Russell Davies has recently posted some thoughts regarding the difficulties brand experiences face in accomplishing the same thing for brands that TV ads can pull off:
(brand experiences) succeed in accurately re-creating the genuine brand experience and in doing so reveal that the brand is deeply tedious and un-inspiring. This is one of the great advantage of television advertising, it can make your brand seem more interesting than it is. It's much harder to do this, convincingly, with something as extended as a ride. Or a website. The growth in this kind of marketing will accelerate the thinning of the brand herd, removing the unremarkable ones and revealing horrible lose-lose-lose situations
I strongly agree with this, and find the vast majority of "brand experiences" to be clumsy and irritating, Brand experiences require such a refined execution, that the end result is most of them lack any magic whatsoever. (This includes all forms of "assvertising").
It'll probably be important to remember, as new marketing grows, that we make sure not to throw the baby out with the bath water. As Douglas Holt argues in his great book, TV ads have been the most important tool in creating iconic brands, through powerful storytelling and meaning creation. It's probably not too fashionable to mention that these days, but they'll remain a very effective part of the branding toolkit.
(For some excellent thoughts on the need for crafting compelling experiences and telling appropriate stories in the digital medium, check out a recent post from Troy Young at Three Minds).
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