How Health Brands Can Use Holiday Downtime to Prepare for a Strong Year of Experiential Marketing
The holidays can feel like a weird pause for health and wellness brands. Consumers are traveling, slowing down, and celebrating… but you know what’s coming. January is about to unleash a tidal wave of New Year, New Me energy. That’s exactly why the holiday slowdown is pure gold. While everyone else is coasting, you have […]
DIY Experiential Marketing: When It Works—and When It Really, Really Doesn’t
“This would cost us half as much if we did these events with our internal team.” Sometimes this is the response we get after a sales and planning call with a potential client. And maybe—not a popular opinion among agencies—sometimes brands really do come out ahead when they take on experiential marketing programs internally. But […]
Trimming Branches to Grow Taller: The Future of HFA
Sometimes you have to trim a tree to encourage healthy growth. At the end of the summer, HFA got out the tree loppers and made some big cuts to our service branches, pruning about 40% of our business. It was a massive, carefully considered, and, let’s be honest, terrifying decision. Why in the world would […]
The Power of the People
True story – A kombucha company owner stops by a sampling event to secret shop a program he’d paid thousands of dollars to execute. The brand ambassador grimly asks if he’d like a sample. He says, ‘Sure.’ She pours the sample while explaining she doesn’t really like the product. She believes it tastes sour and […]
The Art of Activating on a Budget
How much does an experiential marketing program cost? $1,000? $10,000? $1,000,000? The answer? Yes. Experiential marketing programs can range anywhere from $1,000 to over $1,000,000.. For those at the higher end of the range, this blog probably isn’t for you. You can pull off many of your wildest dreams (and we’d love to help you!). […]
When Things Go Sideways…
“Good morning! I hope you have a wonderful shift at WFM today. Give me a shout if you need anything.” This is how most brand ambassadors start their days with HFA. A cheerful greeting, a show of support, and an opening to a dialogue with to their fellow weekend warrior, our on-call manager. When […]
5 Things to Ask Your Market Managers
An alien invasion takes over the music festival where you and your team are activating…what do you do? While most challenges your team faces at an experiential marketing activation won’t be this outlandish, we all know the importance of having an event manager who is able to face even the most intense challenges head-on. But […]
Expo West was Great… Now What?
Welcome to the post-Expo West season. No doubt by now you’ve gone from the high of the Expo West energy – the intense tradeshow hours, retailer meetings, connecting with past colleagues, team dinners, after hours meet-ups, and VIP parties – and now you are left with the “real work” of figuring out what to do […]
How to Measure the ROI of Retail Demos
When clients come to us for retail demos, they often want to know how they can measure their ROI. It’s a valid and important question. At HFA, it’s imperative that our clients see a high ROI on their retail demo programs and experiential marketing activations. Our primary growth strategy is built on retaining long-term clients […]
Experiential Marketing: The #1 Key to Success
Location, location, location. It’s the most important factor in a real estate purchase and it’s just as important in experiential marketing. Choosing the location for your next experiential marketing event is the single most important factor that will lead to your event’s success…or lack thereof. To find the best location for an experiential marketing activation, […]
Benefits of Spot-Check Calls
One aspect of the experiential marketing industry that draws independently-minded individuals is the fact they get to operate as their own agents. Brand ambassadors choose their shifts, and often work without management on site. It takes a very dependable and trustworthy person to work in this kind of environment. Unfortunately, not everyone is cut […]
Why Premium Products Need Education-Focused Activations
Imagine you walk into a fancy store, and you see some special, expensive things on the shelves. You’re curious about them, but you’re not sure if they’re worth buying because they cost more. Do you take a chance? Not likely. But what if there was a brand ambassador there letting you actually try the product, […]
When Should You Start Planning Your 2024 Demos?
While our friends and family are planning their New Year’s Resolutions, those of us in the health and fitness industry are working hard to make sure those goal-setters are set up for success! We’re filling orders to stock the shelves, setting up promotions for retailers, and when January 1 comes, we’ll be out there passing […]
4 Policies that Help Us Keep Great Brand Ambassadors
We believe passionate, well-educated, driven brand ambassadors are the key to success for any experiential marketing program – from product sampling at key retailers to large-scale activations at music festivals. Without the energy great brand ambassadors bring to events, you will be fighting an uphill battle in creating memorable engagements with your target consumer. At […]
Remember – It’s Not About You: Putting Customers First in Experiential Marketing
We may be biased, but we believe in today’s marketing landscape, there is nothing as exciting as putting together an innovative, engaging experiential marketing campaign. When done well, creating unforgettable brand experiences is a win/win for the brand and the consumer. But here’s the thing: to truly connect with consumers, you need to put them […]
7 Tips for Brands Launching Retail Demo Programs
We work with brands of all sizes – from startups to category leaders. We love watching brands grow and evolve. Most emerging brands get into a smaller retailer, hoping to create a data story there that will compel larger retailers to bring in their products. In these cases, building a high ROI demo program is […]
Are Higher Traffic Events Always the Right Fit?
When we meet with an experiential marketing client about a new campaign, we always start by asking them what their goals are for the program. They almost always focus on a high number of engagements – handing out pallets of samples, capturing thousands of email addresses, or having an entire music festival walk through their […]
Experiential Marketing: When More is More
The saying less is more is true…sometimes. But sometimes, you have to toss aside that old adage and go big! At large-scale events, where dozens, or even hundreds, of brands are competing for attention, if you don’t stand out, you’ll be lost in the shuffle, and you can expect your ROI on the event to […]
The Secret to Success with Dry Demos
One of the most interesting things we learned during the pandemic was some of our brands didn’t find a decrease in sales at retail demos when they pivoted from product sampling to dry (non-sampling) demos. To us, this seemed counterintuitive. We had always believed that tasting or experiencing the product was imperative to closing the […]