We visited the Experiential Marketing Summit in Vegas to get a front row seat for what was happening within the industry. Here are our thoughts on what we saw and who we met.  

 And to be honest did we even go if we didn’t create a top 3 list? Here goes… 

1. SMART SPONSORSHIP SELLS

The marketing team at Continental entered their partnership with MLS with a very simple approach… How do we sell tyres? It sounds overly simplified but the execution is excellent. They took a grass roots approach and focused on “everything outside the white lines”. The focus was on “soccer culture”. This encompassed everything from the insight that parents spend a lot of time in their cars driving kids to practice and games to the knowledge that the advertising hoardings would be better handed over to local dealers than with traditional Continental advertisements. The dealers loved this and went above and beyond to promote the relationship. 

Continental really harnessed the relationship by effectively becoming an unofficial sponsor of the World Cup through their relationship. Here’s a flavour of the content and how they drive home the message…

A nice co-brand on this campaign was the new Adidas trainers that had Continental tyres as the sole. Check it out here. 

2. FACEBOOK WANTS TO KNOW HOW YOU FEEL

Well done Julie Hogan from Facebook who delivered a fantastic keynote. She put it best when she revealed the big question she asks when developing an event for Facebook “How do people feel at our experiences?”. What a great metric. The focus is on impact. We love this. 

 She also showed this from AirBnB which we love too, and you can still book it here.

3. JAMES BOND IS COOL AS F*CK!

We love remarkable experiences. We love sticky ideas. We love James Bond. Essentially if there is a Venn Diagram with those three we are bang in the middle loving it playing Goldeneye on the N64 while humming the theme tune…  

dundedun dun dun dun dundedun dun dun dun dundedun dun dun dun dundedun dun dun dun deDON Do do do. 

It’s tough to not hum along! 

So when we saw Tino Schaedler and Neal Callow presenting on how they created 007 Elements we were first in line. They did not disappoint while showing how they developed and created the world’s first cinematic brand museum situated in one of the Bond franchise’s most iconic locales—in this case, 9,800 feet above sea level at the peak of Gaislachkogl Mountain in Austria. 

Here’s a look at what they created… 

We already have our trip planned over to Austria and will report back with our findings.

All in all it was fantastic time spent with the top talent in the industry. A lot like our favourite spy, we will return. 

-JD