Hi there,

The other day I was walking through Barcelona when, from what felt like miles away, I caught a whiff of freshly baked bread.

Before I even spotted the logo or glanced at the menu, I knew exactly where I was… Subway.

Instantly I'm 16 again, ordering that fatboy meatball sub with ranch sauce and extra jalapeños, or going "rogue healthy" with an Italian BMT on honey oat. IYKYK

That smell isn't an accident. It draws you in before your rational brain kicks in to ask if there are freshly baked White Choc Macadamia Cookies in store.

That's branding. That's designing the experience.

In a world where everyone seems obsessed with AI, your brain actually prioritizes emotionally charged, sensory-rich experiences over raw data. Neuroscience research proves emotionally connected experiences stick in our memory three times longer than neutral ones.

We don't recall information. We remember how things made us feel.

Yet most brands are still shouting messages into the void, acting like human billboards instead of creating moments that matter. But the smart ones? They've cracked an entirely different code.

Your Brand Isn't What You Say It Is

Let me be clear: your customers decide what your brand is. Not your brand manager. Not your agency. Not that beautifully crafted brand book we designed for you.

Your brand is the sum total of every single interaction someone has with you. It's the email that feels surprisingly human. The website that loads instantly and doesn't make people hunt for what they need. The way your product feels in their hands. The way your store smells.

Most brands treat these touchpoints like afterthoughts. They obsess over logo placement and hex codes while completely ignoring that their checkout process feels like digital purgatory. That's backwards thinking, and it needs to stop.

What Experiential Branding Actually Means

Let's ditch the marketing jargon for a minute. Experiential branding is simply branding that lives in your body, not just your brain.

It's moving beyond logos and slogans to create moments people actually feel. Think about the soft lighting in every Aesop store that makes you want to touch everything. Or the electric energy at a Nike pop-up that makes you want to sprint home and work out immediately.

The best brands know it's not about telling people who you are - it's about letting them experience it firsthand.

This isn't abstract marketing theory. This is basic survival as we move forward. We're drowning in information, and people are getting pickier about what deserves their attention. In a world of overstimulation, consumers gravitate toward 'quiet luxury,' 'slow living,' and authenticity over excess.

As AI content bombards us daily, the next generation must prioritize quality over quantity, presence over performance, and experience over empty messaging.

The Three Ways to Make This Real

Physical: Stop Hiding Behind Screens

Most brands fear physical spaces because they can't control the variables, but that's exactly why they work.

Walk into a Lego store and watch what happens. Kids (and their parents) start building immediately. Retail becomes play, and suddenly nobody thinks about price points or competitors.

Rapha gets this with their cycling cafés. You're not just buying gear - you're joining a community over espresso, talking about weekend rides. The product becomes secondary to the experience.

Even the small details matter more than you think. Custom packaging that doesn't feel like Amazon, handwritten notes, and spaces that smell like something specific and make you want to linger. Your brand needs a body. Give it one.

Digital: Make the Internet Feel Human Again

Spotify's Wrapped transforms data visualization into a personal love letter about your year in music. Analytics become emotion, and people share it like a badge of honor.

Nike By You lets you play god with sneakers. Point your phone at your feet and watch custom colorways appear in real time. Change the swoosh, swap materials, see how it looks with your actual jeans. Suddenly you're not shopping - you're designing. The AR tricks your brain into thinking you're already wearing shoes that don't exist yet.

Most digital experiences optimize for efficiency. The good ones optimize for feeling.

Hybrid: When Everything Clicks

This is where it gets interesting. When digital and physical collide, experiences become multidimensional.

Visa Live at the Louvre blended music, culture, and digital engagement by allowing fans to participate both in person and virtually via Roblox, amplifying brand visibility across multiple touchpoints.

Remember when Pokemon Go turned the entire world into a game board. Physical locations became digital destinations, and suddenly millions of people explored their neighborhoods to catch virtual creatures. Same planet, completely new layer of meaning.

