The experiential experience
Anyone can throw up a tent in a high-traffic area and harass the general public, but what does it take to pull off an effective experiential event? In a piece that first appeared in Encore, Matt Smith investigates.
A television commercial can easily be muted and ignored, but try ignoring a purring, squirming cat in your arms. That was the experience awaiting passers by in Sydney’s Martin Place in October last year when Mars Petcare built Whiskas Kitten Palace.
The stunt involved constructing a transparent, custom-built house filled with cats provided by charity Pet Rescue. The project took around six months to plan, but the reception from a pet-loving city was more than worth it. “Despite the rain, people were lining up for an hour to see the cats,” says Anthony Dean from Mars Petcare. “We had a live feed of the event on our website and got a tonne of new Facebook likes. The house was busy all day and there was a 13 per cent increase in adoptions.”
Elaborate experiences like the Kitten Palace can be daunting to plan and pull off but are the perfect way to cut through advertising fatigue. At one time something as simple as throwing a tent up at Martin Place and handing out samples would cut the mustard. These days the competition is fierce, the stunts elaborate and flashy, but there’s a fine line between impressive and excessive.
The Jim Beam Esky stunt is like a holiday to Afghanistan. The idea’s good, just totally wrong location. It would neither of won over the Eastern Suburbs lovelies or reaffirmed the brand with its western suburbs heartland. An expensive missed opportunity?
I love how the phrase “western suburbs heartland” has become a catch-all term for anything that you’d keep as far out of sight as possible. Jim Beam? Bitch please, not in my half of the city.
@ Encyclic – “Western suburbs heartland” means some of the biggest, proudest brands in the country – Western Sydney Wanderers, Parra Eels, GWS, The Voice, V8 cars, Holden utes, Jim Beam, Hungry Jacks, VB, the list goes…
.@Westie, thank you for making my point for me.