Interview: Kevin Jackson, Experience Man

Back in the Summer of 2015, when Kevin Jackson was still VP at George P Johnson, I caught up with him to enquire about his next big venture in the world of Brand Experience. Kevin is now back in action as the owner of The Experience is The Marketing

 

April 2015

What does the future hold now you are leaving GPJ?

In 6 months’ time, I will be doing my own thing. It’s very exciting. We have done some amazing work at GJP and so I’m sure that my transition out will be very smooth.

So what were the highlights for you personally at GPJ?

One of my personal highlights of my time at GPJ is securing the deal with Statoil, a Norwegian oil company. It was a great opportunity for [GPJ] to run their events all over the world. The Samsung GalaxyII was a fantastic campaign too. We had famous footballers, including Messi, Ronaldo and Rooney forming a mythical team against aliens. It was great campaign.

What makes a campaign great?

In order for an event to work you need four key elements; brand, environment, zeitgeist and audience. Those are the simple ingredients to make an experience work. And bravery helps! The bravest clients get the best work because they trust you but trust can only be earned through a good relationship. GPJ for example has built and maintained great relationships with their clients based on mutual admiration and trust and this gets great results.

Where is the events industry going and how can it go there better?

As an industry we are becoming more developed but there needs to be a standard form of measurement. We need to be able to see results and monitor them, we need to ask “what’s the challenge? How do we solve it?

Events work in the same way as any other business model: objective, content, channel. We create an idea then manage the channel. However, within the industry we need more hybrid thinking to develop a particular set of skills, to collect retail data for example. In our hyper connected world, we have the ability in real time to see what needs changing and have access to the data to change it. We are in a society that is all about the now, you order something online, you have it the next day.  We then as an industry, should be more instant. If people are tweeting about something, we should be picking up on that and looking at the feedback and changing it right away. Audience involvement is so important and by focusing on engagement, we can make the world cater for ‘brand me’.

What’s the secret to success in this industry?

Energy and plenty of it! Whatever it is you are doing, people will remember the energy you bring with you and it has a positive effect on people. You must also be excited about change and be willing to embrace it! If you don’t like change you’re in the wrong industry, no matter what industry you are in.