Maritz Interactions: Making Brands Come Alive

Sept 29, 2008

Why do people believe in brands? Maritz Interactions has cracked that code, recognizing that consumers today are driving brand perceptions and need to be engaged in more personal, meaningful ways. Experiential marketing, as the Maritz team sees it, is the way to create brand dialogues that increase customers'sense of connection to a product and build brand loyalty. Maritz's client roster, including many Fortune 500 companies, attests to the soundness of that philosophy. Its company credo: "the science and art of people and potential."

    Maritz Interactions President Thom Casadonte describes his team's approach: "We provide innovative solutions that make the client's brand come alive for customers and prospects. We develop innovative brand experiences in partnership with our clients and their agency partners."
   
    The goal of the experience is to send a specific message that communicates the most appropriate aspects of the client's brand to the target. Not only must the mode of engagement be attuned to the product and the target audience, but the effort also has to deliver results.

    Says Casadonte: "We're committed to creating brand experiences that yield serious bottom-line results, not just by helping clients attract customers, business partners and employees, but by turning customers into brand advocates, business partners into brand allies, and employees into agents of change."

    Maritz's experiential division launched several years ago, after CEO Steve Maritz noticed that traditional "brand monologue" marketing efforts weren't working as well as they used to. "Maritz Interactions historically has provided a strong value offering for our clients with event marketing, production and communications services," he says. "It was critical for us to make a significant investment in experiential marketing also, as our clients are savvy marketers and are asking for greater strategic support from us."



    Part of that strategic support comes from Maritz's wealth of corporate research strength. "Our analytics take into account every aspect of a brand and combine these with the latest intelligence about the target market and industry trends," Maritz says. "Then we use that information creatively to create an interactive experience that gets real results by evoking the desired emotions and actions. We're more like heart managers than brand managers."

    It's these deep insights, combined with strategic execution, that boost Maritz clients' ROI and bottom lines. Case in point: The Toyota "AST Dew Tour," linking the automaker with action sports.

    Maritz created a fun, carnival-like atmosphere where customers could interact with the automaker's cars. Potential buyers could maneuver through a funhouse-style drive course, kick back in the athletes' lounge, and watch the mad skills of world-class skateboarder and environmentalist Bob Burnquist showcase the Toyota Prius hybrid technology.

    Maritz's highly strategic approach harvested significant returns for Toyota. Total three year attendance for the tour has increased 62 percent, more than quadrupling from 2006 to 2008. In addition, the tour's success earned Maritz Event Marketer's EX Award for Best Activation of a Sports Sponsorship.
   
    Another example: For an important telecom client that wanted to deepen its relationships with C-suite executives, Maritz created a series of intimate B2B hospitality events underscoring the client's progressive and innovative DNA, featuring several of the nation's finest molecular gastronomists and mixologists in an interactive environment. The experiential event, with its cutting-edge cuisine, drew far more people than expected-a major coup, considering the C-suite target-and provided elegant support for the client's brand pillars.

    Want to learn more about how experiential marketing can take your marketing program to the next level? Call Maritz, the company that's been designing and producing experiences for more than 50 years, the company that provides the highest level of virtual and real world experiences for customers, prospects, channel partners and employees-and maximum ROI through the disciplined application of strategic thinking, creative design and flawless execution.

Contact: Andrew Bimson, Director, Marketing and Business Development, andrew.bimson@maritz.com.

Download the 2008 Experiential Marketing section here (PDF)

For more Experiential Marketing coverage:
Part I
Part II

Download the 2007 Experiential Marketing section here (PDF)