S6 E3: Experiential Marketing with Bill Southard and Bryan Duffy

Adrian McIntyre: 00:00:01

From the Public Relations Global Network. This is PRGN Presents. I'm Adrian McIntyre.

Abbie Fink: 00:00:07

And I'm Abbie Fink, President of HMA Public Relations in Phoenix, Arizona and a founding member of PRGN.

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Adrian McIntyre: 00:00:28

Our guests on this bi weekly podcast series are all members of the Public Relations Global Network. They will discuss such topics as workplace culture, creative compensation and succession planning, the importance of sustainability and environmental, social and governance programs, crisis communications and outside of the box thinking for growing your business.

Abbie Fink: 00:00:47

For more information about PRGN and our members, please visit prgn.com. And now let's meet our guest for this episode.

Bill Southard: 00:00:59

Hello. Hi, I'm Bill Southard, president, CEO and founder of Southern Communications, an agency that I founded 30 years ago. We're based in New York City.

It's really an honor to introduce a good friend of mine and a business partner, Bryan Duffy with Boom Ventures, who's going to talk about the role of experiential marketing and one to one consumer engagement and how we provide value to our clients.

Bryan Duffy: 00:01:22

An honor, Bill. That's impressive. Thank you. Appreciate that. Hi everybody, I'm Bryan Duffy. I'm the founder and CEO of Boom Ventures.

I've been in the marketing communications industry now for well over 30 years. I founded Boom, as crazy as it sounds, in the middle of the global pandemic in the fall of 20 20.

We've had tremendous success over the last three, four years based on the model that we've built and looking forward to the conversation.

Abbie Fink: 00:01:46

So why wouldn't you start a company in the middle of a global pandemic? Why would that be a problem?

Bryan Duffy: 00:01:51

Exactly, right.

Abbie Fink: 00:01:53

So maybe just to kind of level set a little bit before we get a deep dive, could you kind of give us your definition of experiential marketing and kind of where that fits and maybe the overall strategy of a marketing program?

Bryan Duffy: 00:02:10

Yeah, no, it's a great question. I've been, as I said, I've been doing this now for 30 plus years, specifically within the experiential marketing space for the last 20 plus years.

Plus years. It's interesting, over the last 10 years, I'd say that experiential marketing has really taken a seat at the table with the big boys.

And what I mean by that is the other mediums, advertising, pr, digital marketing, et cetera, et cetera. Right.

For years and years, experiential marketing was kind of the redheaded stepchild at the table and it was always considered a below the line service offering.

And what's happened over the last 10 years in particular is marketers, brand marketers are really truly valuing what experiences provide from the consumer engagement perspective from a standpoint of communicating their products and services and their messaging and so forth.

And what we've seen is that from the value that experiential marketers have right now in the space and in the medium in particular, they're spending more and more dollars towards it, they're prioritizing it. There's so much more that can come from experiential marketing.

There's the opportunity to drive content, obviously the engagement component, the digital and tech component, and elements that are involved with that are amazing. The shareability factor, again, going back 10 plus years ago, the knock against experiential marketing, it was always a very expensive proposition.

You would do an experience, let's just say it's in the middle of Times Square. Several thousand people would show up. That's great. You would spend the money.

But the ROI in many cases was not valued as much as it is now because you had just a set of eyeballs on it that were there in person. But there wasn't really any bit of a shareability factor.

Now we're creating experiences that create engagement, that create the experience that consumers are capturing. They're sharing that content. So from an amplification perspective, from a reach perspective, the ROI is tremendous. Right.

So that's really where in many ways the value of experiential marketing has taken a bigger seat at the table when it comes to that integrated service and marketing communications offering.

Abbie Fink: 00:04:12

So it might seem obvious that it is an in person opportunity. So maybe thinking about, you know, when you did begin your own agency, when we weren't in person as much, but you know, where.

How do we start these conversations about the importance of consumer engagement and why this investment might be worth, and I imagine this is relevant, really, no matter how large or small your organization is, you can create an experience for your consumers. But as you said, it's still a relatively young discipline within our industry in terms of acceptance. So how do we talk about that?

How do we get the value proposition in front of our clients to get them to understand why they should make this type of investment?

Bryan Duffy: 00:05:08

Yeah, no doubt. And I'll talk about the value of experiential marketing and why do it first and then I'll bring it back to why do it in the middle of the global pandemic. Right.

But at the end of the day, I think most folks will tell you that live face to face communication and marketing and events provides a sense of community. So we are all longing and desiring for a sense of community.

It's more emotive, the emotions that come from the ability that I'm going to go to an event with my friends or my family or whoever that may be and I'm going to experience that together.

So there's the community aspect, there's the emotive aspect, there's the emotional aspect of it, there's the shareability, as I said before, tremendous value.

And yes, the event might capture or it might attract a couple hundred or a couple thousand people, but the shareability gives you the ability to reach literally millions across the world. Right. So much value in that. Longer lasting impressions, much more memorable. Right.

