From the way we shop, work and eat, to how we communicate, technology has changed the world immensely. And this is true in no industry more so than Marketing, where technology has been crucial in helping brands keep up with an ever more diverse, educated and hard to engage consumer base. Almost every type of Marketing has benefited immensely from technological advances.

Tech has revolutionized Event Management through seamless booking and logistical solutions and has enabled direct marketing to be personalized and scaled to reach millions over email. It has combatted the limitations of single-channel marketing and enabled collaboration across media types and between brands, retailers and individuals. And, not only has it revolutionized existing processes, it has created a long list of new ways to reach consumers like Digital Marketing, Influencer Marketing, and Content Marketing.

Getting Back to What Matters Most

But, possibly more important than all the individual tasks and tools that MarTech has given us, it is the freedom to be creative that really matters. Through MarTech, marketers have been gifted with infinite time-saving and process-improving tools, taking the complexity out of many activities and freeing up more time and brain space for what truly matters. With the “how” taken care of, we can get back to more of the “what,” making the best use of what is truly our most valuable asset: our own creativity.

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Experiential Has Been Slow to Adapt

Interestingly, one of the most creative and innovative forms of marketing — Experiential — has been the slowest to adapt to new technology. While technology is often used within consumer experiences, and also allows for the social sharing and engagement beyond the physical, there has been strikingly few advances in the marketers’ process in booking, scaling or measuring experiential activations.

In this world of Experiential Marketing, the old-school reigns supreme. Marketers usually have to choose between spending thousands on an experiential agency, or they have to deal with the logistical complexities and expense of manually organizing their activations.

It was exactly these issues that caused experienced brand marketer, Teresa Aprile, to create Brandscrush, an end-to-end booking platform for experiential media, in 2018.

“It seems ludicrous that in an age where you can connect with millions online in a few short clicks, getting physical hands and feet onto the ground remains frustratingly slow and expensive,” Teresa says.

She saw an opportunity to use technology in a way that has been done in almost every other facet of Marketing: creating a simple tech-based solution for marketers that makes finding, booking and measuring their experiential activities as easy as booking a Facebook ad campaign.

A MarTech Solution for Real-World Engagement

Through Brandcrush, marketers now have direct access to thousands of activation opportunities in real-world spaces like gyms, hotels, corporate offices, cafes, and events.

From sampling to placement, pop-ups, and “on the trainer” or “on the menu” product experiences, marketers can find and book activations, scaling them nationally or internationally in a matter of seconds. Instead of finding and paying a field marketing team, you can have staff at these existing business spaces host your brand experience on your behalf — becoming brand ambassadors, and leveraging the established connections they have with the clientele.

Bringing MarTech into Experiential also means that we no longer have to sacrifice targetting and relevance to reach large audiences, something that traditional mass sampling campaigns have always struggled with. It provides an opportunity for advanced ROI measurability and allows marketers a way to incentivize and track a path to purchase, so the success of your experiential activities can easily be monitored via sales figures.

Importantly, in the same way, that technology has created new marketing channels, it has also created a whole new media channel for experiential — existing businesses, who can now earn more revenue by helping brands connect with their customers.

Experiential Marketing has always proven incredibly effective in reaching and engaging with consumers. But, the logistical complexities and expense of running these activations have made it simply not feasible for many marketers. With a tech solution like Brandcrush, experiential and in-store activations could now be as easy to book as a digital or social campaign, showing once again the power of MarTech to give marketers back their time, and most importantly, space for creative freedom.

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