The experience economy has long been a lynchpin of marketing. Increasingly no marketing trend report is complete without a nod to the fact that Millennial consumers value experience over the acquisition of products.

A study by Harris Group found that 72% of millennials would rather open their wallets for experiences than material items. As stereotypes surrounding Millennial consumers go, it is perhaps the least offensive, but nonetheless based on out-dated aged centric stereotypes. For as Space’s ground-breaking experiential work with Hendrick’s Gin underlines, age is not a prerequisite to craving experiences.

By 2020, the customer experience will overtake price and product as key brand differentiators. This prediction, from Chaos Theory, underlines why experiential marketing is such a growth area for brands. Within the next three to five years, CMOs are expecting to allocate 21-50% of their marketing budgets to experiential marketing.

The challenge

The gin category has fast become a victim of its own success. The ‘Ginaissance’ and the seemingly unstoppable rise of the gin category is well documented. According to data from Nielsen and CGA, gin sales grew by 41% of 2018. A total of 402 new gin brands have entered the market since 2016, 367 of which are premium brands.

Yet continued growth is far from assured. In May last year analysts at investment bank Jeffries declared, “We think the gin boom has peaked.” A flattening growth reflected in the Wine and Spirit Trade Association’s bullish predictions for spiced and flavoured rum. This challenging marketing ecosystem was given a further mountain to climb last summer because of the cool start to the season.

Sean Kelly, Associate Director of Space, says that the growth of the gin market and the volume of choice is a challenge both in an on trade and off trade environment. He explains, “Gin has become such a ubiquitous part of the drinks business; it has become totally normal to have 10 to 12 gins on a back bar.”

James Taylor, Senior Brand Manager for Hendrick’s Gin, says the beauty of the gin category is that despite the fact that there are so many different gins with so many different provenances and taste ranges, it is a relatively easy category for consumers to navigate: “When you compare the gin category to other alcohol sectors such as wine, there is no snobbery in it.”

This means while Hendrick’s doesn’t describe itself as a brand for everyone, nonetheless it is focused on being accessible in its marketing. “Hendrick’s has been around for a long time,” explains Taylor. “So, the challenge for us is around creating cut-through with consumers. The challenge for the category is it is very vibrant, and it can be overwhelming for consumers with the volume of choice.”

The insight

Hendrick’s has a clear view of its audience; a clarity of thought that allows it to cut through outdated stereotypes. For while the brand has a broad audience, it is very clearly defined.

According to Taylor, their audience is defined as “the curious crowd”, a segmentation that is based on attitudes not the traditional blunt, often misleading, segmentation of age. “Age isn’t important to us; it is all about a state of mind. This isn’t about targeting by age at all. We focus on who people are, not on a label or an age bracket,” he explains.

“Age is nothing but a number,” he continues. “The social conventions and norms surrounding age are being broken every day. People live their lives the way they want to, this is why you need to focus on the attitude.” He notes that the advertising industry, in particular, needs to ensure they aren’t excluding a very affluent audience who are just as engaged in the category, simply because “they aren't a 25-year-old hipster”.

The brand, which launched in 2000, has its eyes firmly on long-term brand building to drive growth. “For us the most important thing is long-term brand building,” adds Kelly. He points to the fact that while they have an eye on short-term initiatives, all their experiential activity is rooted through the narrative of the Hendrick’s world, complete with a distinct artistic style, built up through multiple platforms including cinema advertising. Experiential marketing should not automatically equate to short-term sales or activations; here is a brand that places the lifetime value of a consumer at the forefront.

“From the outset we knew we weren’t setting out to simply put a sip [of Hendrick’s] in people’s hands. It was about delivering a brand world,” Kelly adds. The brand’s insight was focused on building a really immersive brand experience. “Because the social media dominated world has become so transient, creating an immersive experience that fuels social content but is not driven by it was key to us,” he explains.

Kelly identifies the tension between truly immersive brand experiences and digital platforms: “When people are in an experience with us on the one hand, we want them to put their phone away and completely engage with us and ignore the outside world.” On the flipside, of course, the quality and value of the reach of social posts by engaged fans is highly valuable to the brand.

“When you are talking about building an immersive brand experience authenticity is key,” says Kelly. “You need to have a rich experience at every single touchpoint.”

