When the art exhibition "Making Miami" opened last December during Miami Art Week, it was an instant standout, a recognition that's not so easy to achieve.

For starters, the weeklong event is anchored by the three-day Art Basel Miami Beach, an international art fair that Vanity Fair magazine describes as an "annual orgy of art and commerce." Besides "Making Miami," there were 20 or so additional art events happening across the city at the same time, not to mention many celebrity-studded parties sponsored by brands like Cartier and Louis Vuitton and DJ sets at chic hotels—all designed to entertain the 75,000-plus people who come to town for Art Basel.

But "Making Miami" was clearly special. Spread across a 20,000-square-foot public space in the heart of the city's design district, the art installation re-created four different galleries integral to the Miami art scene between 1996 and 2012. It featured pieces from over 50 local artists and a sculpture garden with works from the renowned artist Daniel Arsham and the popular art collective FriendsWithYou.

ARTnews magazine called "Making Miami" one of Miami Art Week's "most exciting local shows." It made Vogue too, in a piece about art world insider tips.

"Making Miami" wasn't organized by a gallery, art museum or even the artists themselves. Instead, it was the brainchild of Vivek Jayaram, founder of Jayaram Law, a 22-lawyer law firm with offices in Chicago, New York City and Miami that caters to the legal needs of creatives as well as more traditional clients. Jayaram worked closely with the firm's CEO, Noah Ornstein, to manage all the people and moving parts involved in the show's production.

The event could be described with a somewhat new business term: "experiential marketing." It involves promoting experiences people enjoy, and doing so in a way that gets them to associate those experiences with the sponsoring brand or product. The approach is often used by high-end brands, such as when Tiffany & Co. celebrated the 2016 reopening of its Beverly Hills location with a surprise performance by singer Ariana Grande, who serenaded guests with a version of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" as the boutique doors swung open for a private shopping event.

But experiential marketing isn't exclusive to high rollers. It's been used by brands behind products ranging from sneakers to chocolate-hazelnut spread to foster excitement and ultimately investment.

For Jayaram Law, the 2023 event was the firm's second Miami Art Week offering. In 2022, Jayaram and his firm produced an immersive art exhibition called "Ares House" based on a virtual luxury residence created by Arsham. More than 2,000 people experienced the installation over four days, and it received write-ups in Architectural Digest and Forbes, according to the Jayaram Law Blog.

Could Jayaram and Ornstein simply have written a check and slapped the firm's logo on someone else's exhibit? Definitely. Perhaps they could have gotten some name recognition that way, along with a supply of opening-night cocktail party invites for client gifting.

But they wanted to do something different that would make the firm stand out, communicate the firm's values and convey how those values align with those of its creative entrepreneurial clients.

"We thought, 'We all love Art Basel, we all come to Art Basel, we should be a part of Art Basel—we should have a show,'" says Jayaram, who handles intellectual property transactions and disputes. In creating the exhibitions, he adds, "we succeeded in building the kind of community we set out to connect with."

Ornstein agrees.

"We love practicing law, but we get up to participate in these creative-driven, catalytic moments in time that move forward ideas, that move forward people," he says. "To be a part of these moments requires building trust between us and those creative communities, and you build trust with these communities by becoming a member."

In addition to the physical "Making Miami" exhibition, the firm created a digital archive of the works in the exhibition and produced a coffee-table book that it gifted to clients and friends of the firm.

The firm didn't create the exhibitions with client development in mind, Jayaram says. That happened organically. The firm's experiential marketing has led to retaining significant new business: two globally known contemporary artists, two public companies and several fashion brands.

"As a way to bring clients to you, it's been very, very, very effective," he adds.

The events impressed Derek Hawkins, senior corporate counsel for IP and emerging technology for Salesforce, a Jayaram client.

"It's refreshing to know that your outside counsel doesn't just observe what's happening in the landscape where they provide guidance but actually live in it organically," he says. It shows "they'll be able to provide practical guidance that is rooted in understanding the 'why' behind the decisions, not just what rights we have and what the law allows."

Such is the power of experiential marketing, says Thomaï Serdari, a marketing professor at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business and the director of the school's luxury and retail MBA program. It is a relatively new promotional strategy, emerging only in the last decade or so, she says.

