Footfall vs connection: What experiential marketing gets wrong about scale
Maybe Covent Garden isn't the only option...
Over the last few years, high-footfall locations like Covent Garden have become a default choice for brand pop-ups.
It makes sense… on the surface.
The area attracts enormous numbers of visitors every day. A ready-made audience, right?
Brand ambassadors hand out samples, queues snake round the block, people dip in for a quick look before drifting back into the flow of tourists and shoppers. Content and reach roll on in.
For marketing teams under pressure to demonstrate impact, the appeal is obvious. If thousands of people walk past, surely a good proportion will step inside? And if hundreds step inside, you’ll have strong engagement numbers to plug into your report.
But here’s the problem: footfall isn’t the same as audience.
Just because someone is walking past doesn’t mean they care about your brand, your category or your story. They might be tourists. They might just be curious (read: nosy!) about the queue. Or they might be there for the freebie (…which may or may not end up on Vinted later).
Experiential marketing often counts these interactions equally. In reality, they’re very different levels of intent.
For this week’s deep dive, we’re getting experiential.
Keziah Wildsmith (founder of Heaps + Stacks) is unpacking:
Why footfall ≠ audience
The problem with how pop-ups are measured
What “friction-maxxing” actually means in practice
Why smaller, intentional audiences drive stronger outcomes
How brands should really be measuring success
Let’s get into it.
