October 2018

Experiential Marketing in the Food Industry: We are What We Eat

Mobile strategy

Like the car we drive and the clothes we wear, what we eat and where we do it says something about us, our interests and our lifestyle. So, that’s where experiential marketing come in.

It is astonishing how the famous aphorism “we are what we eat” of the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, who judged two centuries ago to be too daring by his contemporaries, is today more than ever relevant.

Like the car we drive and the clothes we wear, what we eat and where we do say something about us, our interests and our lifestyle. It doesn’t matter if we are passionate about sushi, regional cuisine or strictly vegan: eating is no longer just a question of food, but of sensations and emotions linked to the same experience.

Beyond Services and Products

Experiential marketing translates these trends into actions, creating new significance and meanings in which consumers can recognize and then reinterpret.

Originally conceived for brands in the luxury sector, experiential marketing indicates the set of activities aimed at promoting the products or services of a company not only by communicating its functional characteristics and benefits, but also by associating them with emotional, sensory, relational and social experiences related to the purchase and / or use of the same product or service.

This produces empathy and favors greater market demand: the consumer, in fact, perceives the product in a different way, attributing it on the basis of personal experience, a superior value that recognizes as representative of oneself.

Online Choices, Offline Experiences

Who are our clients? What are their interests and preferences? How and when to engage them? These are the questions to answer to succeed in building a unique and personal customer journey. This is why using technologies that make it possible to profile users in a strategic way at the right moment when they make their choices is a competitive advantage, especially when it comes to food experience.

It could happen that a potential customer, finding himself in the vicinity of a restaurant, decides to enter only after having searched for information and evaluated the comments online with his smartphone. According to a Doxa-Groupon survey, only 39% of Italians choose where to eat simply by walking around the city. 66% rely on word of mouth by friends and acquaintances, while the remaining 58% cannot help but consult the online reviews of those who have already been in that place.

A Smartphone-Friendly Future

In this scenario, tools such as proximity marketing, which combine the online dimension of user actions with the offline dimension of their experiences, can make a difference by changing their way of attracting new customers, thus re-engaging those who already know.

For Italians, in the future eating outside the home will increasingly be characterized by mobile, where you can also book online the position of your table, and you can order from an updated menu based on online reviews. The bill? You can pay it with your smartphone without going through checkout.

Tourism and Experiential Marketing

Not only in the Food sector but also in Tourism, the emotions we want to live guide our choices in terms of experiences and travel, which becomes an opportunity to be enriched and express a part of who we are and what we want to be.

Imagine an app that tells the story of a territory, its museums and its flavors through contents, images and videos, when the visitor is close to those places. The smartphone becomes an active space where those who offer an experience meet those who are looking for it.

With this in mind, using innovative mobile technologies to profile users based on their interests, behavior and geographical position, allows you to build increasingly personal experiences, which, communicated in the right way and at the right time, surprisingly makes you discover something new.