread, and why experiential marketing is so important.
Create the right message or story, and share it with your immediate audience.
Then let nature take care of the rest.
The wider community will eventually find its way to your idea, you simply need to set the wheels in motion.
In case you’re wondering, I prefer my sweet potatoes with butter and a sprinkling of cinnamon

The Brand Big Bang

Robert Pattinson was hit by a cab last week, whilst trying to get away from a mob of teenage girls. Thanks to his breakout role in Twilight, R-Patz (as they’re calling him) is struggling to come to terms with his newfound megastardom.
That’s the thing about “Hollywood fame” – no matter how hard you try, it changes you.
There’s a point where you go from ‘next big thing’ to ‘king of the world’.
The key is to remember how you got started, and make sure that you reconnect with the people who put you there in the first place.
Brands face the same challenge.
Early adopters become passionate advocates and drive the brand growth.
The brand gets bigger and bigger, until suddenly it’s so mainstream that its original enthusiasts drop off the radar.
This is great news for us in experiential marketing, since it’s the face-to-face, hands-on approach that allows brands to get back in touch with the people who helped them breakthrough in the first place.
Tom Cruise knows this, which is why he’s happy spending two hours on the red carpet at every premiere.

Talk To Me

It seems that the tectonic plates of marketing are moving to a new position, and we’re going to have to go with it.
In a recent essay published in Campaign and here, Alex Dunsdon, Business Director at M&C Saatchi, argued that the ‘Age of Conversation’ is over. This is the dawning of the Age of Osmosis.
Is anyone else singing songs from Hair in their head?
If this all sounds a bit shocking, blame Malcolm Gladwell.
He argued that we can only manage 150 relationships at any one time, and we’ll always choose humans over brands.
If you’re already exhausted from balancing the needs of friends and acquaintances, what hope does a brand have of striking up a meaningful conversation?
Fear not, however, because the Age of Osmosis will show us the way.
If we can’t convince people through conversation, we just need to hang out with them instead. Before we know it, our brand behaviours will be rubbing off on them like grass stains on a PE kit. Our target audience will feel an affinity for our brand, without really knowing why.
The great news here is that, if we’re talking behaviours and quality time spent with brands, we’re in a fantastic position to take advantage of this new school of thought.
And experiential approach brings those behaviours to life, invites audiences in, and gives them an opportunity to absorb our essence through proximity.
The king is dead. Long live the king.

Roll Up Roll Up

At Jack Morton, we like to think that we are the inventors of the term “experiential marketing”
Indeed when we started to use the phrase if you typed experiential into Google it came back with “Did you mean experimental?”
However there is another guy who deserves some of the credit.
You may not have heard of him, but his impact and influenced transformed the movie industry back in the 1950s.
William Castle was a film promoter, director and producer, who found that outrageous stunts were a cost-effective way of promoting low budget movies. The key, he believed, was creating something that would get people talking, the power of advocacy and word-of-mouth.
At first, he came up with promotional stunts like an insurance policy for $1,000,000 for the first audience member to die of fright whilst watching his film Macabre.
Next it was ‘Emergo’ – a 12-foot glow-in-the-dark skeleton that swooped over the audience’s heads during the movie.
But as Castle saw his popularity (and fan club membership) grow, he realised that the way forward was to stop using these ‘gimmicks’ as promotional devices, and to start incorporating them into the experience of the movie itself.
So audiences were given special glasses that enabled them to see the invisible spectres in Thirteen Ghosts, and random seats gave moviegoers electric shocks as they watched The Tingler, about an electro-powered parasitic monster.
These novelties might sound hokey and old-fashioned today, but they transformed movie-going from a passive to a participative experience.
The great work we do for our clients should never be the icing on the cake – it’s the very heart of the experience.

Now For The Science Bit

If I asked you when you were last paratelic, you’d probably start racking your brain for the last time you had way too much to drink.
Ho, Ho. An easy joke, I know.
The fact is, the last time you were paratelic was when you felt the wind in your hair, or across your scalp in my case. It could have been the last time you gazed out of a bus window, or lost yourself in a great piece of music.
Paratelic is actually the state of mind in which we find ourselves when we’re truly relaxed and away from the things that occupy our minds – work, family, pressure. The opposite being ‘telic’ which is to be totally focused serious-minded, and keen to avoid disruption.
But you’re not here to brush up on cognitive psychology, so what on earth am I talking about?
Well, I first heard about telic and paratelic states years ago when I first started in experiential marketing. And the subject has become more and more relevant as our discipline has expanded and matured.
Traditional advertising has to tread a careful line between telic and paratelic audiences. If it interrupts people in a paratelic state, it can become an irritant.
Likewise, if they’re in a telic state, they may be more focused, but not necessarily on our message.
But experiential – that’s where the rules change.
We can capture an audience, and change their state. If they’re concentrating on one thing, we can take them away and help them to forget the pressures they face. Or if they’re wandering freely, we can build an experience that will focus their mind and change their behaviours.
Powerful stuff.
And a world of opportunities.
We just need to think about our audience, and their state of mind.

Have a very paratelic weekend