On the latest episode of Campaign Middle East’s On The Record podcast, Virginia Ocampo, the Director of Global Strategy at Spiro, discusses how to build meaningful, experiential strategies, ensuring cultural relevance, brand safety and consistency in global brand positioning while leaning into data analytics and AI-led consumer behaviour insights.
Beginning the conversation, Ocampo said, “Artificial intelligence and LLMs are just tools that permit us to derive insights from raw data. Those insights then inform a strategy that guides the direction of specific brand experiences. We don’t jump into tactics, because tactics without strategy are an expensive noise. That’s why we always take the route of data, insights, strategy and then look into the creative direction of that experience. What this ensures is that connections – between brands and consumers – will have a higher impact.”
Ocampo also breaks the myth that it’s hard to prove return-on-investment (ROI) within experiential marketing while discussing ways to quantify the effectiveness of experiential marketing on long-term brand equity.
“We need to stop viewing experiential as a cost and start viewing it as a strategic investment into brand equity. For this, we need the right metrics to have a measurable experience – in a way that speaks to impact. This goes beyond return-on-investment (ROI) to include what is the return on the objectives, on the experience and on the community that impacts your brand on that activation,” Ocampo said.
She added, “The time has to move away from planning events to designing experiences. If you could forget about everything you know about events, do it, and then take this new approach. It’s time to rethink how we design experiences. We have the tools, strategies and frameworks that can guide this process to create impactful experiences,”
Calling for a strategic approach to experiential marketing, Ocampo says that it’s time for brands to define clear key performance indicators (KPIs) and clear objectives, without which any efforts put into it are wasted.
“We have tools such as the Gravity Index, which breaks down seven drivers in audiences that helps brands be more accurate in the design of their experiences. This definitely results in higher impact and engagement with your audience,” Ocampo explained.
She also goes on to explain the need for marketers to embrace training programmes and cross-disciplinary workshops to ensure that brands develop effective experiential strategists within their teams. Spiro recently conducted several such workshops for brands and partners in the Middle East.
“Even if brands have been in the market for 30 years, it’s never too late to assess where they are it in terms of their portfolio of events; the way they communicate; and the consistency of their messaging, especially in big industries where they have different business units that have different audiences and require curated messages for each audience,” she added.
For more insights from a very intriguing conversation, watch the full video above.
CREDITS:
Guest: Virginia Ocampo, the Director of Global Strategy, Spiro
Host: Anup Oommen, Editor, Campaign Middle East
Production: Surajit Dutta, Content Production Manager, Motivate Media Group
Videography: Mark Mathew, Creative Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
Studio: Ahmed Abdelwahab, Studio Manager, Motivate Media Group
Editing: John Melencion, Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