"Experiential marketing is a way of promoting a business, product line or specific product by creating immersive experiences that generate emotions, challenge the customer intellectually and allow them to know the brand and desire the brand," Serdari explains. "It's not an advertising or broadcast vehicle that says: 'This is what we do, learn about it.' It's a long-term strategy to build trust with a target client or customer base."

Today, consumers place brand connections front and center, says Tara Wilson, founder of the Fort Worth, Texas-based Tara Wilson Agency.

"They want to feel like they can communicate with a brand and be a part of that brand's conversation," says Wilson, who has specialized in experiential marketing since 2015. Her work focuses on sportswear and beauty brands. She's worked with Nike, Samsung and the Dallas Cowboys to craft immersive campaigns across the country.

"You want to create a moment and a space to demonstrate what you stand for and give people the opportunity to connect and be in community," Wilson says. "And because your brand fostered this opportunity to engage, this connection, you get love and loyalty from the consumer in return."

Wilson created an experiential marketing event in Los Angeles for the launch of the athleisure brand Lou & Grey. It's sold at Loft, a clothing chain formerly known as Ann Taylor Loft.

The brand's ideal customer was a woman who segued from athletic activity to brunch or school pickup, and she wanted her outfit to be able to do the same. To highlight Lou & Grey's ability to transition across the activities of the day, Wilson created a morning experience centered around a kickball tournament. It was held in an upscale location adjacent to an outdoor lounge area with pouf seating and a bar serving branded boxed waters.

"The tournament was light, easy and fun. We brought in influencers to be team captains, and the teams created instant community," she says. Before the games began, participants mingled in the lounge area and got the chance to check out the new product line. They were told they could pick out a shirt they liked and keep it, an offer Wilson calls the "surprise and delight moment."

Critically, Wilson says the gifted top also served as the uniform for the kickball tournament.

The hope was that if the players continued to wear the top throughout the day, they'd see how well it functioned in their daily life, and they'd want to return to the brand to make a purchase—and share that experience with others in their personal and social media circle.

What experiential marketing is not about is making money, Wilson cautions.

"If you are doing an experiential marketing event to drive sales, you're approaching it wrong," she says. "Experiential marketing gets people to know who you are and what you stand for."

Which is exactly why it can be such a valuable approach in the law firm space, legal marketing experts say.

"I don't know of a single general counsel who only saw an ad for a law firm and said, 'Let's give them a shot,'" says Zack McKamie, vice president of marketing for Dallas-based Androvett Legal Media & Marketing, which works with law firms of all sizes and practice areas.

"When you provide value and engagement in an authentic and meaningful way and you ask for nothing in return, people will thank you for it, and that's when you can begin to build a real relationship. And there's no way to replace what relationships mean in the legal world," he adds.

Experiential marketing isn't the same as simply offering a straightforward event like a CLE, roundtable or conference, or sending an informational newsletter, McKamie says.

"You need to look at things through a different lens in terms of, 'What do I want to achieve? What hasn't been done or utilized before, and how can I create a way to gather that's innovative and compelling?'" he says. It's about community-building, and "determining how you want people to feel when they are working with the firm and its attorneys."

First, you need to create a clear and cohesive platform for your brand, McKamie explains. That includes defining a firm's look and feel as well as its values, messaging and how to communicate that with others in the marketplace.

From there, it's critical for a firm to think of its target audience. McKamie suggests asking: "Who would they want to reach or meet? What would be impactful for them to experience?"

When you align who you want to meet with your values and what makes your firm unique, good ideas and opportunities will reveal themselves in authentic ways, he says.

Which doesn't mean that a law firm must go about this alone. Some say maximum creativity often comes from collaborating on an experiential marketing initiative with a third party—such as an artist, a charity, a social impact initiative or a consumer brand—so long as it aligns with the firm's values.

"We live in a world where relationships are everything, so if a firm is intentional about who it's working with, the collaboration can be seen as an extension of its own values, its own culture," says Jaé Joseph. He's the founder of Normandé Wes Ventures, a consulting company based in Miami and New York City that specializes in connecting businesses with artists, fashion designers and luxury brands for collaborative projects.

A law firm could even collaborate on an experiential marketing event with a client, Joseph suggests. "Working with a client to brainstorm ideas and create an event together can refresh an existing relationship," he says, adding that collaborations could lead to a broader relationship and more work.

It could also inspire new client relationships by showcasing the synergy between the firm and an existing client, he says.

