Woodland does Sunburn again & with a bang!

Woodland, a hardcore youth targeting brand has once again translated the aspirations of the youth into connecting strategies through the Sunburn Dance & Music Festival, a key event targeting the youth. In their 4th year of association, the brand organized adventurous sports for youth, which engaged them and in the process explained to them the brand's adventure related product offerings.

Harkirat Singh, MD, Woodland, says explaining the brand's equation with the festival, "The association with Sunburn festival allows us to provide a rich brand experience to the youth. What could be a better platform than this, which helps in showcasing the young who get a chance to engage in adventurous outdoor sports activities on the Sunburn platform? The youth wants freedom to experience and create a community unique to its needs. We go where the youth is going and we do it the way they do. For instance, when we stage a climbing wall or a hamster wheel, the audience experiences it and these activities connect with them in a much better way and generates word of mouth promo. In addition, our innovative ordinations not only capture attention, but also motivate people to experiment and refer our products to others.”

The brand optimized the place for more than just advertising. "For us there are obvious synergies, as a brand we believe that the best way to engage the young is to have a two -way conversation rather than just advertising. As consumers today want interaction, Innovation has become important as smart planning and when it comes to innovation in experiential marketing, there are no limits. We try to be as creative as we can get. In addition, it helps in building quick awareness and recall for the brand and if done nicely, innovation can also lead to the snowballing effect - word of mouth (WoM), talks on social networking sites and blogs. In our case, outdoor even adds to the environment of a city; further, Proplanety issues can be communicated quickly over outdoor (almost overnight),” states Harkirat.

This year, the festival widened its horizons and reached to other cities like Noida, Bangalore and etc besides Goa, the traditional destination for the festival.  The Woodland adventure challenges comprised various activities like Rock Climbing, Rappelling, Hamster Wheel, Bungee Jumping, Slack lining, Zip Lining, Wigwam with Graffiti other such simulated adventure settings across cities that included Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Goa. By installing the adventure sport, the brand aimed to imbibe the spirit of adventure in today's youth and expects to continue its efforts in the same direction. Their larger plan is to change the way outdoor adventure sports is perceived in India. The idea was to keep it completely green and sustainable to send out a parallel message to the youth.

Right from the ideation to implementation, construction to installation and creating an innovative structure, there were a few issues that the brand had to face. "I think we'd call them challenges rather than hurdles! And this is just how the creative process works - it's only through digging into a brief (and hitting a few dead ends on the way) that you reach that golden idea. At the start, usually no concept is a bad one… and then as work continues you have to start to be a little more practical about what's going to work and what the budget will allow,” explains Harkirat.

The key factor that Woodland focused on was relevance with the larger priorities. "In a festival-like environment, there is scope to do something adventurous that gives people seminal moments. But at the same time, we are able to do innovative installations that add a bit more educational value. It's easy to end up product-led and functional with activations, but it's being brand-led and emotional that really connects with people,” explains Harkirat.

Speaking about the response to the campaign, Harkirat says, "The consumer response had been fantastic.  They have loved being able to try on the Hamster Wheel or on Slack lining and have their photo taken. The event has been great at bringing the brand belief to life - outdoor, adventure, fun, different — while also promoting a product that actually works.”