Experiential Marketing Is on Life Support... But It Shouldn't Be.

I keep Google Alerts for a handful of things: my name (obviously), my book title, a few brands I admire (or envy), and the term “experiential marketing.”

That last one used to be my favourite alert.

Every few days, I’d get a little gem in my inbox, a recap of a jaw-dropping installation in Tokyo, a campaign that took over an NYC subway station, or some mind-bending immersive stunt in London that made people stop in their tracks and feel something.

But for the last few months?

Nothing.

No articles. No press. No buzz. No experiences. Just silence.

I thought maybe I deleted the alert by mistake. I didn’t.

The reality is far worse: no one is doing anything worth talking about.

And that, my friends, is either a symptom of a sick industry, or a wake-up call for everyone who claims to care about brand love, attention, or customer connection.

Because here’s the truth: experiential marketing isn’t dead. It’s just been forgotten by people who stopped giving a shit about originality.

And that's dangerous.

Why Now Is the Moment for Experiential

We’re living in an era where attention is the new currency. But we’re also drowning in noise. Ten thousand ads a day. Programmatic retargeting that follows you like a needy ex. AI-generated content that looks beautiful and says absolutely nothing.

And in that wasteland of sameness, experiential marketing is the last true weapon left for brands who want to matter.

Not be seen. Not be optimized. But actually matter.

Because when it’s done right, experiential isn’t an ad campaign. It’s a cultural moment. It’s a memory. It’s a story someone tells their friend three years later with the words, “Did I ever tell you about the time…”

And here’s where guerrilla marketing enters the ring like a shirtless, paint-splattered savior.

The Guerrilla Gospel

If you want to understand where experiential should be going, look no further than guerrilla marketing.

It’s low-cost. High-impact. Tactically surprising. Visually disruptive. Emotionally sticky.

It’s not about renting billboards or buying likes. It’s about earning talk. About making people feel seen, or laugh, or wonder what the hell just happened.

Let me remind you what it looks like when brands actually try:

• Nike inflated a giant man lounging in Air Maxes on a London rooftop. It was weird. It was art. It was unforgettable.

• Louis Vuitton dropped a massive animatronic Yayoi Kusama into their Paris flagship window—painting dots on the building like some fabulous, acid-trip Bob the Builder. Traffic stopped. Instagram melted.

• I put giant post it notes around NYC to promote my book release.

None of these ideas were safe. None were run through the “we need to test this with five focus groups and the CFO’s cousin” filter. They were brave. They were weird. They were real.

What’s the ROI of Making People Feel Something?

If your job is to get people to talk about your brand, let me say this as plainly as I can:

You will never outspend Netflix. But you can outsmart them.

A moment on the street beats 1,000 banner ads. A surprise installation crushes a clever tweet. A goosebump-generating activation rewires memory in a way no Instagram ad ever could.

Experiential and guerrilla marketing don’t just show up, they take over. They hijack culture. They trade media dollars for human memory.

They’re what’s left when the ad campaign ends and the TikTok trend dies.

And most importantly, they’re the difference between being noticed and being remembered.

So Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This?

Because it’s hard.

It takes guts. It takes weird ideas. It takes understanding people, not just personas. And it takes people in the room who know how to sell a surprise to a room full of budget-watching robots.

But we can’t afford to keep playing it safe. We can't keep living in a creative coma, recycling old ideas and pretending repackaged digital stunts are the same thing as presence.

This is the moment to bring it back. To be the brand that doesn’t just shout into the void but shows up with meaning.

So yeah… maybe the silence in my inbox is depressing.

Or maybe it’s a fucking invitation.

To anyone out there who still cares about brand love, customer wonder, and making things that actually make people feel something, consider this your rallying cry.

Let’s make it weird again.

Let’s make it unforgettable.

Let’s make experiential matter.

If you’re a brand that’s lost its edge, or you’ve just never found it, DM me. I know a group of creative geniuses who know how to fix that.

And yes, we’ve done this before.

And yes, we can do it for you.