Experiential Marketing is all about brands creating exciting or memorable experiences for their customer, or potential customers, in order to increase brand affinity. These experiences can be in the form of a limited mini-experience like a meet and greet or surprise freebie in-store, or part of a larger event such as a branded booth at a big sporting event, or even as a large event where the brand is the showcase. Experiences like meeting the band instead of just going to the show, or suiting up like a player and experiencing the game instead of watching it from home, are what experiential marketing is all about.

As part of these experiences, consumers are often provided with freebies in “giveaways” or special large prizes, which is fine as long as laws and regulations are followed. “Giveaways” at events are still subject to sweepstakes and tax laws. And large prizes like trips need waivers and affidavits to protect your brand.

If laws aren’t followed, you could run the risk of incurring large fines or a lawsuit — or a brand disaster.

So raise your hand if you are a marketer thinking about creating an experience for your brand and you also happen to be an expert in sweepstakes and promotional law?

No one?

Time to call in a promotional law expert to discuss your ideas and options. Marden-Kane can be contacted here. We can consult and give you a custom solution.

Still not sure if you need a promotional marketing partner? Well, here are some common situations we see when it comes to experiential marketing:

The One Where They Didn’t Have Enough Items to Give Away

Szechuan Sauce, Stabbings And The McDonald’s Promotion That Went Way Wrong: There is perhaps a possible world where McDonald’s rereleased its Szechuan McNugget dipping sauce from the 1990s promotion of the movie “Mulan” and everything went fine… (Continue Reading)

This one had disaster written all over it once it went viral, and up until the day of the event there was still no sign of what stores would have the elusive Szechuan sauce. My son and I tried to take part, but when we discovered how small the list of select locations was we gave up. The brand clearly underestimated the power of the die-hard fans who wanted the Rick and Morty experience! Next time I hope McDonald’s can put together a better experience with more freebies and better Terms and Conditions with a store list posted in advance!

 

The One Where Too Many People Showed Up

Lingfield Park Bosses Deny Conditions: More than 150 people have taken to the racecourse’s Facebook page to complain about conditions at the gig on Saturday night… (Continue Reading)

Nothing is worse than having free tickets and traveling for hours to get to your event only to find out that the event was oversold and your experience is negative. This type of situation is not good for brand reputation – and could be avoided with full disclosures about crowds and conditions – or limiting the tickets to control crowd size to avoid this situation altogether.

 

The One With The Illegal Raffle

Small-town VFW awards $1.1M raffle prize after game previously halted: Someone finally won the Morris VFW raffle prize Monday evening — a month after the drawing was halted when it was discovered to be technically illegal… (Continue Reading)

Pay to play is illegal in most states and is called a lottery. Even when you call it a “raffle” that doesn’t make it legal – and while PTA or local town fundraiser might get away with it, once your prize pool gets sizable you might not. The bad publicity and fines you would have to pay are not worth the risk. Talk to a promotional marketing expert to avoid this VFW’s nightmare.

 

The One That Encouraged High Risk Behavior

Woman Dies After Water Drinking Contest:  A woman who competed in a radio station’s contest to see how much water she could drink without going to the bathroom died of water intoxication, the coroner’s office said Saturday… (Continue Reading)

No one should die because of poor contest planning. Consult an expert, even if the contest premise (hey, let’s get some people that want to be on the radio and try to win a Wii!) doesn’t seem harmful. I am sure this radio station didn’t expect this, but it doesn’t excuse the outcome.

 

These are just a few of the unfortunate problems that have come up for brands that haven’t called in promotion experts to look at the legal and logistical ramifications of your brand experience. Don’t be the next “problem” example! Make sure you run your experiential marketing plan by a promotional marketing expert for a quick legal and logistical check-up  today.

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