3 Things To Keep In Mind When Beginning Nightlife Advertising
- June 7, 2024
Savvy brands are finally ready to party with the cool kids–they see nightlife as an opportunity to connect with highly engaged consumers. Nightlife goers are young, engaged, and have intent and purchasing power. At PCN Entertainment we’re ready, willing, and excited to get your brand on board. After your initial “aha” moment, you realize you want to advertise to nightlife consumers, but now what?
1. Define your Goals and Objectives
To a lot of new advertisers, nightlife is seen as just a playground. They’ve been to nightclubs, bars, lounges, and restaurants, they know where the consumers are hanging out and they want in. However, unlike advertising in TV or digital media, nightlife can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate with so many options it’s hard to find the right experiences.
Nightlife is a space that attracts young creative consumers with a wide array of interests and tastes. To unlock the opportunity in nightlife advertisers need a unified and centralized medium that can natively insert them into the conversation in places where consumers play, dine, and socialize. Since no single advertiser can cover that much ground, you need a strategy for nightlife advertising. What is the product you’re marketing? What are your campaign objectives? Who is your target audience? How, when, and where do you want your brand to show up? These are just a few questions (and we break it all down further for you here).
2. Create Online and Offline Experiences to Meet Consumers Where They Are
Many advertisers focus on serving business goals to increase brand awareness or social mentions without looking at the broader picture of serving the consumer’s unique needs. To win at creating online and offline experiences you need to be more customer-centric than anyone else. Understand that consumers have a different set of goals from brands and venues. People want options beyond nightclubs; lounges, bars, social dining experiences, and convenience to have access on-demand – in our experience over 40% of millennials want other experiences beyond nightclubs. About 30% prefer a lounge or social dining experience.
We couldn’t be happier when advertisers are excited about a creative activation in nightlife–we just want you to be excited about the right things. In fact, some advertisers kick off conversations with bold proclamations, like, “I want to start my own branded party” or “I want to sponsor NYE at Tao.” We like to go back to the basics and lay out all your available options, especially since we can’t overlook a brand’s budget.
Let’s start with original branded parties. We know they sound sexy, but they aren’t always the best approach. From development, production, distribution, and event management, parties are a huge undertaking. Starting from scratch is not necessarily the most effective way to tap into nightlife.
Similarly, when brand executives ask to advertise on specific big weekends or widely known events, we urge them to take a step back. There might be other parties out there who are better aligned. It might be more cost effective to spread a campaign out across several parties, rather than doubling down on one of the most popular (and most expensive) parties.
Inversely, advertisers need to create a hybrid campaign that connects event data with digital marketing campaign data. To effectively execute a hybrid nightlife strategy, you have to rethink your customer journey – ongoing value, shareable experiences, immediate fulfillment, anywhere real-time, personalized moments – and use customer feedback loops to consistently improve their experiences online and offline.
All that being said, talk to us and rest assured that we’ll point you in the right direction.
3. Go in the Right Direction for Your Brand
So, what are some other options? Advertisers should consider a few of these ideas:
- Partner with an existing party series or DJ that aligns with your brand and target audience.
- Work with a DJ who doubles as a brand ambassador to endorse your brand and User Generated Content ads.
- Combine editorial sponsored content to showcasee your brand in an exclusive environment, like Pico Group’s recent sponsorship campaign with Hydeout World.
- Create an amazing audience experience where users can participate with their favorite DJ. For example, we worked on a campaign for Hydeout World and June Shine, during a livestream on Twitch fans we’re able to submit song request directly to the DJs. Real fan to brand engagement.
There’s no blueprint to nightlife advertising. But there is a common theme: Marry your brand with the very best nightlife content and DJs.
Developing a nightlife strategy takes time, investment, and vision. At PCN Entertainment we’re experts in helping brands find the nightlife advertising solutions best suited to their needs. We roll up our sleeves and get to work. To get started, contact us today.