When you nail the hybrid approach, you're not choosing between online and offline. You're creating something bigger than both.

Who's Actually Doing This Right

Mastercard – Turning Payments Into Ritual

Most financial brands bore you on purpose. They hide behind security theater and corporate speak, treating every interaction like a necessary evil.

Mastercard flipped the script. Walk into any store across 80+ markets, and you'll hear their sonic logo when you tap to pay. That little musical flourish trains your brain to link the sound with completion, satisfaction, and success.

They opened branded restaurants like Priceless Table in São Paulo and NYC, where the experience becomes the product. Signature cocktails crafted exclusively for Mastercard cardholders, custom scents, and even their physical cards use materials that feel heavier and more substantial than the flimsy plastic everyone else uses.

The most mundane transaction—paying for something—becomes a moment you notice and remember. Obsessive design disguised as convenience.

hudsonyards

293K followers

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Electrolit – When Hydration Becomes Festival Salvation

Most brands at Coachella set up a tent, hand out free samples, and pray someone posts about it on Instagram. Electrolit said screw that and built a two-story art-filled oasis instead.

Their Hydration Camp wasn't about pushing product - it was about giving festival-goers what they actually needed: a break from the madness. Pop-up 5K runs for the psychopaths who still had energy after day two. Chill zones that felt like art galleries. Wellness bars where drinking electrolytes felt like self-care instead of hangover damage control.

They took the most basic human need - not dying of dehydration in 100-degree desert heat - and turned it into a destination people actively sought out. Not because they were desperately thirsty, but because they needed somewhere to reset their brains.

@chris.farias

Staying hydrated 🫶 freebie 🔗🅱️ #coachella #stagecoach #electrolitcreator #electrolit #hiddengem #fypシ゚viral

House of Vans – When Free Actually Means Something

Most brands "sponsor" culture by slapping their logo on someone else's event and calling it authentic. Vans bought a warehouse in Brooklyn instead and created something that changed how an entire generation thinks about the brand.

House of Vans became a pilgrimage site where the brand lived through experience, not messaging. Walk in and you'd smell concrete dust mixed with spray paint. Feel the vibration of skateboard wheels on wood. Hear emerging bands that would headline festivals years later. Every sense was engaged in what Vans actually stood for.

People would wait hours in line because they could feel the authenticity. This wasn't a branded space trying to look cool - it was a cool space that happened to be branded. The difference is everything.

The concept spread to London, Berlin - different cities, same raw energy. Local skaters, international artists, underground bands, all using Vans' platform to create culture rather than consume it. The experience was the brand. Everything else was just shoes.

@goabspaledi

🛹 #houseofvans #vlog #tiktoksouthafrica

Quick Wins That Don't Require Mastercard Money

Look, I get it. Those examples are inspiring, but you're not running a Fortune 500 company with an experiential marketing budget bigger than your entire annual revenue.

But here's the thing—you're actually missing the point. Experiential branding isn't about having deep pockets. It's about giving a shit, and it starts with the smallest details.

Start With What You Already Have

Your onboarding email sequence probably reads like terms and conditions right now. What if it felt like getting advice from someone who actually wants you to succeed? Same information, completely different energy.

Take your packaging. Swap those generic brown boxes for something that makes people want to take a photo. Add a handwritten note that doesn't sound like it came from a compliance manual.

The Scrappy Company Advantage

Most big companies can't move fast. They have brand guidelines, approval processes, and legal reviews for everything. You can decide to change something at lunch and implement it by dinner.

Commission local artists to create custom scents for your space. Design unboxing experiences that feel like opening a gift from a friend. There's a reason Apple invested millions in perfecting its unboxing experience—it works.

The Real Opportunity

Most brands completely miss this: 9 out of 10 marketers say experiential marketing is important to their strategy, yet there's still a fundamental disconnect between goals and measurement. Everyone talks about building brand loyalty, but they measure short-term metrics like social impressions.

