Great experiential marketing is like a toolbox—it’s less about what you have in it and more about how you use it. AI is a powerful tool for its accessibility and ability to pull key information in an instance. It can take your event from something two-dimensional to something highly engaging, strategic, and memorable.
Think of AI more like an assistant that helps you stay on track and make educated decisions as you build out live events, not something that takes over. Here’s how we recommend using AI to give your experiential marketing events more of that endearing human touch.
Personalized Outreach & Hooks That Hit
The more audience information you have, the better AI can help you use it to craft the perfect message to your audience. Reference someone’s past involvement with the brand or highlight a new feature or angle they’ve been waiting to see from you. AI can also help identify and incorporate keywords that interest them into event titles, as well as engaging copy strategies to hook them from the get-go.
Brainstorm Sessions Backed by Market Trends
Lean on the tracked interests of your target audience while ideating in-person brand experiences. Then, let AI pop in with trend-based decision-making as you go. For example, AI might identify that food trucks placed strategically at music festivals easily convert new audiences into repeat buyers.
Keep in mind, AI should be more of a starting point, so you can get creative from its early suggestions. Your brand might make this idea their own by incorporating a vintage Volkswagen pop-up outside the iconic Red Rocks venue for a specific artist who aligns with your brand’s values. We did this with our Tacos & Tequila Van, bringing tequila sampling to new heights where tasters felt on top of the world.
Timeline Construction & Optimization
AI can even help optimize the timeline and flow of your event. Ask it for example speakers to invite based on past audience data, what times of day to organize them according to crowd flow, and logistic recommendations for build-up and tear-down of each day. You could even use AI to create checklists for floor managers, or assign tasks based on workload and expertise. Consider setting up your own AI chatbot to help answer event goers’ pre-planning and last-minute questions too.
AI can even help you quickly see how an event can look different based on different themes or industries. Quickly refresh and swap out photo booth ideas, giveaways, backdrops, and booked acts based on niche interests industry by industry.
Post-Event Analysis
Uncover trends and consumer interests to hit on next time by synthesizing post-event surveys into an AI tool. For example, feedback after a vegan tasting event could uncover a crowd’s preference for places with lots of foliage and fresh air. Now you can pivot your simple grocery store tasting stand into an outdoor set production, like we did for our Babybel “Cheese Grows on Trees” pop-up. This traveling greenhouse featured plant-based vegan cheese “growing” on trees, allowing consumers to instantly understand the plant-based product messaging.
Using AI Ethically
AI tools pull from vast data sources, and consumer privacy rights are at odds now more than ever before. Keep consumer data safe. Don’t input personally identifiable information into AI tools and risk compromising someone’s privacy. Stick to surveys and trackable data, not names, addresses, or identifiable characteristics.
A Starting Point Before Getting Creative
Remember, at the end of the day, AI is a powerful starting point for language and creative decision-making: emails, social posts, blogs, web page copy, and press releases. Kick off speaker bios, fireside chat questions, event descriptions, and more based on data you’re already sitting on.
While AI can do things like create art and compose music for your event, don’t underestimate the power of collaborating with key culture-shapers like authentic influencers and indie artists on sponsorship activations. Plus, collaborating with local artists can invite in niche corners of your brand’s target audience that AI could miss.
AI covers your bases, but nothing replaces real human touch in experiential marketing. It can’t be a true one-to-one engagement without a person on the other side. Legacy is here to help you find the best balance of human and technology that optimizes your brand’s experiential marketing strategy.