How to Use Experiential Marketing to Achieve Next Level Connection with Your Customers Featuring Pauline Oudin

What if you could create an experience so powerful that it leaves your audience craving more, sparking emotion and forging a deep connection with your brand?

In today’s episode, Pauline Oudin, CEO of Gradient, the creative mastermind behind immersive brand experiences for giants like Cartier, Prada, and Dom Perignon. Pauline shares her expertise on creating “story-living” experiences that go beyond telling people who you are—these experiences make people FEEL who you are.

[00:00] Creating Experiences that Drive Emotion and Connection

[02:21] Experiential Marketing Explained

[06:37] The IMPACT Model: A Framework for Memorable Experiences

[13:40] Making Experiential Marketing Work for Small Businesses

[23:19] Tracking Success and the Role of Data in Experiential Marketing

Connect with Pauline:
Website: https://www.gradientexperience.com/
Instagram: @gradientexperience
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulineoudin

Special Resource: Pauline’s whitepaper dives deeper into the IMPACT Model and offers guidance on creating unforgettable, high-ROI experiences for your brand. Check it out here: WHITEPAPER

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points, this Free E-book will give you the tools you need for predictability and scalability in your marketing and sales efforts. Disclaimer: Only download if you want more customers!

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover

Chapters

• 0:00 Creating Experiences that Drive Emotion and Connection
• 2:21 Experiential Marketing Explained
• 6:37 The IMPACT Model: A Framework for Memorable Experiences
• 13:40 Making Experiential Marketing Work for Small Businesses
• 23:19 Tracking Success and the Role of Data in Experiential Marketing

Transcript

00:00

How do you create the kind of experience that leaves your audience and your prospects hungry to work with you? Well, major brands like Cartier, Dom Perignon, Prada, and some of the world's largest brands have cracked the code into immersive experiences that create deep, authentic connections and spark emotion. It's led to sales, connections and impact.

00:27

far beyond what a brand or company could imagine. And in today's episode, we are going to dive into how can you replicate that in a way that is custom and unique to your brand to start hosting or even creating the kind of experiences, immersive experiences that leaves your prospects and your community hungry for more. I'm excited to welcome our next guest to the show, Pauline Oudin.

00:57

She is the CEO of Gradient, a creative experiential marketing company headquartered in New York City with offices around the globe, North America, Europe and more. Gradient has created and produced experiences for major brands like Cartier, Dom Perignon, Prada and more through immersive experiences seen by few but experienced by many. Welcome to The Takeover with Tim and Cindy.

01:25

where we show you how to dominate every area of life and business. Let's get winning. Welcome to the show, Pauline Oudin. Welcome. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I am so excited about this conversation. We were talking off camera for a moment and let me tell you, ladies and gents, Pauline not only is incredible at communicating ideas, so you all are going to get so much value from this conversation.

01:52

She has been in this world of advertising and marketing for quite some time now. So you are going to get value, not just from what she's doing now as the CEO of gradient and experiential marketing agency, but also just her career as a marketer and advertiser. So Pauline, let's take our listeners to the beginning on how you got started in this world of experiential marketing. And we're going to be using this term a lot throughout the show.

02:21

Tell us what experiential marketing is for those who don't know. Sure. And it is a big word that people might have heard or might not have heard. And yet, I can guarantee you that all of your listeners have experienced it before. So for the theoretical definition, experiential marketing leverages events and experiences to create meaningful moments and interactions that engage customers in memorable and personable ways. What's the difference?

02:50

What does that actually mean? Think of the last time you were at a major event, a concert, a sporting event, and you had a brand that was visible, not just in a logo on the side of the stadium, but in a way where you really got to experience the brand. That was experiential marketing.

03:13

When you walked into a pop-up store where a space completely took over, was taken over by a brand in a way where you felt like you were almost stepping into an ad, where you were truly stepping into the world of the brand. That was experiential marketing. Or even if you went to a trade show where you had an experience of a brand that was more than someone like handing you a flyer, but where you were actually like, Oh, I get.

03:42

who these people are. I feel what this company is all about. That was also experiential marketing. So we've all experienced that. I like the descriptors too, because I think every single person listening can remember a moment or an experience, something where they had that feeling. And from what I pick up from what you're saying is it's also the feeling, the emotions that a brand creates. Tell us more about that. So the interesting,

04:12

dichotomy that you're bringing up is that for a very long time, brands would tell you what they were about, right? In an ad, they told you who they were and what they would sell. That was storytelling. Super important. But today, especially younger generations, don't want to be told. They want to experience. And so what we create is what's called story living.

