MORNING WALK FIELD NOTES
DISPATCHES FROM OUR WALK
Volume 4.0 - May
Welcome to our first Field Notes dispatch of 2026!
We’re starting the year by focusing on a role as old as humanity itself: the storyteller.
In an era defined by endless content, storytelling is moving beyond volume and velocity. Today, it’s about the subtle orchestration of attention — telling a story with consistency and keeping it consistently interesting.
It’s a task as difficult as it is essential. But, once you can get people to wrap their head, and their heart, around the story you’re telling ... you might get them to actually listen.
ORIENTATION
brand hibernation is over
Recently, brands have stayed “inside” by optimizing for screens and a homebound populace. But hunkering down gets old. Growth has slowed as digital bubbles fail to create meaning and motivation to act. Industry observer Michael Farmer has called for a “new advertising paradigm” to address today’s fragmented audiences.
The bottom line: brand growth is back.
And part of growth is getting brands back outside.
The Wall Street Journal reports that experiential spending increased 10.5% year-over-year to $128.35 billion in 2024, surpassing pre-pandemic levels. And as attendance rises across live sports, festivals, and pop-ups, it’s clear that real-world experiences still cut through the digital noise. Audiences are rarely actively shopping, so brands must engage beyond the narrow lane of performance marketing.
At Morning Walk, we’ve seen that the most significant engagement still happens in real life. Because social shares are nice, but showing up for a brand really means something.
FIELD REPORT
out of office
Kalahari took experiential on the road this spring with its Safari Migration: a five-day, seven-state journey moving 45 animal sculptures toward its new Virginia resort. The result was 30M+ impressions, 96% new site visitors, 200 news pick-ups, 13K email sign-ups and more than 3,500 experience-hungry attendees showing up in-person to catch a Kalahari convoy rolling down I-65.
At this year’s King of the Hammers, OPTIMA and Clarios doubled down on the power of showing up, including the debut of Sparky’s Cantina, an outpost that was both brand activation and community hangout. Each brand’s presence also fueled a true creator content engine, with athletes, influencers, and fans driving 4.84M video views and 8.7M estimated impressions across channels.
POINT OF INTEREST
when experiential hits the road
Nothing says summer like a cold beverage, especially one that comes from the craft-obsessed folks in the North Woods. Long before “experiential” became a marketing buzzword, Leinenkugel’s hit the road with a customized Airstream and the three Leinenkugel brothers traveling coast to coast, making surprise stops at key accounts and events, allowing Morning Walk to turn real-world connection into the kind of brand loyalty you can’t build from behind a screen.
