I recently had the pleasure of being one of a mixed crew from EPIC to hit up a massive industry tradeshow. Full transparency: I looked at everything through the very specific lens of being the creative director of an ad agency.
I left the show feeling … underwhelmed.
Not because of the overall presentation. A lot was happening. The kind of sensory overload where everything competed with the thing next to it to be louder and more impactful.
It was all beautiful, yet something was missing.
That “something” got me thinking about the difference between having an experience and contributing to something experiential. They sound similar, and they are often used interchangeably, but they are NOT the same thing.
Confusing the two is how we end up mistaking activity for engagement.
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Consumption vs. Contribution
An experience is something that happens around you, while something being experiential requires participation, and both matter, especially their distinctions.
A prime example was waiting in line with a coworker to participate in what we thought was going to be something experiential. There were headphones, a live speaker with a tiny microphone, a lever on the wall, and a big circular screen in the middle as our live speaker’s “AI assistant.”
Then it hit me: she’s going to talk into the microphone through our headphones, and we’ll have a live discourse with this AI assistant! Awesome.
The wheels fell off pretty early when the AI assistant started answering a question our host hadn’t finished yet … then it happened again … and again. It wasn’t live AI; it was a recording.
Experiential work requires agency, with the audience having a role. The reason you’re there, the inputs, the choices … they’re all necessary and certainly all matter.
So, experience = consumption and experiential = contribution, fair?
Affect vs. Effect
Much of what we call an “experience” is designed to look impressive, not be affected by the audience. The effect is there, but how it affects is shallow. The brand is communicating at the audience, not with them.
When the audience can’t change the result, steer a narrative, influence data, customize the output, or make a choice that matters, the work may be immersive, but it’s more theatre than anything.
Experiential work trades a bit of control for real engagement. That trade-off can feel uncomfortable because it introduces variability and removes the safety of something fully canned.
But when users have control, they don’t just remember what they saw; they remember what they did.
So maybe the question isn’t: “How do we create an experience?” Maybe it’s: “How do we get our audience to participate, and what happens when they do?”
Perception vs. Reality
Here’s where I turn things back to you. What do you want out of an experience? Is it enough to be entertained? Impressed? Informed? Or do you want to participate? Now put yourself in your audience’s shoes and answer the same questions.
There is a time and place for experiential creative, but we should start asking ourselves how we want people to engage with our brand.
This isn’t a trade show-specific conversation either. Websites that not only look great, but also adapt to user behavior, interactive videos … really anything personalized coming from your brand.
There is a perception that an experience is enough, and it often is. The reality is that when we start prioritizing how audiences interact with a brand, we can engage with them in ways that feel more personal, stick with them, and keep them coming back.
Whether you’re building an experience or pushing toward something more experiential, we should talk.