04:42

where you start from the story that a brand is trying to tell, and you make sure that a consumer actually experiences it, lives it, so that the story that's being told resonates as authentic. Because I think the newer generations especially have a pretty high BS radar, and if they feel that a brand is just saying that this is what they do.

05:12

they call that BS. They wanna make sure that they truly feel what the brand is about. And so it's the big difference between storytelling and story living. And it seems like that that starting point where a lot of companies are starting all that is at the storytelling, right? You see this, the average business class is gonna tell you, make sure you have your brand and your logo and you have a story behind what it is that you're selling, right? Which is not bad advice. I think it starts there as you're mentioning. It starts there.

05:40

If you don't have a story, if you don't have a clear way of explaining why me versus them, then as experiential marketers, we can't create something that is going to truly differentiate you from them. Because if you're the same, then we can come up with a great concept and they could slap their logo on it and it would still be true. So that would not be...

06:08

truly something that makes you live your unique story. You work with some major brands, Prada, Cartier, Dom Perignon, I mean, the works. So is experiential marketing reserved only for these major brands that have the major budgets, or can they be translated to smaller brands and smaller companies too? And it's a great question. And what I would say is, if you are already spending money,

06:37

in any kind of interaction that brings your brand to life, a conference, a product launch, an influencer trip. If you're investing that money in those experiences, you are already spending money in experiential marketing. The question is, are you truly milking it fully? Are you getting as much ROI out of it as you can? And...

07:04

we're going to talk a little bit about how those smaller businesses can truly make sure that they are thinking in the same way than the big boys do, the Cartiers, the Dom Pérignon, because yes, they have overall bigger budgets, but proportionally, that press launch is going to be proportionally such a bigger part of a budget for a small business than for Dom

07:34

And so you need to make sure that you're as smart with your investments as you can. If you are the kind of business where you are a plumber and you are, you know, all of your business comes from word of mouth, then maybe not. Yeah, that makes total sense. So I don't know if anybody on our audience is a plumber, but let's take an example of like, say another, a coach. Yeah. Say I'm a professional coach.

08:01

and have a massive audience and we're about to host like a new event or a product launch. Where does somebody start in that process of experiential marketing? What are a few of those things as you're mentioning that we need to be looking out for? So this might be a good time to share that Gradient is going to be releasing pretty soon a white paper that I think can be very useful to all of your listeners because it really explains what are the questions you need to ask yourself.

08:31

as a business owner, as a coach that has decided that they are going to invest to be present at a conference of professionals where there's going to be a lot of networking, but you've actually decided to spend some money to have like a booth, right? You're going to be more present, more visible. Okay. So you've decided to do that. Now how are you actually going to make it memorable?

09:00

How are you going to make it impactful? And this white paper is based on a framework that we've created called the Impact Model. So let me walk you through it. Impact, six letters, I-M-P-A-C-T, integrated, measurable, effective, community building, and true to brand. And if you, as a coach,

09:30

small, mid-size business owner have decided to invest in a press launch. You have a new product and you've decided to host a breakfast for the press that covers your type of business. So you are going to be paying for this luncheon or this breakfast for these eight journalists that you've managed to be interested in your product. How are you making sure

09:58

that this effort that you're doing is integrated with all of the other communication points that you have. How is it gonna be reflected on your social media? How is it gonna be reflected on your website? So how are you taking this, just like you would like your main ad, how are you making sure that that becomes a core element to all of the other efforts that you normally use to communicate? Like distributed? Mm-hmm. How is it measurable? So if...

10:28

You are investing in this moment, in this effort. What kind of data are you going to be using to make sure that this got you the results you needed? Is it number of press hits? Okay, but what does that actually get you afterwards? Is it, for example, in this case, that your website SEO...

10:55

ranks up and your Google search ranking goes up. Is that going to be a key measure of success for this effort and what would be a good expected return on investment? Make sure you think about that before you decide to go into this effort. Is it participatory? This is an important one and one that isn't as obvious. Participatory means the people that are actually going to be invited.

11:23

How are they going to be a part of the experience? How are they going to be able to play with your product, with your service, to be able to imagine themselves truly living it? So if you're a coach, what are the kinds of quick, fun exercises that you're gonna be able to do in two minutes, two minutes, two minutes, with each of the press people that are there, to give them a sense of what it's actually like?

11:53

And how can they maybe even start asking some of the other guests these same questions, right? How are they participating in the experience? Because there is completely different parts of your brain that get activated when you are listening and when you're participating. So think of this, how can you make it playful? Effective means to truly hit on the emotion.

