Every so often you read a stat that makes you rethink what you thought you knew about marketing. The latest one to have that effect on me is from the Harvard Business Review. And it’s a doozy.
When someone spends just ten minutes interacting with your brand in the real world—touching, trying, talking—they’re six times more likely to remember it than a digital ad impression.
Six times the memory. All from ten minutes.
And if you want proof that these in-person moments do more than spark recall, EventTrack’s latest consumer research shows customers who attend brand activations deliver 25–40% higher lifetime value.
In other words, those ten minutes don’t just land in the memory bank. They compound.
For someone who spends her life telling businesses to get closer to their customers—really closer, not “we posted a Reel, fingers crossed”—this feels like the data is finally catching up with what good marketers already know: being in the world beats being in the feed.
This month I headed back to New York, this time mostly for pleasure. Yep, that turned into research, because NYC is a brilliant place to observe how brands are experimenting. And what I saw everywhere is experiential marketing taking off in ways that Australian brands could learn a lot from.
Let’s start with the pop-up phenomenon. Temporary stores aren’t new, but the cultural role they’re playing now is.
A decade ago, a pop-up was a novelty. Today they’re a weekend pastime. People meet friends and wander into neighbourhoods because something interesting has popped up. They don’t just go to shop—they go for a moment, a feeling, an experience they won’t get scrolling at home.
One day I walked through Nolita and saw a queue for Australian brand MCoBeauty stretching down the street. Hours of waiting to step into a temporary store offering samples and gifts.
What struck me is these pop-ups weren’t just selling products. They were selling connection. You could see people talking to staff, chatting in the queue, taking in the atmosphere. It was community building disguised as retail.
Pop-ups thrive in places like New York because there’s high foot traffic and a culture of discovery. But the underlying principles translate anywhere.
Australian cities and regions have their own curiosity-driven audiences, and consumers who love something new, especially when it feels intimate, exclusive, or designed with care.
Pop-ups remove the risk of long leases and let brands test markets in real time. They give customers an experience they can feel, not just “engage with.” And they offer something even more powerful: conversations. Real, human ones.
The kind you forget you miss until you’re standing in a beautifully lit store talking to someone who knows their product inside out.
During my trip, two pop-ups in particular stayed with me—not because they were flashy, but because they were smart.
The first was Back Market, the refurbished electronics marketplace that started in 2014 in France—where one in three iPhones sold is refurbished—and is growing rapidly globally. Their mission is to challenge the belief that only “new” tech is good tech.
In the US, where people are still conditioned to upgrade their phone every two years with their telco plan, the concept is still gaining trust.
So the company did something clever: they opened a temporary store in SoHo dedicated to demonstrating the quality of refurbished devices. While you could purchase items, the primary goal was Showing and building trust, not pushing sales.
You can compare new and refurbished phones side-by-side. You can get your own device repaired or cleaned. You can watch technicians diagnosing issues on the spot. Everything is transparent, tactile and grounded in evidence.
The Back Market pop-up is essentially a three-month experiment in human behaviour: when people touch the refurbed item, when they see it working, when they speak to a real person who explains how the grading and warranty system works, their scepticism drops away.
The day I was there, they were hosting an influencer who showed how to snazz up older tech.
And this is where that HBR statistic comes to life. Ten minutes spent in a space like that builds trust in a way ten thousand banner ads cannot. It shifts mindset. It creates confidence. It gives the brand a foothold in people’s memory, sometimes permanently.
The second example was Nature Made, a vitamin and supplement brand that transformed its SoHo space into an interactive wellness journey. Not a sales floor. A journey.
You walk in, answer questions about how you want to feel—calm, energised, rested, strong—and the store helps you build a personalised routine. There are installations you can play around with, spaces to write commitments to yourself, tasting stations for their gummy supplements and events ranging from Pilates to meditation.
I overheard three Gen Zers debating what mattered most to their wellbeing. Not which products to buy—what mattered to them. That’s the kind of conversation brands dream about sparking.
Without realising it, I was in that store trying the activations for twenty minutes. Double the magical ten. And I left feeling more connected to the brand than I would flicking past their ads online.
But the lesson here isn’t “fly to New York and open an activation.” It’s simpler: people remember what they feel. And right now, consumers everywhere, including Australians, are hungry for something they can actually participate in.
Even the luxury sector is embracing this. At an IPSOS Global Influencers launch event I attended at the Harvard Club, one panellist spoke about the TikTok trend of “creating a Ralph Lauren Christmas.”
Their flagship holiday windows have become an activation in themselves. People aren’t just walking past them. They’re building an entire lifestyle fantasy out of the feeling those windows give them. That’s subtle, powerful experiential marketing.
For Australian brands, the opportunity is wide open. You don’t need a massive budget. You don’t need dancers, DJs, or a Westfield atrium. You simply need to create a moment that customers can step into. A moment that lets them feel your brand, not just see it.
It could be a weekend pop-up. A travelling concept store. A micro workshop. A tasting table. A demo day. A “meet the maker” drop-in. A neighbourhood partnership. Anything that makes your brand real, tangible and memorable.
The shift? Digital marketing is still essential, but its job is now to point people towards something, not to replace it.
Those ten minutes in person are where memory forms, trust develops, and loyalty starts.
If you’re planning your marketing priorities for the next twelve months, ask two questions:
Where will customers be able to meet us in the real world?
And what will they remember about that moment a year from now?
The brands that answer those questions well will be the ones customers return to—not because an algorithm told them to, but because the experience stuck.
Sometimes, all you need is 10 minutes!