Marketing in NZ: Where’s the Experience?

Posted by: Alex Erasmus

Experiential marketing is about bringing the customer closer to the brand and, by its very definition, creating an experience. It’s fair to say New Zealanders love experiences like anyone else; tons of graduates take an OE and the country is full of different tours, promising the ‘Kiwi experience’.

In addition, there are plenty of campaigns that tap into Kiwiana and play on the strong sense of national identity. You only have to look at the extremely successful ‘Tourism Paeroa’ campaign by L&P and the newly launched ‘Get Some Kiwi in Ya’ concept from Kiwi Bacon to see that we all love engaging with a brand that feels alive.

Of course it’s important to integrate cool experiential offline events with an online campaign, the two go hand-in-hand, but why is it that New Zealand hasn’t fully tapped into the fun and effective experiential marketing space like other countries?

Sure, we spend an increasing amount of time online these days, but there is still definitely an opportunity to create something different and interesting for consumers that doesn’t involve a computer or TV screen.