12:19

So how are you making this go out from just being a logical conversation to being something that's felt? And the important thing there to understand is that we do not make purchasing decisions based on logic. We like to think we do. We don't. And what we often say is that hearts move minds.

12:47

So you can have very logical reasons to not buy something. Nope, don't wanna buy them because I know that they're cruel to animals. That's definitely like, nope, not gonna do it. But the why I'm gonna do it is usually something because it just sort of hit an emotional nerve. So what are you doing in that moment that is going to make people feel an emotion?

13:13

And what emotion are you trying to make them feel? Be very clear and I want them to feel wonder. I want them to feel surprise. I want them to feel, I mean, we had experiences where we had to feel fear in the entertainment industry. You've gotta be clear on what emotion you're trying to trigger and then you can be effective if you're first effective. So that's the A, community building.

13:40

Again, we like to think of ourselves as being very logical and evolved, but we are still, first and foremost, mammals. We are social creatures and we enjoy things that connect us with others. And whether that is in the room, right? If I'm at this breakfast or luncheon for my press launch, how am I creating moments where

14:10

The other people there feel like they're connecting with one another. There, there is a moment where I get to share a moment with the person that's sitting next to me and then how am I incentivized to share with my wider community? What kind of content have you created for me that's going to make me want to share it further? And so really thinking about what are these elements that we can do that creates community?

14:38

for the people that are attending within and then without. And then the last one is true to brand. And I think that this is true, obviously, for any kind of marketing effort you make. But once you've developed your idea, your luncheon, your booth, et cetera, imagine that instead of your logo behind you, it's your competitor's logo. Does it still ring true? And if it does, what do you need to do to make sure that that doesn't work? But...

15:06

If it was their logo behind that, it wouldn't be a fit that only your brand can be lived in this experience and not just any brand. The last T is a bit tricky. Can you give us an example of like what that would look like? Hey there, make sure that you are staying on top of your game by following the show.

15:32

hit that subscribe button for the Takeover with Tim and Cindy wherever you are listening. Let's get winning together!

15:42

So obviously I'm thinking here more about our clients that have extremely developed brands. But when we did this experience in your hometown, in Miami for our Basel for Cartier last year, and we completely created, transformed a building so that it looked like a Cartier box. But when you were walking into it, every code

16:12

every piece of furniture, every wall, every finish was reflective of the Cartier DNA, of the Cartier brand. And if you had pulled in there another brand's watches, right, if you had pulled in their Hublot watches, it would have felt off. It's just that that brand, Hublot,

16:42

DNA than Cartier does. So you need to think about what makes us truly us compared to our competition and really highlight those elements. Wow. That impact is so powerful. So ladies and gents, make sure you go back and re-listen to that. Take notes because that was so powerful. And the white paper, when it comes out, we're going to leave it in the show notes. So you all can click that link and grab it because that's some really powerful information. And

17:09

I think what I love about what you shared, Pauline, is you're empowering our listeners to take this into their own hands, right? So even if they hire a PR agency or they're working with an experiential marketing agency, they can ask these questions to ensure that they get the maximum impact or ROI out of an event or an experiential marketing pop-up or anything like that. That's absolutely correct. You know, it's interesting. We were having a conversation.

17:38

with my partners not too long ago. And we were saying, well, aren't we sharing information with our competition? And the way I was looking at it is that our competition isn't other experiential agencies. We are all pushing for the growth of our space. And probably our main competitors are people that push other types of ways to reach an audience. And so-

18:08

Let's be realistic. Google is really good at reaching specific types of audiences for specific types of sales. We all click on a link and Facebook is really good at it. You probably, as have I, have purchased things directly off of Instagram because it looked really good and now I end up with a new eyeliner. And that's great. And that's a great type of marketing for that type of product. But there is a...

18:35

growth that's happening in the experiential market space, in the experiential marketing space. We've recently done a research and all that information is going to be in our white paper as well, interviewing hundreds of senior executives and asking them, how have you seen your budgets shift in recent years? And over 80%...

18:57

of senior marketers say that they have over the past three years, they've seen their experiential marketing budgets increase. And so for me, the more we all grow this space in a way that is credible, showing the results, showing the impact, the ROI of our field, then there's more budgets for all of us to compete over. It just grows the industry. Exactly. That's powerful.

19:27

You spoke about kind of numbers ROI. How is gradient tracking ROI for its clients? Like what are some of those data points that you all are looking at that tells you, Hey, this was like a successful campaign or event and this was unsuccessful. So gradient has actually developed a tool over the past year and a half called quant that pulls in a lot of different data points and some of which when we start sharing, sometimes our clients are like, wait,

19:55

You can track that. So for example, when we have clients that activate at festivals, which are great ways of reaching an audience, right? You know that if you're trying to target the 25 to 30 year old female, if you're going to a major music conference, you're probably going to see them. And then if you're trying to reach men of the same age, how are you reaching men?