The solution

In the midst of a consumer ecosystem where competition for time and space is at a premium, whether on the shelves or in consumers’ lives more broadly, Space and Hendrick’s had an immersive summer solution to its marketing challenge. Notably an approach that was not focused on short term sales growth, although the campaign achieved this. This is an experiential campaign aimed squarely at building brand affinity in the long term.

At the heart of the ‘Escape’ campaign is a clear and empathetic approach. Effectively the brand, through a series of activations, is inviting consumers to escape the mundane elements of life. Whether providing a moment of complete creativity within their commute, or through a series of immersive portals which bring the Hendrick’s world to life.

King’s Cross Immersive Scented Tunnel

A rose and cucumber scented tunnel is perhaps not something you would expect to see amidst the misery of the daily commute; yet it is exactly what Hendrick’s delivered. The longest-ever tunnel wrap, with over 1,000m of vinyl, brought brand experience to the everyday commute

“When you do something for the first time you don’t have that roadmap,” explains Taylor. Certainly, when you are setting out to create a 75-metre long scented tunnel wrap then such a road map would be reassuring. The term ‘media first’ very rarely refers to a genuine first, yet in this case it is entirely true. The activation, created alongside Vizeum, involved putting storytelling rather than traditional six-sheets at the heart of Hendrick’s outdoor activity. 

“For that level of investment, it would be easy to think I should do X number of six-sheets across the UK. But it is about making people look up from their phones, to really stop people in their tracks,” explains Kelly.

It took three weeks to create the artwork for such a vast space. The flat plan alone was a significant creative endeavour. The wrap itself was so large it needed to go up in stages over a two-week period, and only between 1am and 4.30am, the small window where it wasn’t being used by the public. 

Hendrick's, King's Cross Tunnel Takeover

Portals to the Peculiar

A laundrette in Shoreditch, an ATM at London Bridge and a newsstand in Edinburgh all provided the experimental stage for Hendrick’s to raise the bar when it comes to experiential marketing.

As Taylor explains, the portals were the ultimate manifestation of the brand’s goal of helping consumers to escape the mundane: “There are a growing range of drinks brands selling tickets to events, or prioritising sampling but with the portals what we really wanted to do was create a genuine Hendrick’s environment for people.”

According to Taylor it was the attention to detail that sets the portals apart. Space and Hendrick’s worked with the Gazebo Effect to cast the right actors for each portal, rather than following the tried and tested route of brand ambassadors.

Each immersive experience featured different narratives but each one was carefully thought out and aligned to the brand. For example, the Hendrick’s Launderette was named after master distiller Lesley Gracie and even featured an orchid, her favourite flower.

Hendrick's, Portals to the Peculiar

The results

Hendrick’s commitment to experiential paid significant dividends. While the gin category as a whole flattened out over summer 2019, Hendrick’s experienced 11% growth over the period. Portals, as part of the Hendrick’s summer Escape campaign, contributed to a 10% brand growth in the 12 weeks to 7^th September 2019, according to data from ScanTrack.

Yet this investment in experience was about more than simply generating a short-term sales spike or a sampling boost. As Kelly explains, Space worked with Hendrick’s from the outset to establish exactly what the brand was setting out to achieve: “The conversation is about the quality of reach but also on the quality of the creative idea. It can all fall down on the creative idea.” 

He continues, “It fuels the creative ambition when a brand talks about more than just reach and awareness,” noting that if the campaign was all about short-term goals, we simply wouldn’t be here talking about it.

As James explains, “How we measure success is all about the long-term health of the brand, it is about everything from awareness through to sales and econometrics.” He continues, “It is really easy to measure reach in terms of clicks or website readers. It is really easy to quantify reach but what is important is the quality of the creative reach. It is not just paid and earned. It is organic reach; the comments, the shares, the positive sentiment.”

Cultural capital

In many ways Hendrick’s and Space’s attention to detail, particularly when it comes to casting and staging, takes a leaf out of the ‘Secret Cinema school of marketing’. The experiential cinema brand, which launched in 2007, relies on a hugely simple, yet nonetheless highly effective marketing formula; provide a unique, limited highly photogenic experience, which naturally is amplified via social media and build your brand through building cultural capital. A marketing approach which is firmly rooted in the art of theatre and relies heavily on the strength of its creative execution. 

Kelly sees the next challenge for the brand as “where to go next” and how to get more people to experience their immersive offerings. “Creatively it has to be bigger and better, so the question we ask ourselves is how do we continue to evolve,” explains James, adding “the moment we stand still we start to go backwards.”