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Ever scrolled through your Facebook or Instagram feed – or even your high school yearbook – and you see a photo of someone you used to know and spend a lot of time with?

Most likely, seeing that photo brought back at least a few memories of your past with that individual. And, depending on the individual under consideration, those memories may have evoked a variety of different emotions and feelings.

That’s our roundabout way of raising the following question: how can experiential marketing mavens create live brand experiences that continue to resurface in the memories of attendees – again and again, on an ongoing basis, after the experience is over?

If this can be achieved, then the experience will be remembered by attendees for the longest possible length of time – amplifying the effects and reach of the experiential marketing campaign across time. There are virtually endless ways to accomplish this – the experiential marketing practitioner’s only limit here is the extent of their creativity. So in this piece, we’ll briefly focus on just a few methods the experiential marketer use to positively reinforce attendee memories after the interactive brand experience.

Before we get to that, though, here’s something that’s important to keep in mind: even if a live brand experience doesn’t take advantage of additional “memory triggers,” that experience is still far more memorable than other marketing channels. For example, the level of memory recall for an advertisement seen on TV simply does not hold a candle to the emotional depth – and therefore recall ability – of the memories created by interactive brand experiences.

With that point made clear, let’s now consider a few tactical approaches that can even more firmly weld a live brand experience to attendee memories.

• Photo Taking

  . Adding a photo-taking activity to the interactive brand experience gives attendees the chance to have their photos taken in a fun, exciting, or stimulating setting. Then, by giving prints of the photos to the attendees (perhaps along with a branded frame), they will have something to look at that will trigger positive feelings associated with the experience. For example, in a recent experiential marketing campaign orchestrated by Femme Fatale Media for the Canadian grocery brand Pusateri, shoppers were invited to pose for a fun photo with brand ambassadors stylishly dressed as “Mr. Claus” and “Mrs. Claus.” Since Christmas was near, with the holiday spirit in the air, shoppers were eager to have these photos taken. They would then have a lasting memento of the enjoyable event.

• Videos.

  Similar to photographs, videos can be recorded of attendees during the live brand experience – then sent to them via email or some other digital medium. Once again, attendees will thus have the opportunity to relive the experience and thus relive the memories.

• Relevant branded items.

  Branded items relevant to the experience – whether it’s mugs or T-shirts or something else entirely – are another effective way to keep the memories of the interactive brand experience ongoing in the minds of the attendees.

• Relevant branded gifts.

  These are branded items which attendees are encouraged to gift to their friends and families – further amplifying the experience and solidifying memory triggers of the experience throughout the attendees’ network.

• Collect attendee contact information.

  Finally, by collecting contact information of attendees (whether email addresses, home addresses, or some other information), they can be invited to other brand experiences or be sent relevant material and information that would add value to their lives and further remind them about the past experiential marketing campaign.