20:25

25 year old men these days. Like they're not watching TV, they're not reading magazines, they are on social media but in super specific ways. So if you're trying to reach a younger audience, usually you're gonna have to go where they are. And for example, festivals are great ways to reach them. So from there, what can we do? Well, if we're creating an experience, we can make sure to know exactly how many people went through it by tracking interactions.

20:55

with all cell phones that came in nearby. We don't know whose cell phone it is. We don't know their number, but we know how many cell phones came by, how long they stayed, if a cell phone left and then came back again, how many times they came back, and if we can even track, did that cell phone then go to a store maybe in the area. And because we have general data, we can also say, well, 47% of those cell phones

21:24

belong to females, et cetera. So we can start having demographic data behind it. So that's a first really impressive piece of information. The other thing is we can say really how long they stayed. And when you think about it, an ad, right? A billboard on a highway, you're driving past it and maybe you noticed it, maybe you didn't, but it's certainly very quick. Here, I can tell you that the brand interacted for a whole...

21:54

three and a half minutes with the human that was carrying the cell phone. Yeah. From there, I know that that was a really deep interaction. So whether an experience was successful, how long did people stay? How many people came back? Whether there was a direct drive to sales? And then we will work with clients to pull in their data into our system as well so that we can see what was the drive in sales.

22:23

On top of that, we have another layer, which is looking at the social media impact. For example, we look at a really interesting data point, which is growth of new followers. So if we look at how many followers did you have before we did this experience, how many new followers do you have and how many stayed, right? About a month afterwards. So was it just a blimp and then you're back to where you were, or is it a step up that you can continue building off of?

22:53

And those additional followers have a huge value because now it's people that started following you because they were truly impacted by this experience or they heard about it from their friend that was impacted by this experience. And you've got an ongoing communication on really rich soil. I love how meticulous you all are on tracking the data points at PIMO data is everything. It's in the ins and outs of everything that we do.

23:19

The ability to show that to your clients, I can imagine, is really, really powerful. Yes, it's been a revolution for Gradient. We brought in about two years ago a head of product that has really transformed both the way we can visualize data for our clients and integrate all the data points into one platform that makes it really easy for clients. Because let's be clear, most marketers are so busy.

23:48

you need to make it simple for them. And if you send them like a 10 page PowerPoint with all the data points, they open it and they're like, I'll read it later, right? Show me something that I can easily access, that I can download where all the information is there. And then he's helped us on that front and on optimizing how we work internally, really making sure that we're focusing on the creativity of our concepts for our clients and not in busy work so that again, we can be more.

24:18

impactful for our clients. I want to zone in Pauline on you as a leader, CEO of Gradient. You seem very creative and I can tell you love the experiential marketing and you've been in this space for a while. How do you transition or even what does that look like? That creative side where you have an opportunity to maybe brainstorm and be creative around the experiences versus we talk about being like the organization, the pen to paper, the action behind the vision.

24:47

What does your day-to-day look like? How do you separate the two and which part do you enjoy the most? I think at a certain point, when you do have a title like CEO, you do tend to be managing the same types of conversations and the same type of problems as other CEOs, no matter what the field that you're in is. Obviously, I do have breaths of fresh air when I am invited into a brainstorm.

25:17

And our teams have these amazing tools to spur creativity, to just let your brain go in areas where it normally wouldn't go. And sometimes just making sure that you focus on being present for that creativity. And sometimes allowing yourself to say, I don't have the, you have the bandwidth, but maybe you don't.

25:44

have the mental bandwidth for it. Sometimes I've said, guys, I wanted to be here, but I'm actually going to step away because I'm not going to be bringing a huge amount of value here. You guys have got it. And sometimes I know I can say, OK, I'm going to put this hour aside. The rest of the world will still be there. And I can actually jump in and think differently. But I think that there's one thing that's super important is that when you do have a creative mind,

26:14

Yes, you can continue feeding and having fun by participating in some of these more creative based conversations. But most problems can be looked at creatively. I sometimes have honestly great fun just creating a new Excel model because it's all about, okay, there is a problem in front of me. There is another way of approaching this.

26:43

How do we make this easier? How do we make this more accessible? How do we make this more enjoyable? And it's the same idea of just being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes, right? It's the concept of empathy, which I think is hugely important in creativity, because really what you're doing when you're being creative is you're thinking about how can I develop something that will please another, that will affect another. And in the same way.