That disconnect is your opportunity. While your competitors chase vanity metrics, you can focus on what actually matters: how people feel after interacting with your brand.

Because in a world where everything feels engineered for engagement, authenticity isn't just refreshing - it's competitive advantage.

Your brand is already an experience. The question is whether you're designing it intentionally or just hoping for the best.

Design the experience. From the very first touchpoint to the last. Make every interaction count.

That's where you start.

Brand Wars: The Battle of Scent

Aesop

Aesop treats shopping like meditation. Their stores feel like modern monasteries - soft lighting, stone basins, shelves arranged with the precision of a Japanese tea ceremony. The scent hits you before you're even through the door, and suddenly you're moving slower, thinking deeper thoughts about your skincare routine.

Everything whispers calm. The product copy reads like philosophy - "A gentle gel cleanser to refresh and purify without compromise" instead of just "face wash." The staff speak in hushed, reverent tones about botanical ingredients like they're discussing rare art.

The packaging is so beautiful that mums worldwide refill those amber bottles with cheaper products and hope nobody notices. Sorry Mum for outing you in case you're reading this.

This isn't retail - it's therapy disguised as commerce. You go in for soap and leave questioning your entire approach to self-care.

Le Labo

Le Labo treats you like the main character. Walk in and they mix your perfume fresh, right in front of you. Your name goes on the label. Your city. The exact date you bought it. They're not selling you fragrance - they're bottling your identity.

The aesthetic is Brooklyn industrial meets Parisian apothecary. Raw concrete, exposed pipes, ingredients displayed like they're cooking your scent to order. The staff move with purpose, measuring and mixing like perfume chemists rather than sales associates.

You don't just buy Le Labo - you commission it. Every bottle tells a story: "Sarah, London, March 2025." It's personal branding via scent, and somehow that timestamp makes it feel more precious than any luxury packaging could.

Ad Vault: IKEA

“The Trash Collection” (2021)

You can't talk about experiential branding without mentioning IKEA.

Not only because of their showrooms and meatballs (though those are brilliant), but because of what they did in Norway in this campaign

Over 3 million pieces of furniture get thrown away in Norway alone every year. Most brands would commission a study, issue a statement, maybe plant some trees. IKEA went dumpster diving - literally. They rescued discarded IKEA pieces from dumpsites, cleaned them up, repaired what needed fixing, then re-labeled and sold them at deep discounts.

No glossy marketing spin - just the raw reality of furniture waste and what it looks like to actually do something about it. This was accountability as brand experience.

They owned their role in a global waste problem and turned responsibility into retail. Every rescued piece told a story of waste and renewal. Buying became a conscious act, not just consumption. Most brands talk about sustainability. IKEA made you feel it.

Lento Vibes

A bit of random inspo from around the grounds:

• Sleeping on the Job? Literally: IKEA tapped real people’s sleep talk—yes, sleep talk—as dreamy endorsements for its mattresses. The campaign is charming, surreal, and oddly comforting. 👉 Catch the zzz’s

• “Just Ask Google” Gets Human: Google’s latest campaign by 72andSunny reshapes how we think about search—less robotic, more real. The tagline’s simple. The message is everything. 👉 Watch the campaign

• Beyoncé’s Road-Trip Finale: Queen B rides off into the sunset on a motorcycle in Levi’s newest ad. Bold. Cinematic. Pure “people change, clothes don’t.” 👉 Watch Beyoncé roll out

• Small Bank, Big Brand Names: A bank uses a clever legal loophole to feature the world’s biggest brands in its ads—without paying a dime. Brilliant creative on a budget. 👉 See the maneuver

• Columbia Ditches Outdoor Clichés: Instead of glossy nature tropes, Columbia’s latest campaign dives into the risky, messy, and raw parts of the great outdoors. Reality never looked so real. 👉 Watch the raw adventure