“Although there is great comfort in metrics, if clients believed they offered the absolute proof of success, they would only be making 30 second TV commercials and banner ads.

“Clients are finding it harder in today’s information-saturated culture to get their message across, and we offer an opportunity to deliver a memorable experience directly to their audiences like no other form of media. This is a great time to be in the experiential communication business.

“Because of the very bespoke and multi-channel nature of experiential communication, we need to co-create clear, qualitative success criteria with our clients. From these, we should determine specific outcomes that can be measured, such as actions, responses or visitations. And just imagine if we could measure the depth of a brand impression.

“We believe the industry needs a cohesive body that recognises the difference between creating relevant and engaging brand communications and simply staging live events; a group that can engage in discussion with our clients to determine the success criteria for our work in more qualitative terms. We believe that it would be in the interests of the leading agencies to present some common thinking in this area and thereby raise the game for our industry as a whole.”

What is your definition of experiential marketing and what media does it include?

“Experiential is not a channel. It’s a way of communicating that’s relevant for today’s information culture. Events; exhibition; digital; PR; TV; print; it doesn’t really matter. The bottom line is this: have meaningful conversation. Create an experience and make it memorable.”

Peter Cowie is managing director of award-winning experiential communications agency PCI Fitch