Companies love sponsoring events. That’s why sponsorship spending on events has outpaced every other industry — with a predictable total of $6.28 billion in 2024. But if brands aren’t spending that cash to build activations that fans love, that’s money wasted — and fans’ expectations are rising, fast.
So how can music festivals make sure their experiential activations are authentic for both the event and brand? Experiential marketing.
Experiential marketing is all about crafting a memorable customer experience. When it comes to experiential activations at festivals, the goal is to enhance the fan experience and add a new dimension to festivals and large events.
Here at Eventbrite, we live to help organizers create immersive and meaningful experiences. We power over five million worldwide events every year — and now, we want to partner with you to create an experiential marketing campaign your guests won’t find anywhere else.
Read on to find out what experiential marketing activations are, why they’re a great way to boost engagement at your next festival, and receive seven creative ideas to promote your events.
7 experiential activation ideas for your next large event
1. Set up hands-on art installations
2. Extend the experience using VR technology
5. Set up custom AR lenses and filters
6. Work with your sponsor to create activation ‘mash-ups’
Understanding the basics of experiential marketing activations
Before we run through inspiring examples of experiential activations that will blow the socks off your event attendees, let’s pump the brakes and cover all the basics.
Namely, we need to cover what experiential activations are, how they work, and why they’re a great option for event organizers looking to add some extra oomph to their offerings.
Experiential activations definition
You’ve probably heard various brands or industry people refer to experiential activations using a number of different terms, such as ‘participation marketing’ or ‘live marketing,’ ‘brand activations,’ ‘brand experience marketing,’ or ‘experiential marketing.’
In its most basic form, experiential activation is a dynamic marketing strategy brands use to attract customers and give them a new way to interact with brands in a real-world scenario.
That can take many different forms, including:
- Hands-on creative experiences
- Immersive physical experiences
- Immersive mental experiences
- Technology
We’ll cover some of these different use cases and how event organizers use them to wow guests shortly. But first, let’s talk about why experiential marketing poses such a great opportunity for venues, marketers, and event professionals.
Why use experiential activations for your events?
If you’re looking for a way to engage with your festivalgoers on a new level, experiential activations are the perfect solution. Why?
First and foremost, experiential marketing gives your target audience a chance to try before they buy. By setting up unique experiences ahead of your upcoming events, you can show non-ticket holders what they’re missing.
So if they enjoy your experiential activation, they’ll want to run out and get a ticket ASAP.
Brand activations are also a great way to better connect with your guests during your event or festival. Activations transform linear visits into immersive experiences that engage with guests on multiple levels — whether using cutting-edge technology or experiential design to add a new dimension to your event.
In doing so, you can strengthen your bond with your event attendees and leave a lasting impact on their brains. This is how you foster strong relationships with your target audience and create loyal customers.
Finally, experiential activations are the perfect way to show brands you’ll use their sponsorship funding well.
Companies that choose to sponsor your festival want to know that guests will see their brand front and center. Bold brand activations achieve that, and you can also utilize your sponsor’s USPs to showcase the best of your brand.
Sounding good so far? Now, we’ll cover some examples to give you a better idea of what we’re talking about.
Learn from the best experiential activations
There are plenty of ways to better connect with your customers — particularly if you’ve got some strong sponsors behind your event.
To help inspire you, we’ve asked some industry professionals about their favorite experiential activations (and how you can replicate them for your own events).
1. Set up hands-on art installations
Art-centric experiential activations are increasingly common for festivals, usually in the form of interactive art installations. According to Chad Issaq, CEO of Set Creative, art often speaks to your festival goers in a way that other forms of live marketing just can’t.
“Art is a fundamental part of our experience every day,” he explains.
“Technology impacts your brain, but your entire body is moved by art.”
As a result, creative director Ben Z Cooper says art installations are a great way to simultaneously showcase and advertise your sponsors while creating something unique and evocative that guests won’t see anywhere else.
“The value that brands are getting from sponsoring art installations is a wider reach and exposure,” Cooper says.
“Traditional advertising isn’t as effective anymore, so giving people experiences is the new way of advertising.”
Cooper has worked on several technology-driven art experiences at festivals — including a festival activation that allowed fans to speak into a microphone and see their voices in lights.