You guys probably remember, it's interesting, I speak a lot at colleges and so forth and do panel discussions. It's amazing when you go and you start talking to people, it's like, hey, tell me what you did for your 21st birthday.

What was the first sporting event you ever went to? What was your first music concert? Right. What did your parents do for their 50th wedding anniversary?

Whatever it may be, people automatically remember it. Why? Because it was something that was again community, it was emotional and it created a LONGER Lasting impression.

Versus do you remember that 30 second spot you saw on TV two years ago? Right. Do you remember the 10 second spot that you saw on the digital advertising piece or whatever it may be?

But it builds community, it's a shared experience, it's emotive and at the end of the day it creates human connection and that's what people crave. And then going back to, you know, why do it?

Coming out of the pandemic, I had the good fortune of working for some pretty large experiential marketing and sports marketing agencies owned by some of the big holding companies for years and tremendous value in that and had a great experience.

But what I found for me personally as I was getting further and further away from consumers and our employee base, as I continued to grow my career and eventually was a president of an, of an experiential agency.

But you know, coming out of the pandemic, I knew there was the opportunity to build a better mousetrap because I knew people were gonna be again craving community, wanting to get outside experience things together. And I knew there was an opportunity for me to time it right.

So you know, started the agency in the fall of 20 20, took three or four months to stand up and operationalize the business went live to the marketplace in January of '21.

And I knew that in the spring and summer timeframe, coming out of the pandemic, what was gonna be the first thing people did, they were gonna go and attend sporting events, they were going to attend music festivals and concerts, all outside activities where we all felt somewhat comfortable. Right. The B2B event space wasn't quite there yet. So hence you had that hybrid model between you know, again digital and live experiential marketing.

But just felt the timing was right to be able to come and build the agency model that we've created. And we've had very good success with capturing and taking advantage of people with pent up demand to get back to engaging with each other, quite simply.

Abbie Fink: 00:08:21

So Bill, a lot of your work is in consumer products and such. So obviously this is something that's of interest and of value to you and the work that you're doing.

And I'm curious about the implementation process and how from idea generation and brainstorming about what we're going to do to the activation element of it and you know, what are those conversations like when you're, you know, beginning to bring to the table, let's build something that's experience driven and you know, how are we going to carry that through?

Bill Southard: 00:09:00

Yeah, good question Abbie. So you know, it's really about collaboration. I mean, so with Bryan and his team, if it's an existing client, we'll bring them in during the brainstorming stage and say oh, because you know, they need to know who is our target audience, what are our goals, what's the product's point of differentiation, what's the key demographics. Bryan also just, you know, we work very closely with Jen Belcastro. Jen was on last year when we talked about the role of market research.

So we bring Bryan and his team in kind of an early stage and collaborately we'll develop ideas around essential strategy that makes sense across all mediums, whether it's PR, digital, paid earned, etc. As well as experiential on the implementation side.

And Bryan can tell you this because I know that he does work with some, some of the biggest agents, biggest PR agencies in the world, they don't know how to execute. Right.

So even if they kind of come up with the idea and they are largely responsible for generating the press coverage that may be attached to that experience, all logistics behind pulling it together, it takes an expertise to make sure everything kind of works flawlessly.

So it's a, it's a Good relationship in terms of having individuals and a team that understands that even, for example, Bryan and I are working on something together now for a tourism board, for example, and they had something in mind about time of day and location. Bryan and his team really kind of dug into it.

We came back with a recommendation that made a lot more sense based upon how much traffic they wanted to attract, the type of individual, the type of location, etc. So I think at the end of the day, it's really about being collaborative.

We bring Bryan in even on pitches where we may be pitching a consumer account, and we'll present them with the strategy and say, listen, here's an experiential idea that can help create some momentum for your product.

The one last thing I'll say that, you know, we're all seeing increased pressure from clients and the consumer side, particularly to create more of a value between that touch point and that. That driving traffic to a website or driving sales. With mobile. Right.

To Bryan's point, with mobile, if you go to an event in Times Square, an event in one of those major cities, Bryan, there's an opportunity right now to actually buy the product right on site. Right. Which, you know, 10, 15 years ago was difficult. You had to leave, you had to go back home, et cetera. So that is a key advantage.

And the last thing I'll say is that for a lot of our consumer brands, we really need to kind of stress a point of differentiation.

And that engagement with the consumer in that immersive experience allows us to really create that point of differentiation that would potentially bring somebody into a brand that we're representing.

Bryan Duffy: 00:11:52

Yeah. And Bill, to build upon that, going back to that live component. Right.

There's nothing that replaces the ability to sell a product or for a consumer to touch an experience and engage with a product than being at an event itself. Right. E Commerce. We all know how that's exploded.

And from a digital and content perspective and traditional PR and tv, it's all well and good, but to create a platform, to create an experience and environment for a consumer to come up into and engage and demo and sample, nothing replaces that. So it drives incremental sales, drives incremental advocacy. And that again, goes back to the value of what experiential marketing can be.

