By Rob Leeks, Creative Director at Imagination
You’ll doubtless have heard the philosophical question ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’ The events industry version of that arguably is – if a brand event happens but no-one knows about it – did it actually happen at all?
Put plainly – the more awareness an event gets, the better value it is for clients.
For that people need to know about it in advance. They should potentially book, learn and even personalise their experience in advance of rocking up to the venue. Then once there, they need to discover things that they actually want to share. Finally, winning hearts and minds then requires continued engagement after the event.
The experience can no longer simply begin when someone walks through the door – it begins much earlier, and increasingly, it begins on a phone.
All too often, the temptation for brands is to treat digital as something that only sits inside an experience. All the effort goes into planning the unforgettable event or product launch, and then, to support it, there is the website, app or real time social content. Ninety-three percent of UK adults now have access to a smartphone, while UK adults spend an average of four and a half hours online each day, with most of that time spent on smartphones.
So, when brands are planning an experience or activation, the thinking can no longer stop at the physical room. Yes, that may be where the experience comes to life, but it is unlikely to be where the engagement with the customer begins.
The first touchpoint is digital Eventbrite’s 2025 research found that 61% of Millennials use social media to decide what to do with their time, while nearly a third of Gen Z use TikTok specifically to discover events.
But the content that first makes someone want to attend is an extension of the experience, rather than simply marketing or creating awareness. The best approach is to make the digital and physical touchpoints feel like they were designed as one journey.
And there are some great examples of this being done well. Netflix’s Stranger Things campaign created a digital world using the show’s unsettling Upside Down aesthetic. Rather than simply giving information, the first digital touchpoint carried the atmosphere of the event and built anticipation for what was to come.
Digital should make the experience better
But digital earns its place in the experience only when it makes things easier or more engaging for the people using it.
There has been a tendency in experiential marketing to opt for the newest and flashiest tech, whether that is an enormous screen or an interactive installation.
The most useful question to ask when it comes to what technology to incorporate is: what will it allow people to do?
A global tourism event in Saudi Arabia is a good example. Digital tools were built into the experience from the start, helping with check-ins, transport, wayfinding and access to information. A conversational AI kiosk that could communicate in 13 languages helped visitors find what they needed. Each of these elements had a clear role and helped connect the different parts of the experience.
Don’t stop when people leave
And that role for digital does not end when the event does.
If your event was a success, attendees will share photographs and videos and post about what they witnessed. Those interactions can extend the reach of the experience beyond the people who physically attended, but brands also need to think further than likes and impressions.
If you capture someone’s imagination but have no way to connect with them afterwards, the memory of the event will quickly fade. Equally, having someone’s data means very little if the only follow-up is another generic email that disappears into their inbox.
Brands need to try to get both right. The role of digital after the event is to build on what made the physical experience feel special, rather than simply adding another marketing touchpoint.
That could mean sharing personalised content, additional information about something they saw at the event or an invitation to explore something further.
Design the whole journey
Ultimately, making this shift will require a different way of thinking about experiential marketing.
The physical experience still matters, and digital cannot replace the atmosphere of sharing an emotional moment with a crowd or the impact of seeing something special in real life. What it can do is influence how people find the experience, how they move through it and what they do afterwards.
Finding that balance is only going to become more important as technology changes.
Take the effect that AI has had on search engines, for example. People are now using tools such as ChatGPT to get recommendations and decide what they want to do. Brands will need to think about how their experiences show up in these conversations, alongside traditional search and social media.
We are also seeing digital and physical experiences come together in new ways. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, for example, put cameras, audio and AI into something that looks like an everyday pair of glasses. That same technology could be used to create interesting ways for audiences to interact with what is happening around them.
But no matter how much technology advances, the principle remains simple: it should make the experience better and it should have a reason for being there.
People do not experience brands in neat channels anymore. They move between social media, websites, apps and physical spaces without thinking about where one ends and another begins, and experiential marketing needs to reflect that new reality.