What is Brand Activation & Why Does Brands Need It?
Brand Activation
Brand activation is what you do to make people aware of your brand through experiences or engagements. It’s what you do to make your brand more memorable.
A unique brand experience can happen in a grand, fashion-like event in an expensive hotel or restaurant or in a more target-based way by simply sending the right samples to the right people.
Brand activation highly relies on elements of surprise and creativity.
In a brand activation campaign, creative ideas provide a multi-touch brand experience to connect a new local or even online brand to its target audience.
Brand Activation Types
Experimental Marketing
Well-known brands tend to use experimental marketing to connect face-to-face with their customers. In fact, experimental marketing provides a multi-touch brand impression and a unique interactive experience with the brand or the digital product.
Promotional Marketing
New brands and startups try promotional marketing to attract customers or even tap into new markets through digital marketing apps and social media campaigns.
Promotional marketing helps gain a loyal customer base that increases brand awareness through reward loyalty programs, free sample giveaways, digital contests, social media giveaways, special offers, etc.
Social Media Engagement
In fact, trendy social media networks have large numbers of users, and new brands use this capacity to achieve unimaginable goals during their brand activation marketing campaigns.
Social media influencer campaigns are usually curated by brands that hand-pick a set of celebrities or influencers to their events, only to have them broadcasted to their network of followers and increase their awareness levels.
In-Store Retail
Brands use the In-Store space to interact with their customers in unique and creative ways. Inviting a few well-known influencers to a shop opening increases public attention and impressions.
In-store social media interactions are another popular brand activation trend in which customers experience a singular brand experience.
Pop-up Store Brand Activation
In-store marketing provides several advantages that make it profitable for brands to run pop-up store campaigns. People find pop-up stores funny and surprising, and they are highly effective in engaging social media users.
From prestigious technology brands like Google to local tea and coffee beverage brands in various cities, pop-up stores are used to address the target audiences.
Objectives Of Brand Activation:
To increase visibility:
Even if a brand is well established or has some presence, the company can organize brand activation campaigns to increase visibility and attract more customers.
To enhance awareness:
Most consumers do not recognise new brands and their products. Such companies can reach out to their target audience as well as increase awareness through brand activation.
To build trust and relationship with the consumer:
As well as brand activation is to build consumer’s trust in the brand and its offerings. Trust in a brand often leads to consumer loyalty, which leads to repeated purchases. The companies can even use this loyalty to increase sales by developing word-of-mouth and referral marketing campaigns.
To reinforce proposition:
In fact, it enhances and reinforces the brand’s value proposition. Through brand activation, companies remind the consumers of their mission and vision.
To drive consumer engagement:
It helps in creating a link or a bridge between the customer and brand, resulting in consumer engagement. Customer engagement refers to a customer’s willingness to actively participate and communicate with the brand. Consumer engagement and interaction is one of the most important objectives of a campaign. This kind of engagement can be distinctively seen when companies carry out activation through experiential marketing.