27:12

a Google sheet, I need to think about how are others going to use it? How can it be useful? How can I show this in another way so that it can have the impact that I want it to have? So I think creativity can come in very many ways, but I still enjoy the brainstorms. I've never heard that articulated in that way that creativity is, is empathy. And I love how you describe that. It's powerful. Okay. Let's shift gears. Let's talk about growth and gradients growth.

27:41

What would you say if you can pinpoint one or two things that have contributed to the growth of Gradient, right? From where you all started to where you are now, what has led to that growth? I think there's quite a few steps along the way. Obviously, the founder of the agency, Anthony Coppers, that pulled me in as I was a client and asked me to partner with him, definitely shifted the general...

28:10

within the agency because then it became not a founder led agency anymore, but a company based on a partnership, which I'm not saying that it was because I changed things. No, it's because there was the mentality of we need to bring in people that are very skilled at what they do best so that we can focus on what we do best. So let me go back to

28:40

the advice that I got on the first day of my first job at Ogilvy, when the CEO at the time, Shelley Lazarus, one of the only female CEOs of the major advertising agencies, and certainly at the time, she would have lunch with all the new recruits. And she explained at the time that to be excellent, no matter your career, to be excellent,

29:09

you need to focus on what you can excel at. So the first thing you've got to work on in the first few months of your first job is to figure out what are you possibly excellent at? And she gave the example of being a great tennis player. If you have a really solid backhand and just an adequate right hand, then keep your adequate right hand.

29:35

but do everything you can to train so that your backhand is just killer. Because then you have something to bring to the table. So focus on what you can excel at. And so I think the first thing that probably shifted in gradients growth is the idea of bringing to the table people that were excellent at a specific thing.

30:01

and not asking them to be everything. So many times in companies that are growing, you ask people to wear three different hats. And that's okay when you're growing, but you need to be very clear on, okay, you're wearing these three hats for the moment, but really in the future, what's the hat you should be wearing? And what do we need to do so that you can stop wearing these two other hats?

30:30

What's your permanent one? And what are the two that you just need to be adequate at until we've grown enough that we can start letting these go? And I think that that mindset was definitely brought on by this initial partnership. And I would say the other thing that really changed how gradient grew is our focus on our values and our clarifying our values. And we did that work, thankfully, before the pandemic, because I think...

30:59

going through the pandemic in an industry that was definitely strongly affected by it would have been much harder if we weren't clear on who we were and why we were. Yes. And the one book that helped us in that initial journey was Dare to Lead by Brene Brown. And I think if you're a business owner, if you are a manager, and even if you're a parent, it's honestly a great read.

31:28

because it helps you zero in on what makes you truly you as a business and how to have hard conversations with kindness. And so in doing that, we realized what our core values were, including collaboration, collaboration within the agency, collaboration with our clients, collaboration with our vendors, and everything we did, all of our processes.

31:58

we're built on how do we collaborate better. And when you're clear on what makes you different, you can be clear on what you've got to invest in to reinforce that strength. A common theme I see is among some of the most successful, whether it's agencies, businesses, is that topic of culture. It's vision, it's values, it's what's the DNA. We kind of spoke about that, the makeup of your company and your organization and how you get through challenging times really comes down to

32:27

the way your culture and your values are built, right? Like does that actually strengthen you as a team, as a tribe, or does it pull you apart? And it looks like, seems like Gradient has really developed a team culture and values that have united you all and allowed you to sustain such incredible growth. That's amazing. Thank you. And yes, we have invested a lot in our culture and in thinking about how to adapt to new things. You know, we are now in a hybrid model.

32:57

for example, and you can't build culture in the same way when everybody's in the same office or when you've got people that are in three or four different offices and also a little scattered all over the US. How do you maintain culture? How do you bring people together? All of that does require thought and does require a really specific implementation. You can't just leave it to chance.

33:26

Yes, you have to be intentional. I 100% agree. This was an amazing conversation. So insightful. I mean, I learned so much about experiential marketing. So thank you for shedding so much light to myself and to our listeners. Where can people get in touch with you, Pauline, and with Gradient? Gradient can be found obviously on our website, grad but also follow us on Instagram. It is, if nothing else, a really cool.

33:55

feed of great experiences that are sort of fun to look at. And then as for me personally, LinkedIn is the best place to reach me at. I do have a relatively original name, so I'm not too hard to find. Amazing. And we'll leave Pauline's details down below. Pauline, it was an amazing conversation. Appreciate you so much. Thanks for being on The Takeover. Have a great day. You too.