If you’re a venue owner, experiential activations can take a slightly different form. You just need to make sure activations ring true to fans by indulging your audience’s curiosity and playfulness.
For example, Alex Beim creative director at Tangible Interaction Design says he worked on an activation at clubs for Absolut Vodka where he created a sculptural piece with the liquor bottles. Fans could then put their finger on the center, and the sculpture would light up to the beat of their hearts.
“People are curious and playful, and in the last 10 years, we’ve been so focused on new tech and media that we haven’t paid attention to the full person,” he says.
“We’re creatures moving through space, and you can really engage people with their senses. Brands can make a real impact just by understanding this.”
💡Pro Tip: If you want to create a truly engaging piece of immersive art, ring-fence a part of your event budget. According to Mat Thomas, founder of ConcertPass, experiential art activations need to go the extra mile to offer fans something different, which costs money.
“Hands-on experiential events tend to give greater engagement. It’s the main reason brands spend more in this area,” he explains.
“They might cost more, but the fans are more active. People are used to free things — now it’s about how you can engage in a two-way interaction.”
2. Extend the experience using VR technology
Sponsor interest in live streaming and virtual reality (VR) is growing — and it’s more connected to the experiential trend than you may think. After all, both technologies are about extending the festival experience.
That can include attracting new fans, engaging with potential customers, or simply creating a new dimension for fans at the festival.
“VR is probably the biggest thing we get asked to come up with ideas on in regards to tech and experiential asks,” says Adam Cohen, Entertainment Marketing Executive at Wheelhouse Labs.
This content can go beyond the performances and become its own art form, just like on-site activations.
“With both festivals and venues, content is always going to be an incredible driver of engagement and value,” says John Riccardi, a strategic account manager at Eventbrite.
“Especially when this content reaches fans who aren’t at the festival, this can help brands raise awareness with a broader audience.”
For example, you can utilize content from your event to create VR experiences that your festival guests can send to their friends or family. This is a great way to engage with your guests on social media channels — but it also creates a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) that could motivate those friends to buy tickets for your next festival.
3. Create a festival pop-up
Traveling pop-ups can be an experiential marketing strategy to give potential attendees a sneak peek of your festival before your event. This expands your reach and boosts your brand recognition to help build excitement around your event.
There are some amazing high-budget examples or pop-up stores and experiences that we could go into, but allow us to show you some festival pop-up examples and event ideas worth trying that will impress your sponsors without breaking the bank:
- Set up a food truck with a tasting menu to promote your upcoming food festival
- Create a pop-up speakeasy with a cool bar to promote your whisky festival
- Organize a mini battle of the bands or karaoke contest to promote your music festival (with free festival passes being offered to all participants)
Want to see how pop-ups work in practice? Take a look at Pretty Princess Parties because they’re absolute pros.
They host regular free pop-ups like their recent Augusta Princesses at the Park to build their community and widen their exposure. Not only are these events free, but they give families a taste of what sort of fun they can expect by attending future Pretty Princess Parties events.
4. Use gamification
Gamification is another cool way to engage potential customers before an event. In fact, research suggests that gamification makes guests more willing to participate in your events and creates a stronger emotional bond to your brand.
So how can you incorporate gamification into your festival or large event?
You can use online games and virtual experiences ahead of your event to promote future events and ticket sales.
You can even offer discount codes or give away tickets as prizes for your online games — which is super easy if you’re using Eventbrite as your ticketing solution.
Here’s how to set up promo codes in just a few simple steps:
If you’re looking for inspiration on gamification, check out the car manufacturer Seat. Their experiential marketing campaign saw an online ‘Spin the Wheel’ game and personality test used to help point players in the right direction of a car that matched their personality — leading to a 13% increase in people booking test drives in real cars.
Don’t have a huge car company sponsoring your festival? There are some simple yet effective gamification activations you can try that won’t cost millions of dollars.
For example, you could:
- Create a personality quiz to tell guests which acts of your festival they’re more likely to want to see
- Set up an online spin wheel for your social followers to play and to win extras at your festival (like free drinks, a food truck discount, or even an extra ticket for a friend)
- Create a digital (or analog) scavenger hunt at your event space for guests to do in between entertainment and offer up prizes to everybody who completes the hunt
Ready to set up your own experiential activation?
