Experiential shops form breakaway
A group of experiential marketing agencies are to launch a breakaway trade body to rival the Field Marketing Council (FMC), as they feel they are not properly represented.
About 40 agencies, including Proximity, iD Live Brand Experience, Cunning and Arc Field Marketing will meet on April 27 in London to set up the Brand Experience Association (BEA).
iD chief executive Paul Ephremson relinquished his membership of the FMC last year. He says: “It is widely felt that the industry has outgrown the association that represents it. We feel experiential marketing has advanced too far in terms of creative input and accountability to be grouped under the same vague banner.”
The BEA is the brainchild of Matthew Bending, managing director of promotional space booking agency SpaceandPeople.
The FMC was created in 1999, when the Field Marketing Association joined forces with the Direct Marketing Association, in an effort to gain wider support and promote its members more effectively. Since then, there have been calls for the trade body to change its name to better represent its members.
FMC chairman Alison Williams says: “In my view, we would do better in a single organisation that had separate working parties promoting different bodies. I’ll be going along to the meeting and will be keeping an open mind until then.”
The central objectives of the BEA include an aggressive PR strategy to increase awareness, investment in research, the establishment of industry-wide standards, and studies into new technology available to the sector.
