What Is A Brand Activation?
A brand activation is the process of bringing your brand to life through the use of events, marketing campaigns, and various other strategies. It utilises all of the elements of your brand, from the actual logo and colour palette, through to your brand tone and persona to create an in-person event or experience for your brand followers and fans to experience. If you’re still not sure, have a read of one of our latest blogs ‘What is a brand activation?’, and it should answer all of your questions.
Now you know what a brand activation is, we can start to dive into some examples of a brand activation.
Planning for a brand activation:
Like any marketing campaign, it’s important to know a few things before you start work. A few things that you need to make sure you are clear on are;
- Who are you targeting with this activation? – it may not be your usual target market, or it may be a more unique subset of the market.
- Where do those people spend their time?
- What are you trying to achieve with the activation?
- What is your budget?
By answering the above questions, you are then able to start to break down what kind of activation type is going to be best for your goals and your particular target market.
Brand Activation Examples:
Here are 8 of our favourite types of brand activations;
1. Pop-Up Experiences
Pop-up brand activations can be incredibly effective because, as their name suggests, you can pop up anywhere that you would like. These activations are temporary, with quick turnarounds and are used to create buzz and excitement amongst your audience. One design and style of pop-up can be transported around to pop up in more unexpected locations without too much of an additional cost.
2. Influencer Collaborations
Influencers and brands go hand in hand,and are a great opportunity for brand activation. Create an event in partnership with one of your biggest influencers and watch the perks roll in. As soon as your influencers are engaged and hooked, the customers will follow.
3. Gamification
This is an ever-growing trend that helps increase engagement numbers in your activation. Gamification, as it implies, relies on turning an aspect of your event into a game. Quizzes and contests to win products, win vouchers or special VIP experiences can be a great way to engage your audience as well as gather important data on them like their contact details.
The Saphire Gala for the Children’s Org in 2023 has a great example of how successful Gamification can be. They raised a whopping $580,000 for their charity and launched the Vault, a beautiful interactive activation where guests could put money forward to open the vault and see if they were lucky.
4. Community Focused Events
These are more applicable for events like local festivals or charity events, but activating a space in your local community that aligns with your company values. It is a great opportunity to get right in front of your crowd and keep it feeling local and interactive.
Our event with Ambulance Wish QLD was a great example of this. Bringing together 270 guests from all over Brisbane who are passionate about the cause, to celebrate, fundraise and enjoy an evening of great entertainment.
5. Interactive Workshops and Classes
In an environment where we all want to learn more and more, particularly on certain topics that pertain to us, interactive workshops are becoming a successful way to excite your guests.
Soso Run Club in Brisbane is a great example of this, they have activated their community with run classes, that now have some incredible brand sponsorship on board. People come for the class, but then become an engaged audience for the brands to work with. Interaction first, selling the product is an organic second.
6. Customer Appreciation Events
Our brands and businesses are nothing without customers. Finding ways to show our customers we appreciate them is imperative, particularly if you are facing an industry that is oversaturated with lots of competitors. Any chance to show some of your best customers you appreciate them is always going to pay dividends.
Bumble Australia does an amazing job at this and hosted their Bumble for friends event in Sydney last year.
7. Product Launch
An event to launch your latest and greatest product. This is a great way to showcase the product’s features, benefits, and uses directly to the media and/or your new target market.
Sunroom had a launch event for the ages with their viral launch event in Sydney featuring some key movers and shakers in the industry for their event.
7. Brand Installations
Curating installations that are visually striking and shareable across social media can help brands to generate buzz. User-generated content is always such an incredible way for your brand to grow, so give the people what they want and give them the content!
We did an art gallery last year with Getty Images and Populous for their 40th anniversary. We bought together images for their top 60 projects in one hall for guests to view and see their work up close.
There are so many different ways to create a successful brand activation, it is crucial to build a unique strategy for your brand to see the best ROI and get the most value out of these events.
If you’re thinking a brand activation is for you and your product or service, but need some help with brand activation ideas, reach out! We would love to chat and see how we can help, get in contact today.
