Sell Me An Experience

The Keg Mansion, sold the haunted experience

Last year for Christmas, my boyfriend and I decided to book a hotel and go to Toronto for the weekend, instead of buying each other presents. We went to the Keg Mansion with his family, Ripley’s Aquarium, on a Steam Whistle Brewery tour and to a board-game café. Why did we do this, you might ask? We wanted to share new experiences together, instead of getting each other gifts that didn’t really mean anything.

Ripley's Aquarium, an underwater experience

Another great way to market to millennials is through experience, or in other words, experiential marketing. Creative Guerilla Marketing defines experiential marketing as a form of marketing that focuses on helping the consumer experience the brand. They also said that it is used to form a memorable and emotional connection between the consumer and the brand so that it generates customer loyalty and influences the purchase decision.

Experience Toronto in a beer

Experiential marketing can be anything from free sampling, to full out guerilla-marketing stunts. An experiential marketing campaign that quickly comes to mind for me, is Red Bull. Red Bull ‘gives you wings’ and it gives you a unique experience. Another example is the launch of Tim Horton’s Dark Roast coffee, where they completely blacked out one of their locations. Consumers got to go inside, in the complete dark, and experience the new flavour with their senses of taste and smell heightened.

As millennials, we are more interested in buying in on an experience, than the product or service itself. How many times have you wanted to go to Harvey’s and create your own personalized burger? I know I have, because it’s not just a hamburger, it’s an experience. The Store Front Blog states that experiences, especially shared experiences, are what connect millennials as humans. Building an experience to go with your product or service allows us to build a relationship with you.