Abbie Fink: 00:12:34

Now, are these activations, these engagement opportunities part of an existing event, or are you creating an event for this purpose?

You mentioned sporting events and concerts and things, and now when you go, there's dozens of things happening around, you're, you know, constantly being, you know, flashing Lights and other things and, you know, selfie, you know, step and repeats and all these things.

But is that kind of what you're speaking of, that it's an activity within a larger activity, or are you creating something very specific that is intended for that brand?

Bryan Duffy: 00:13:11

Yeah, no, Abbie, good question. It's a combination of both. It really is. It depends on the goals and objectives of our client.

What type of business objectives they're trying to achieve, who they're trying to reach, when they're trying to reach, what are they trying to get them to do. What's the call to action for the consumer?

So within the sports or the entertainment world, we're working many times within those major tentpole sporting events, the Super Bowls, the Final Fours, the Masters of Golf, you name it, Right. We're working with a client right now that wants to be at the super bowl and they want to host another client of theirs.

And they want that built in audience that comes with the super bowl, whether it's the consumer or the B2B audience that are attending the Super Bowl. So they want that ready built in audience. Now the advantages to that are you have that ready made audience.

It is the super bowl, it doesn't get any bigger. And the ability to create the experience and then capture the content and then share it out, Everything we've talked about before is significant.

The challenge with that comes how do you cut through the clutter? Right?

Because there's so much noise going on at the super bowl, there's so many activities, there's so many choices for consumers and for the B2B audience down at the Super Bowl. So, you know, how do you make your experience unique and different? That's going to step above and cut through the clutter, if you will.

So that's certainly part of going to an experience that's already created or an environment that's already created, or we're creating experiences for our clients that are completely brand new. There is not a built in audience. We're not going to a tentpole major event, whatever that may be.

And we're just looking at it to say, okay, what are your goals, objectives? Who are you trying to reach? How are you trying to reach them? What is that call to action? How do you want to create content and shareability?

And then from our perspective, as Bill was saying before, we'll look at it from a strategic perspective.

We'll do, we'll do our insights, we'll gather our data that those insights and that data will inform our creative ideation, which will then inform how we're strategically looking at the overall program, how we're going to achieve the objectives that the client has outlined and then we build the experience to that and go from there. So that could come in many different forms.

Adrian McIntyre: 00:15:17

Bryan, I'm really struck by something you started with, which is that experiential marketing is no longer just a below the line service offering. I've been thinking on that point for the last few minutes as you've been talking.

I mean historically advertising and public relations were kind of the definitive above the line strategy. Trying to cast the widest possible net to hit the most people with a mass campaign.

And then the smaller, more targeted, narrower activities were considered below the line.

And what you're describing is only possible now given that everybody's carrying around, you know, a high quality digital camera and broadcast tool in their pocket in the form of their phones. So all this user generated content is now part of the mix.

It's a little more unruly than a traditional campaign because it's being, you know, it's, you're not controlling the distribution. But there's a number of factors that have converged that now make this much more interesting and exciting.

And I'm just wondering whether or not clients have really realized the, the power of that.

Is it something you're having to try to convince them of, given there's still in many cases a very traditional outlook on, you know, TV commercials still in 20 25. So how's this playing out? I mean, there's a lot of innovation that's happened to make this moment in time possible.

Bryan Duffy: 00:16:47

Right? Yeah, no great questions.

And I think you've got to look at it from the perspective of one of the things we talk about all the time is going hyperlocal. Right. It gives you the ability to target a very specific consumer and build programming around that at a hyperlocal level. Right.

So you're getting that engagement, that reach that you're looking for.

But then it goes back to the fact that now through technology, as you mentioned, we can give them the ability to go national with that reach from a standpoint of the shareability of content and so forth. So that's again goes back to the value prop of why experiential marketing.

You can be very hyper local focused with it or you can expand and go big from a standpoint of the capture of content, the digital componentry, the technology that's involved, the influencer component that's involved right now.

So that is the other beauty about experiential is there's not a lot of other mediums where you can create an experience where you can plug in content, right? You can shoot content, whether that's a 32nd spot, a commercial or just some form of user generated content. You can plug in influencer into this.

You can build apps and a website associated with it and so forth, right? You've got the PR component obviously what you guys and prgen are so good at, right? You can build in that ready made PR component.

There's a sports marketing element where you can bring in athletes and celebrities and influencers to it. So it truly becomes that medium that is a catch all for other.

You can generate content that then becomes more of a short form or long form video commercial can be shot from this.

So there's so much that can be done from a standpoint of while postings and media around at a local level, right from a billboard and out of home perspective.

So it truly is the one medium that you can integrate so many other mediums into it to drive maximum consumer engagement, immersion and then reach and scalability.

Adrian McIntyre: 00:18:42

Thanks for listening to this episode of PRGN Presents, brought to you by the Public Relations Global Network.

Abbie Fink: 00:18:48

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