Millennials have gained a reputation for their tendency to prioritise experiences over products. A study by the Harris Group has found that about 72% of millennials would rather spend on experiences than material objects.
Offline experiences are becoming key to personal fulfilment and people would much rather pay for memories than things. This is the experience economy and it is booming in the UK right now.
TV-sitcom-themed events, festivals and cafes are contributing significantly to this booming experience economy.
Audience-favourite TV shows such as Friends, Peaky Blinders, and Stranger Things have become a whole lot more than just living room memories.
Just last month, fans of the hit BBC show Peaky Blinders were treated to the first official festival of the show. Titled ‘The Legitimate Peaky Blinders Festival,’ the festival promised to be an ‘immersive re-creation of the show.’
The two-day festival held in September comprised of poetry slams, fashion shows showing off clothes from the show and question/answer sessions with the cast. It even featured museum props from the set of the show itself. Needless to say, the festival brought a much-loved TV show to real life and people were more than willing to pay for the experience.
Similarly, Primark recently launched a Friends-Themed café In Manchester. The café is designed to look identical to the iconic Friends café. Fans of the 90’s hit sitcom can now find themselves inside their favourite TV show, which is an actual dream come true for many of them.
The vice-president of licensing at Informa Markets says:
“What we are living in right now is an experience economy. Experiences are what people want to buy now. You’re not just looking at a £10 T-shirt.”
Yet another example is the Stranger Things event, which is supposed to kick off from next month. Fans of the science fiction show set in Hawkins, Indiana in the 1980’s are promised a “living, breathing story” to experience their “favourite moments from the Netflix original series.”
All we know is that it takes place at a secret London location and attendees will be told to stick to a strict dress code and to bring certain accessories for a three-hour “other-worldly cinematic experience.”
TV- shows being brought to life to create real-world experiences isn’t something entirely new. The Harry Potter themed amusement park and the Simpsons amusement park at Universal studios, Florida are all examples of movie/TV show themed real life experiences.
Similarly, the television channel Comedy Central started a FriendsFest in 2015 as a five-day pop up experience for Friends fans living in London. In the very first year of the festival, tickets were sold for only £5 each. The cost is now £29 and thousands of Friends fans have attended it since it began.
According to Max Alexander, chief executive of Secret Cinema: “For years, there have been things like ComicCon but more recently there has been a real proliferation of experiences and events.”
The overall value of the licensing of brands for events, themed attractions, experiences and promotions was worth $533 million last year. This is up almost 21% since 2017, according to figures from Brand Licensing Europe.
