Consumer Experiential Marketing On Track For Healthy Growth

by Liz Seyi Digital marketing manager

If one needed any evidence of just how emphatically in-person experiences have recovered as a phenomenon, one would only need to look to a recently released report indicating that consumer experiential marketing across the globe recorded 8.2% growth for 2021.

And the great news doesn’t stop there. The same source suggested that the sector was set to grow at an even swifter pace during 2022, by 11.1% to $75.16 billion.

It’s quite the contrast from the situation in 2020, when the coronavirus crisis caused the international market for consumer experiential marketing to plunge by an unprecedented 25.7%. In other words, experiences are back, underlining the very real value that close work with the right experiential marketing agency will have for brands for the remainder of this decade.

What else did we learn from the latest report on global experiential marketing?

The publication in question took the form of a global experiential marketing forecast for the years 2022 to 2026, and suggested that one of the largest segments of the media industry was in a strong position to recover from the pandemic’s sometimes crippling effects.

The situation is looking all so different now. However, in many ways, the recovery simply builds on the sterling progress made during the two decades immediately before the pandemic, when experiential marketing set out its stall as one of the most consistently growing media segments.

Those previous decades are important to note, as secular trends that drove brand marketer investments during that time are anticipated to accelerate in the years to come.

The publication was shared by a major data and analysis firm, and outlined two major experiential marketing channels: consumer event sponsorships and live event marketing. Across these two broad channels were various experiential marketing categories, ranging from sports, the arts, and festivals to virtual events, nightlife, and college campuses.

Of the two major channels, consumer event sponsorships was the largest in 2021, being worth some $35.82 billion, although the live consumer events channel was the fastest-growing one, at 9.5%.

During 2022, one of the trends most fuelling growth in consumer event sponsorships was the tendency for various sports leagues, such as the NFL, to sign record sponsorship deals. This year has also seen surging levels of attendance at music and tourist events, and sponsored arts events offering “immersion” experiences have attracted plenty of notice, too.

Looking to the live event marketing side, meanwhile, consumers showed their eagerness to resume attending sports and entertainment shows, following almost two years of little activity. But there has also still been strong demand for virtual events, even as the toughest COVID-19 restrictions from 2020 to 2021 have receded in the memory.

Could now be the moment for you to join forces with a specialist experiential marketing agency?

“The experience” has always been a big deal – and it looks primed to be a bigger deal than ever during 2022, 2023 and in the years ahead. That’s why now could be the time for your brand to get ahead, connecting more powerfully with your target audiences than it has ever done before, with the able assistance of a proven experiential marketing agency.

To learn more about the role Tribe can play in being that agency, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our highly capable London-based team.