New Study: Brand experiences deliver three times the 'purchase advantage'

The continued demand for innovation by consumers is requesting from brands to address a change. Investment in live experiences has the potential to deliver three times the ‘purchase advantage’ over other media channels for brands launching a consumer product or service, according to a new report launched today. Research commissioned by experiential agency Set Creative, who create pop-ups, brand activations and live events, finds a staggering 73% of consumers in the US and UK are more likely to purchase a product if they have taken part in a brand experience.

“The Value of Experience” is a detailed commercial report aimed at providing an inside look into how people feel about brand experiences, to determine their effectiveness and value as a media channel when directly compared to Print, Radio and TV.

“There’s no real data available directly comparing the effectiveness of these four channels,” explains Chief Creative Officer Guy Tremlett. ”So, we decided to conduct an experiment to try and learn more about the value of experience against more conventional marketing methods.” 

The report is based on a two-part research process including:

• A nationally representative survey of over 1,000 US and UK consumers
• A live demonstration/experiment themed around teh launch of a fictitious orange drink brand: Sevillian (held under controlled conditions)

Experiences build trust, top media preferences 

In an era of fake news and declining trust in traditional forms of media, experiential is becoming the disruptive channel to communicate with consumers. The survey findings reveal that 82% of US and UK adults want brands to create experiences that ‘entertain, engage and educate’ them. 

Furthermore, 44% of US and UK adults have increased their time spent on attending live events or new experiences in the last two years – with the figure rising significantly for the all-important Millennial (57%) and Affluent Millennial (64%) category. 40% of US and UK consumers have increased their spending on new experiences in the last two years, climbing to 62% among Affluent Millennials.

Experiential is significantly more influential, shareable, and connected to sales

Respondents involved in the live demonstration felt ‘entertained’ (66%), ‘engaged’ (54%) and ‘satisfied’ (37%) by the activity. All these attributes scored significantly higher than for those involved in the video, reading and listening tests. As a result, participants in the live demonstration were significantly more likely to share (55%) or recommend (51%) the Sevillian brand, compared to those involved in the reading (16% and 15%), listening (13% and 8%) and video tests (12% and 9%).

Of those involved in the Sevillian brand experience, 41% also claimed to be ‘very likely’ to purchase the product – nearly three times ‘brand purchase’ advantage over those involved in the reading (16%), listening (13%) and video tests (12%). Significantly, this correlates to the survey results, which found 73% of people who have taken part in a brand experience in the US and UK were more likely to purchase the brand in question.

According to the agency, these findings only support what they’ve always seen as the limitless potential of experiential marketing. "We’ve always used experience as a powerful channel to drive results for our clients,” says Alan Doyle, Managing Director, North America. “This study gives us further context and helps us to understand how we’ve managed to achieve some of the success we have - the study shows why our work has managed to increase BMW sales amongst millennials in California by 33% and explains why the Heineken Trophy Tour has achieved a reach of 249 million across 21 markets.”