Regardless of the format, authenticity should be at the core of any event. That's easy for lawyers in the Louisville, Kentucky, office of Frost Brown Todd, which has an equine law practice. Every year since 2003, the firm has hosted a formal series of events tied to the Kentucky Derby, the legendary thoroughbred race that's held the first Saturday in May at Louisville's Churchill Downs track.

While hosting client events connected to the Kentucky Derby—or any major hometown event—isn't exactly an earth-shattering concept, the firm is able to infuse every element of its nearly weeklong agenda with authenticity due it its deep ties to the event, says Jennifer Barber, the Louisville office's partner-in-charge.

Not only was the firm founded in Louisville, where it began as Brown, Todd & Heyburn before merging with Cincinnati-based Frost & Jacobs in 2000, but the firm's chairman emeritus, C. Edward Glasscock, has had an ownership stake in several horses that have competed in the Derby over the years. Each year, Glasscock hosts a popular luncheon that's open to the public where he predicts winners of the Derby and a related race called the Kentucky Oaks. The firm and its Derby guests are naturally included.

"Any law firm can take their clients to a golf tournament or sporting event, and I am sure the clients enjoy it, but it's different with us because we've all grown up with the Derby—it's the pride of Kentuckians, and it's really fun for us to be able to share the excitement of the fastest two minutes in sports," says Barber, a tax lawyer.

Starting around March, lawyers in the Louisville office begin personally working with invitees—typically Frost Brown Todd lawyers across the firm's 16 other offices and clients—to customize their individual Derby experience. This can mean booking restaurants, curating bourbon tastings and offering wardrobe advice. Derby dress code favors suits for men and dresses and hats for women, with pastels as the preferred color palette.

"We even have some of our partners who have opened their homes to their clients to have the clients stay with them when they come into town for the Derby," Barber adds.

The extended, intensive planning strengthens personal ties, she says.

"If you think about planning travel with your personal friends, you learn so much about each other doing that, and it's no different with these clients when we're helping curate an unforgettable experience. We're learning what they like to eat, what they like to drink, if they have children and, if they bring their children, what are their ages, and what do they like to do?" Barber explains. "It's really fun, and we get to bond with our clients and share how proud we are of being in Kentucky. We want our clients to leave feeling that too."

For Texas lawyer Laura Frederick, adding authenticity meant ensuring her marketing efforts reflected her unique sense of humor and lighthearted approach to contracts law. During the pandemic, she created an online community in part through posting funny cartoons on LinkedIn depicting contracts law scenarios. In 2022, she brought that community together in person by hosting her first annual two-day CLE seminar in Las Vegas called ContractsCon, where speakers wear costumes to present, participants win prizes and training sessions involve skits based on classic TV episodes.

"I wanted to create an event where I show up as me, and that attracts people, clients and others who have a similar sensibility," she says. "This is about creating an emotional, personal connection. And to do that, I need to be myself. So if there's a lawyer who doesn't like the idea of our superstar panel of lawyers offering contract training in costume, they're not going to come. That's just as well, because they're not suited for this kind of training."

As a business-builder, the event was a success. Before Frederick started posting daily on LinkedIn, she estimates that 97% of her business was from past co-workers' referrals. Within 18 months of her LinkedIn posts, 90% of her new business came from that community. After adding the in-person event, she ended up with so much business that she had to hire four contract lawyers. Frederick has since stepped away from traditional law firm practice to focus on her How to Contract brand.

She wrestled with the decision to take an authentic approach.

"In the beginning, I was really nervous about showing up in this ridiculous way because I thought no one would take me seriously. I've got the credentials—I worked in BigLaw, I was in-house at Tesla—I know what I'm talking about, but I was concerned that if I started posting contract cartoons with zombies on LinkedIn, no one was going to hire me," she says. "What I found is the opposite. People just love the silliness. Lawyers are sophisticated, and they can appreciate that someone can make jokes but still be serious when they need to be to get the job done."

Like others who have tried this approach, Frederick says experiential marketing is about creating lasting connections.

Jayaram agrees. His firm's events remain top-of-mind for his clients long after they've ended. "Every time a client sees a cool exhibition in New York City or every time they see a work in another museum by one of our featured artists, we'll get notes," Jayaram says.

Plus, he says, "I think a lot of people are still impressed that a bunch of lawyers could pull something like this off."

Sidebar: 5 tips to make the most of an experiential marketing initiative