Experiential marketing campaigns can be bold, ambitious or audacious even.
Pulling off a successful promotion, however, hinges on a fundamental premise: how well do you know your audience? Are you able to break that familiarity into a granular level to pinpoint precisely when, where and how marketers can utilize your insights?
Event marketing for the ethnic customers presently takes on the obvious route—marketing during prominent festivals, i.e. Diwali, Eid, Lunar New Year, etc. or creating a specific experience for the sole purpose of promotion.
Multicultural audiences will congregate, celebrate, break bread and break a leg, if they’re offered just the right incentive. Since, experiential marketing is all about connecting a brand to its audience in a positive way by the way of an experience, here are new ideas for a brand can win customers.
Move over, pa, Appa’s here:
The CBC hit show, Kim’s Convenience, featuring the trials and tribulations of a Canadian-Korean immigrant family has been winning everyone’s hearts. Paul Sun-Hyung, who plays the lovable patriarch “appa” in the show is a quirky, funny and relatable character with bushel-load of charisma. Now imagine, if a brand were to invite “appa,” to a pre-organized block party in Markham or Mississauga as their brand ambassador? Huh?
The show’s other actor Simu Liu (Jung), a young millennial, is admittedly a hoops fan. A pop-up event (much like Maple Diversity’s campaign for MEC) except, in this case, it would be a friendly game of pick-up basketball with Liu and his hilarious friend Kimchee (Andrew Phung). The game is guaranteed to bring throngs of their millennial fans.
Tamilians in Toronto: an unexplored target audience
Pongal, an important religious event of Tamilians, falls smack dab in the middle of winter. Known as the harvest festival, Pongal is a community-centric festival. Music, dance and a traditional feast mark the occasion. According to Statistics Canada, Toronto is home to some 140,000 Canadian-Tamils from Sri Lanka. Everyone from the diaspora (including Tamils from India) frequent the temple for prayers. Many groups host music concerts. An experiential marketing campaign, exclusively crafted for the Tamilians during Pongal will not only hit the bullseye, but it can demonstrate to consumers that when a brand understands sub-cultural differentiators and is willing to go an extra mile, its sincerity has to be saluted.
Balle! Balle! music and dance (besides oxygen) are two of life’s staples for South Asians in Canada, irrespective of demographics, language, religion or culture.
Summer in the GTA is packed with concerts, festivals, and celebrations. Toronto is the epicenter of some real Bhangra action. There are festivals (Bhangra in the 6ix, Flower City Bhangra, etc.) that elevate this folk dance into a full-fledged carnival of colours and sound. The competitions are sold-out events and hugely popular. If you’re a brand that wants to make way into your consumers’ hearts, the Bhangra route will get you there.
Why experiential marketing?
Maple Diversity Communications understands the value of experiential marketing. We know, its strength lies in the fact that the communication (between the brand and consumer) happens on a personal level. Secondly, experiential marketing can give a bang for the marketer’s buck. And, most importantly, during experiential marketing, the brand is not vying for attention in an over-saturated space.
These are just a handful of ideas, we have plenty more where these came from. Call, e-mail or visit us and allow us to demonstrate our expertise.