eBusiness Weekly
Leslie Mupeti
In modern day markets, grabbing the audience’s attention has become incredibly difficult.
There’s a lot of noise in the market, consumers have a lot choice nowadays. Brands have to think outside the box if they want to have the attention of the consumers.
Brand activation is the strategy used by brands to bring their products to life and grab the attention of the audience. It’s an event, usually a one-off campaign or any interaction through which a company drives customer actions.
This technique aims to generate brand awareness and build lasting relationships with the target audience and develop customer loyalty.
By engaging with customers and involving them in an event or experience, brands are able to foster positive associations and create long term brand loyalty. For instance, Coca cola brand activations involve an on-ground event where consumers engage with the Coca cola brand directly or indirectly.
An example is the Coca cola “happy ID”, which was an activation program in which people took portrait photos for use in official IDs in Coca Cola branded photo booths.
Another example is the Coca Cola “hello happiness” which was targeted to labourers in the UAE.
Coca Cola created Hello happiness phone booths, special phone booths which accepted Coca Cola bottle caps instead of coins for free three minute international calls, helping them connect with their families back home.
The most popular brand activations are experiential marketing which we will look at in a moment. Before we dive into the types of activations and how you can create your own campaign let’s look at why activations are important.
Why are brand activations important?
Chances are your target audience doesn’t know you before hand. Also, the few people who are aware of the launch do not have any attachment to the brand. This means that you have to establish an engagement with your audience by developing emotional connections. The engagement that you develop with your audience must be an emotional one which is the deepest connection a consumer can have with a brand. Some of the key reasons why brand activations are important are:
1. Brand activations help establish a personal interaction between the brand and the consumer. This helps leave an imprint in the mind of the consumer which helps in developing an emotional connection between the brand and the consumer.
2. Brand activations help your brand come to life. It allows the brand to draw the attention of new customers. It also helps you see what your existing customers think about your brand.
Here are some statistics just to give you some context:
86 percent of people say they skip ads and actively attempt to tune out traditional advertising.
70 percent of people say they would prefer to learn about a brand in a way other than traditional advertising.
65 percent of people recall information better when it is presented visually.
2 out of 3 people given promotional merchandise are able to remember the brand up to a year later.
The human brain absorbs almost twice the amount of information when it is presented in a novel or unexpected way. Adding a form of engagement activates the long term memory system. People’s ability to remember a brand is influenced by the environment in which they experience it.
The types of brand activations
Experiential marketing
Here, the brand creates an experience that is more like real-world. Experiential marketing is all about providing the audience with a memorable experience that they can recall later on.
Experiences matter a lot, especially to the populations of young people. It tends to form in the long term memory structures that the audience tends to recall and remember.
An example is when Red bull sent a sky diver to the edge of the atmosphere and broadcast it live as he jumped out and created a world record fo sky diving. This provided huge media coverage and this amplified the campaign. not everyone has access to a huge budget for campaigns and a perfect example of cheaper experiential marketing campaigns is Lipton ice tea.
They launched a campaign called “rise and slide”. They put a water slide in the middle of London and they ran their campaign which captured happiness and summer and amplified it. The idea in experiential marketing is to connect the consumer with the brand in a way that is truly integrated.
The ultimate goal is to increase brand engagement, to drive consumer response and to increase customer brand awareness, recall and salience. Consumers need to feel like they’re part of the brand instead of just being “the consumer”.
Free trial and sampling campaigns
This is the most engaging and transparent form of brand activation. It’s purpose is for the audience to try a product for free and in the process hope that they will love it. However, the brand must be careful not to appear as too “salesy” as this will chase away people.
People tend to avoid an over-eager approach which results in no customers. It’s very important to select a venue people would like and where they will feel comfortable.
In-store brand activation
The idea is to present the product or service of the brand in direct contact with the consumer so that they can experience it first hand themselves. The purpose of a brand activation is to build a connection between the brand and its audience. Retailers and most business to consumer businesses use this approach. They offer beverages and foods to their audience and allow the audience to get their hands on free products. Let’s look at how you can create an activation campaign for your brand.
How to create a brand activation campaign
Set your goals and your metrics
You need to be crystal clear about what you want to achieve. Do you want to drive 20000 more visitors onto your site? Do you want to increase sales for the month or quarter by 10 percent? Being clear on your goals for the activation increase your chances of making the audience to drive the right actions.
2. Set your campaign budget
You also want to be crystal clear on this as well so that you don’t end up create a half baked campaign. Things to look out for in your activation budget may include: space costs, marketing materials, creative services, event management, catering, performances, event production services, social media, planning and management, apparel and custom branding.
3. Develop your audience centred experience
Brand activation is all about giving your audience a unique memorable experience. You need to know your audience really well. What are they passionate about? What gets them excited?
4. Create a compelling call-to-action
You need to think about want your goals are. If your goals are to drive 20 000 more visitors to your site, then your call-to-action must drive that traffic. Think about what you want to achieve and develop a compelling reason you can give your audience to complete that action.
5. Amplify your activation
The buzz itself at the activation is not what will drive the most results. You need to think about amplifying the buzz to get the most results or traction.
Think about the marketing channels that you’re going to use. Where can you market the activation itself? Can you notify the community to help generate that buzz and get the word out? Can you get the necessary media attention?
