Meredith O'Shaughnessy - Experiential marketing and the Phygital space

In episode three of Alt. Ctrl. Create. Peter Urpeth talks with Meredith O'Shaughnessy, leading experiential marketer and brand strategist, and founder of the innovative agency the Meredith Collective.

Once dubbed 'the pop-up queen of London', projects such as opening London’s first avocado-only restaurant just as the avocado was to go mainstream in the minds of eager consumers to the development of Rudolph’s Christmas Rage Room have confirmed Meredith as not only an industry disruptor but also a creative event specialist with a truly astonishing ability to foresee emerging trends in popular culture and to create experiences and events that are culturally relevant. 

Not content to simply respond to client briefs, with her company, the Meredith Collective, Meredith stages unique consumer events that have become hot-ticket retail opportunities for innovative and forward thinking brands. 

But, with the onset of the pandemic, experience marketing faced a unique challenge with digital emerging as perhaps the only viable marketing route for brands as the grip of lock-down became a reality. But for Meredith the events of the last few months have of course been recognised but the time is no ripe for companies of all sizes to revisit the concept of the 'phygital' - the blend of physical and digital marketing campaign activities and platforms - that create engaging, unique, enticing and rewarding journeys for customers and clients.  

We talk also of what has emerged in the lock-down as firm evidence that physical contact and communication are fundamental to our lives and that the commercial route out of the economic hit of the pandemic is bound therefore to be focussed on connection and experience - as the success of the UK government's 'Eat-out to help-out' campaign may have proven - not a splurge of retail acquisition for its own sake.

In this episode you’ll hear plenty of off-stage traffic noise, yep we are all working from home but also such acronyms as FMCG also pop into the conversation, being short-hand for fast moving consumer goods.

You can connect with Meredith and the Meredith Collective at the website meredithcollective.co 

This podcast is produced in association with XpoNorth - the agency that supports the growth of creative business in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland - xponorth.co.uk

Peter Urpeth is publishing sector advisor to XpoNorth, a pianist, journalist and film-maker with a passion for the innovation of small creative businesses - peterurpeth.com

Podcast theme music - Dirt Rhodes by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3650-dirt-rhodes

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.