Face-to-Face Marketing Gains Increasing Popularity In Sales Promotion
: Maximizing Ad Impact by Stimulating the Five Senses

A new marketing method designed mainly to stimulate the senses of customers and encourage customers to individually experience products has been introduced to SP (Sales Promotion) activity programs. Customers are looking forward to experiencing the best that a product has to offer through experiential marketing.

Effect of Combining SP Advertising With Experiential Marketing
Experiential marketing is totally different from existing marketing methods, which only increase customers’ understanding on the manufacturing process and product quality in a retail shop. Experiential marketing could result in more value-added profits for a company. The 2002 World Cup Game, for instance, was a trigger that proliferated experiential marketing. During the 2002 World Cup Game, a great number of people got together and cheered for the Korean soccer team in front of a super-sized electronic message board on the street. Unconsciously, they were the target of an experiential marketing strategy carried out by sponsor companies. Experiential marketing includes five types. Sense marketing is focused on exciting a customer’s five senses -- sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Emotional marketing is intended to incite audience’s feelings and emotions and reinforce the relationship with customers. Intellectual marketing helps audience think creatively about something by stimulating their intellectual desire. Behavior marketing provides audience with a variety of events for them to actively go through. Finally, relation marketing places an emphasis on establishing a brand community that develops the social connection with customers. With all these marketing methods, a company tries to exceptionally attract customers, impressing unconsciously the image of a product and a firm on the customer's mind.

SP Marketing with Events and Other Promotional Activities
Why do most companies apply conventional marketing and experiential marketing in SP advertising activities? That is because potential customers think the products must offer high-quality and functional specifications and they expect something beyond that. This could be achieved only through experiential marketing activities. Bonghwan Go, director of OOH division in LGAd, comments that since the 2002 World Cup Game, many companies have tried to promote and advertise their products by applying experiential marketing to SP advertising activities. As a matter of fact, this type of promotional activity was already evident before, but it has been proven to achieve significant ad effect through worldwide sports events. Based on the theory from Bun Schmit, the world-famous professor, customers really want products, communication and marketing that touch their senses and stimulate their mentality. In other words, most customers enjoy communicating with products or marketing products that help them experience all aspects of products on the streets. From his argument, we can derive one of the most significant strategies for a marketing plan. This integrated marketing method can be roughly divided into three types. The most common type is using mobile units like buses and cars and positioning them strategically for promotional activities. The next type involves SP advertising activity for temporary events that could offer two-way communication. Lastly, area marketing, which fully decorates a specific area with product image and graphics, provides simultaneous events and the opportunity of experiencing the products.

New Integrated Marketing for the New Generation
Among various types of advertising methods, car wrapping is the most famous. However, according to current sign codes, car wrapping is illegal. Most companies promote products or events with car wrapping even though they might be penalized. Aside from this risk, it is difficult to accurately measure the ad impact of car wrapping. With conventional SP advertising, ad effect can be determined using informative and systematical ways because this type of advertising has a long history and is used widely in outdoor advertising. However, integrated marketing activities with experiential marketing require even twice the cost and there is no accurate yardstick to estimate ad impact in spite of visually high ad impact. Amid these challenges, the number of SP advertising examples has been gradually increasing as the top consumer group has shifted from 30~40’s to 10~20’s and the pattern of customers has also been transformed.