5. Set up custom AR lenses and filters
Augmented reality (AR) technology has grown by leaps and bounds over the past couple of years — and it’s become super accessible and easier than ever for brands to create unique AR experiences.
But first thing’s first: You might be wondering how AR is different from VR. After all, they do sound pretty alike, huh?
Well, AR uses real-world settings for their experiential activations, while VR uses 100% virtual settings. As a result, AR users get to control their experience in the real world, while VR users need a headset or additional tech to become immersed in their virtual experience. All an AR user needs is a smartphone and a camera.
To give you a better idea of what we’re talking about, let’s zoom in on one of the most popular brand uses of this tech: AR lenses and filters.
AR lenses are essentially 3D layers that your eventgoers can access through their own cameras — adding cool (and often crazy) elements into their real world. For example, here’s something to aim for in Snapchat’s Women’s World Cup experiential campaign.
With a bit of coding and promotion, they were able to give fans the chance to wear their favorite jerseys or even transport their homes into interactive soccer fields with live scoreboards.
When used effectively, this sort of engagement is a great way to expand your reach because your event attendees can share your AR filters on social media with their followers.
Believe it or not, creating an AR lens for your new festival isn’t actually that complicated, either. For example, Snapchat has a Lens Studio with templates you can leverage to remove all the coding. It’s just a matter of adding your event branding and selecting the perfect 3D assets to match your event.
Meta products like Instagram and Facebook also support AR ads — which means you can create immersive AR experiences using footage from past events to show your target audience why they can’t afford to miss out on your next big event.
6. Work with your sponsor to create activation ‘mash-ups’
It doesn’t matter who your event sponsors are or what industry they’re in — chances are, there’s a unique and quirky way you can combine their specialty with your brand to create a cool mash-up experience.
If you want to stop would-be ticket holders in their tracks, it’s usually best to aim for a collaboration that people don’t see every day. For example, look at this brand activation from AirBnb and Planters. The opportunity to live in a giant peanut will undoubtedly stop people from scrolling, right?
Another direction is to tap into your sponsor’s specialty to create a more sensible and memorable experience.
For example, ShopRunner teamed up with Coach to create a delivery truck offering free, branded flower bouquets as a way to celebrate Mother’s Day. That was the perfect way to take the best of both brands and create something totally unique and attention-grabbing.
So how could you do this to create a live marketing experience for your events?
- Team up with a food and drinks sponsor to create a custom cocktail for your event
- Get reenactors from a local theater to stage an immersive skit outside your history festival
- If you’re hosting a literary event sponsored by a publishing company, get authors to write special short stories to create a compilation book for guests
Your activation mash-up doesn’t have to be complicated or over-the-top. It just needs to add value to your event and utilize your sponsors.
7. Create immersive decor
Looking for a way to transport your guests to another world? Elaborate decor can build upon your event theme and immerse people in it.
Immersive decor builds upon the overall theme and creates a more holistic sensory experience for guests by utilizing color, lighting, and sound.
Want to see how it’s done? Take a look at what this creative agency did with decor to spice up the UK premiere of The Aeronauts: They covered the outside of the venue in colorful vintage-style hot air balloons.
There are plenty of ways you could draw on this for your event.
For example, you could take guests at your Italian food festival to Italy with full-wall backdrops of famous landmarks, costumed actors, and traditional live music. Or if you’re promoting a renaissance festival, turn your ordinary event space into a fairy forest with lights, fairy doors, carvings, and reenactors.
It’s also worth drawing inspiration from event organizers Jungle Hollywood. Their Paradise Fridays use live plants, decorations, and even live animals to transform nightclubs into a jungle paradise — and we’re totally here for it.
Take a look:
Ready to start creating your own experiential activations?
If you’re working with a corporate sponsor and want to really make an impression on your event attendees, experiential activations are the ultimate solution.
They enable you to engage with your potential customers on multiple levels — simultaneously expanding your reach and increasing your ability to connect with new followers. Likewise, these activations are also a great way to make sponsors happy by showcasing their brand alongside yours.
And if you need help organizing your interactive experiences, Eventbrite can support you every step of the way. Every year, Eventbrite helps event organizers all over the world sell a whopping 300 million tickets — supporting each organizer in their planning, organization, and marketing efforts every step of the way.
