Creating experiences and events linked to its leading brands such as Radio Times, Good Food and BBC Gardeners’ World is nothing new to Immediate Media, but now the company has taken the next step and launched a dedicated experiential agency operating in cooperation with but independently from its stable of titles.
At the helm of the new agency, IX, is Rob Hunt, director of experiential, who has worked for Immediate’s partnership team, Imagine, for ten years. He is joined by Kat Tek, head of experiential, who spent eight years with Immediate Live, the division responsible for major events such as BBC Gardeners’ World Live, the Good Food Show, the London Art Fair and Move It, before moving over to partnerships last year.
Hunt explains: “There were briefs coming through that didn’t really need our brands. They just wanted to reach an audience.” These clients wanted something more interactive and live than just digital or print. As a result, the partnerships and events teams at Immediate were increasingly turning to external suppliers to provide these experiences leading to rising production costs.
The concept was born to launch a dedicated experiential agency, which officially launched in February of this year, although it has been on the drawing board since last year. “It’s thinking between advertising and live,” says Hunt. The new team will draw on the wider company’s strengths in entertainment, food and drink, motoring, gardening and parenting, but aim to move beyond individual brands, using proprietary data and consumer insights to identify audience segments. Combining this with editorial authority and understanding of consumer trends, they will then create “bespoke activations for passionate audiences”. These might be co-branded events supported by Immediate titles, community events bringing like-minded audiences together, high impact pop-ups in unique spaces, or road shows delivering experiences across the country.
“Our USP is that anyone can do experiential, but very few can guarantee the exposure of that experience,” says Hunt. Clients of IX will have access to a slice of Immediate’s monthly audience of 20m adults in the UK across print, digital, social and podcasts.
If an experience needs to be amplified by one of their brands, because it fits into their audience, they will lean into that, but sometimes that might not be the case and that’s fine too.
Hunt gives the example of a popular high street food vendor trying to reach a Gen Z audience. His team has come up with an idea to create an experience at a music festival that is so good it won’t necessarily need to be directly supported by their brands, and instead they plan to target an audience of 18- to 30-year-olds via socials.
“From URL to IRL” is how Hunt likes to describe experiential.
Creative thinking
“Essentially, it’s a real-life experience linked to a brand. It could be you’re walking around your local big shopping centre, and you’ll suddenly see an activation by a coffee company which is launching a new product, and they do a pop up in the middle of a walkway for a week and then move on.”
Where ideas do link back to brands, they will do so in innovative ways. For example, to promote a betting company during the FIFA World Cup 2026 IX came up with the idea of ‘punditoke’ – a bit like karaoke, where people have three minutes to comment on the match and the winners get to comment alongside professional pundits. “Everyone who watches football thinks they know better than the commentators – let’s bring that together under the banner of Radio Times,” says Hunt.
Another idea they recently pitched to one of the big streaming companies to launch the second season of a sci-fi show was to have an open-top bus going around London filled with actors playing the part of aliens, waving at passers-by and calling out messages to members of the public over the loud hailer as their names show up on Wi-Fi.
Clients often look to experiential when they have a big launch. Looking to best in show examples, Hunt cites the time when the non-alcoholic drink Barbican turned into pink ‘Barbie-can’ to promote the Barbie movie or the London Borough of Greenwich renamed itself GreenWitch to celebrate the film version of the musical Wicked.
“Not only have we got all the big ideas, we can amplify them through our brands, but also because we’ve got the power of Immediate Live behind us, we know all the big production companies,” says Hunt. IX plans to leverage Immediate’s existing relationships with suppliers for its new venture.
Seeking connection
When it comes to the role of experiential, Hunt believes it addresses a disconnect in modern life. “People aren’t connecting as much as they used to. If you’re a big-ticket brand like cars, you can’t attract someone to buy a car just by sending them an email, they’ve got to experience it, they’ve got to sit in it, you’ve got to get them down to the dealership.”
Hunt is keen to stress these are all just ideas at this stage, rather than signed off projects, but for instance, they could do Q&A sessions with ex-Formula 1 drivers at car dealerships in big cities such as Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester, advertise these to their existing Top Gear audience and then use them to promote a car brand. Or if a drinks manufacturer is launching a new white chocolate liqueur, IX could create a pop-up stall where they give away the Christmas issue of Good Food magazine alongside a free tasting, so that when the product arrives on supermarket shelves there is already a demand.
The key is to establish a strong emotional connection, and this is where communities come in. “Our brands are built around the joy of being a cook, the joy of being a gardener, the joy of being a petrolhead. You feel you are part of a tribe. That feels emotional,” he says.
An example he always gives of the power of creating an emotional connection is Fat Boy Slim’s All Back to Minehead weekends at Butlins, which “is my benchmark for the best experience I’ve had in the last ten years”. Norman Cook, aka Fat Boy Slim, is involved in the weekend-long dance music festival from start to finish, from hand-signing welcome letters, to checking tickets at the gate, to serving up fish and chips and drinks at the bar, not to mention doing gigs throughout the event. “You feel he’s there to enjoy it as much as you are. Once you’ve been, you want to come back.” His dream is that in the future, IX will create a similar annual event with one of its brands.
Immediate is already doing something similar with their History Extra Weekends in conjunction with Warner Hotels, offering short breaks with breakfast and dinner included all under one roof, with talks from leading historians throughout the weekend.
There is also the BFI and Radio Times Television Festival on the South Bank, where themed screenings are combined with talks by TV stars and experts.
The challenge for Hunt and Tek is breaking through in a competitive arena. Via their ad sales teams and Immediate Live, they are in talks with agencies and clients to be added to their lists of experiential agencies and given the chance to pitch. “There is a buzz and people like the IX concept. The goal is to go above and beyond our own brands,” says Hunt.
Standalone agency
While there will be link ups with Immediate titles, he is aware that if they want to be seen as a standalone agency, they must also appeal to new audiences. The short-term goal is to do a couple of events in the first year that have nothing to do with their brands, as well as breaking even. Based on conversations already in the pipeline, they are set to come in above target, although Hunt is aware discussions don’t always convert into contracts. There is no doubt, however, that Immediate is breaking new ground, as most publishers still include experiential as part of their in-house partnership team.
In a way, experiential has always been part of what Hunt has done, even before it was known by that name. He has worked in newspapers and magazines throughout his career. After starting out as a sales executive at News International, he worked as music manager for Bauer Media Group, looking after the music advertisers for Smash Hits and J17. A six-year stint working for the Evening Standard followed, “doing things like giving away Fiat Pandas in railway stations, we were doing quite a lot of experiential stuff there.” Then he spent seven years as head of creative media, men and music at IPC, looking after titles such as NME, Nuts and Uncut. Amongst other events, he worked on the NME Awards and live gigs, including tours sponsored by ShockWaves hair gel. After another couple of years at Northern & Shell, he joined Immediate in 2016, working his way up from partnerships manager to his current role.
“The challenges will be getting those doors open, getting to see those clients direct; they’re bombarded with a million people trying to get in the door, so what’s our USP?” he admits.
As an ideas guy, he must also make sure the big concepts he and Tek come up with are deliverable. “It’s very different pitching an idea to a client in principle and actually delivering it,” he admits. Their opening gambit has been to send out welcome packs to potential clients, which they hope will help to get their foot through the door. These are little boxes containing a desk top charger and a fidget cube – “something fun and something useful which is what we’re offering with IX”.
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
