By Rob Hicks, CEO, C-Screens
At the end of the last century, business theorists B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore published their seminal work The Experience Economy. In it, they posited the idea that “goods and services are no longer enough; companies must stage experiences that engage customers in a personal and memorable way.”
Half a decade after The Experience Economy was written, social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram emerged that were to embed experience at the heart of consumer expectations. From posting an Instagram during a concert, to checking into a restaurant on Facebook, to sharing a TikTok from a trip, social media has made experience the marker by which many people signal their identity and create wider connections.
Experiences are made to be shared
Real-time documentation has become an integral part of almost any experience. Travel is one of the most visible examples. Seventy-five percent of travellers use social media for travel inspiration, while posts with geotags or check-ins frequently accompany special events or trips, reinforcing the social expectation to broadcast experiences as they happen.
Dining behaviours show similar patterns. Seventy-five percent of diners say they have chosen a restaurant based solely on social-media photos, and 85% of customers share positive dining experiences online, turning meals into moments designed not just to enjoy, but to post.
Even traditionally offline experiences now unfold through the lens of a smartphone. According to Deloitte, 43% of Gen Z fans use their mobile device to post to social media while watching live sports events, illustrating that spectatorship itself is now a participatory activity.
Marketers tune into experiences
This new consumer mindset brings with it significant opportunities for brands, ones that experiential marketers are keen to capture. Drawing on the ideas of the experience economy, experiential marketers are looking at how best to engage consumers directly with immersive activations including events, pop-ups, and interactive campaigns.
This approach is set to become big, with forecasts suggesting that 21-50% of marketing budgets will be allocated to experiential marketing by CMOs. The reason is simple: experiential marketing works. One study suggests that 85% of consumers are more likely to purchase after attending a live marketing event, and 91% have more positive feelings about the associated brands.
TVOOH: The new frontier for experiential opportunities
As experiential marketers look to tap into this rich opportunity, a new approach is coming to the fore. TV Out of Home (TVOOH) enables the viewing of live, playback, and on-demand TV content in high-dwell-time environments outside of the traditional home setting. These include pubs, stadiums, service stations, retail environments, public squares, and other places where people watch TV as part of the broader environment. Unlike traditional TV, which competes for fragmented attention, TVOOH delivers unskippable and high-impact content in context-relevant environments, making it ideally suited to branded campaigns.
For brands looking to engage with consumers, TVOOH provides a powerful way to enhance sponsorships, drive real-time engagement, and create interactive experiences that are ideally suited for organic amplification on social media.
The strength of TVOOH is that it combines the reach of traditional OOH formats such as billboards or digital signs with the emotive and immersive features of live TV. That might be during the buildup to a championship match or the excitement surrounding a film release, but it also extends to everyday environments where experiences matter, such as a traveller passing through an airport and encountering a destination-themed activation. In these contextually relevant spaces, brand messages feel like a natural extension of the moment, enhancing both relevance and connection.
TVOOH also enables dynamic content that can adapt in real-time. Marketers targeting rugby fans watching a match at a pub might, for example, time their branded creative to be triggered by the scoring of a try, or the build up to a penalty kick. Similarly, a brand sponsoring a town square Christmas lights switch-on could trigger a synchronised TVOOH activation the moment the countdown ends, flooding nearby screens with festive visuals and unveiling an immersive pop-up experience.
The evolution of TVOOH
The use of TVOOH in experiential marketing is only going to increase as the technology matures. For a taste of what’s to come, look no further than The George, Greene King’s flagship pub in London, which is gearing up to offer the world’s first fully interactive TVOOH experiences.
The Greene King’s TVOOH screens at The George will integrate fan engagement technology that’s usually reserved for large stadiums for live sport and music events. Pub goers watching games, movies, or concerts at the pub will soon be able to engage directly with on-screen content in real time, such as by sharing their photos, posting written messages, sending shout-outs to friends, or seeing themselves on the big screen and playing around with fun skins and characters.
Meanwhile, hot new social event spaces centred on food, drink, and entertainment, such as the STACK Seaburn, Sheepfold Stables, and Frate Newcastle are enriching their experiences with TVOOH activations. Screens at sites like these enable visitors to engage in branded events including karaoke singalongs, quizzes, and open mic nights, as well as showing premium sporting events.
By delivering the participatory experiences that consumers demand, any activation run over the screens will deliver measurable value to site owners and advertisers. For example, by creating stickier and immersive experiences, screenings at the pubs and hubs like these will likely increase dwell time and footfall, while also generating GDPR-compliant audience data to help advertisers understand and engage their visitors.
Putting people at the heart of experiences
In a world where consumers demand personalised and immersive experiences, TVOOH is fast becoming a core part of every experiential marketers’ toolbox. Enabling brands to blend context, creativity, and interactivity and offering advertisers a new way to capture attention and build genuine relevance.
It’s 27 years since The Experience Economy was written, but it’s only now thanks to innovations like TVOOH that the concept is coming to full fruition.
