Introduction to Brand Activations Driving brand awareness is a great start to building your brand, but having brand activations is what you need, so your prospects can deepen their connection with you and your offerings. As you know, people choose to work with those they know, like, and trust and brand activation events provide a pathway to unique and memorable events. Activation marketing has evolved, but today’s brand activation ideas run the gamut from tailored experiences to pop-up shops and live demonstrations. What is Brand Activation? Brand activations are a type of marketing strategy focused on direct engagement with prospects and customers with the intent of deepening their connection to you and moving them down the customer journey toward purchase and advocacy. Unlike traditional marketing approaches, activation marketing does not rely on touching massive numbers of people at a distance. Instead, brand activation is all about smaller, more meaningful experiences that often last much longer than a social media scrolling glance or a quick look at a website. While brand activation commonly refers to in-person events or engagement, it also relates to digital and web executions as well. It’s any activity where a prospect or customer interacts with your brand, typically outside the scope of a traditional experience. For instance, a standard demo is not a brand activation, but a 3D, VR, or immersive experience demonstration would fall in the category of brand event activation. Benefits of Brand Activation at Events Brand activation events enable organizations to connect with prospects outside traditional channels. For example, event activation set-ups at sporting events enable you to connect with your prospects away from the workplace, so you tap into their emotions, and they see your brand in a different light. Prospects change how they feel about your brand when they see you supporting the teams, entertainment, or causes they most passionately care about. When you get creative with your brand activation events, like making and distributing fun, useful swag, engaging prospects in enticing games, and making memories with your best customers and prospects, it’s a win-win. These events also make great fodder for your social media campaigns as well. An important note about brand activations is that they can be stand-alone executions or add-ons to existing events. 13 Brand Activation Ideas for Your Next Event You’re convinced. Brand activation events are the missing link in your marketing strategy. You’re ready to go, but where do you start? How do you come up with brand activation ideas that will connect with your audience? Start with this list of 13 compelling ideas and see what type of brand activation experience might fit with your organization. Interactive Experiences Your team may already be slated to attend conferences, trade shows, fairs, or other events. A simple way to level up your prospect engagement is to make the experience at your booth or space interactive. The ideal interactive event draws a crowd, thus attracting even more people who naturally want to see what’s going on. Consider upgrading your existing setup with something more interactive, such as virtual reality (VR) experiences, interactive installations where prospects can experience your product or service, and even more interactive product demos. Live Demonstrations Invest in product demonstrations and showcases that are lively and hands-on. Become a showman (or hire one) to bring your product to life, making the demonstration engaging and entertaining. Infuse hands-on experience with prospects that help pique their interest in your product and service. In short, consider how to make your demo an engagement-worthy show. Social Media Integration Social media integration is a must-have part of the brand activation event playbook. At a bare minimum, build a strategy and execution plan that ensures that your engaging event is captured in a positive light and shared across your social channels in advance, live, and post-event. But it doesn’t stop there. What kind of UGC (user-generated content) can you generate? You can offer photo booths with fun props, deliver rewards from sharing on socials, or just capture the joy of your attendees to help drive the FOMO (fear of missing out) with those not in attendance. When positioned properly, the social media support can provide a halo effect and touch those who missed out on the fun. This also allows you to follow up with campaigns sending swag to high-value prospects who couldn’t attend. Pop-up Shops Modern-era pop-up shops have been around since the turn of the century. It’s a proven way to generate buzz and engage with consumers in a unique and immersive way, while also leveraging the benefits of urgency and exclusivity. The best uses for pop-up shops as a brand activation event are to help generate brand excitement, test products in a new market, or create and distribute limited-edition merchandise or exclusive shopping experiences. A conservative or B2B brand, for instance, could generate buzz and excitement by creating a pop-up shop featuring collaboration merch with a hot designer or brand. Gamification Time after time, studies have shown that consumers would rather have a chance to win a prize than get a sure-thing discount. Why? Because games feature a chance at a higher value prize, and the process of trying to win (spinning a wheel, scratching off spots, matching items) is dopamine-producing. Gamification may be a bit more complex, with rules and logistics, but the outcomes of engagement and connections far outweigh the bandwidth and cost needed to infuse gamification into a brand activation event. People love engaging in games: they provide an opportunity to win a prize of higher value, and the ways to execute are limitless. Gamification can include head-to-head competitive elements, making events more fun, engaging, and crowd-attracting. Influencer Collaborations Collaborating with the right influencers is another solid brand activation idea. Influencers can positively impact the perception of your brand. Plus, having a known influencer who resonates with your brand and audience doing meet-and-greets and live streams at your event will take the engagement another notch. The key is to choose wisely. Make sure any influencer you choose is appropriate and relevant for your brand before engaging in a relationship. Immersive Storytelling Is there a way to reimagine your brand experience in the real world? Immersive storytelling is a brand activation event type where you tell your brand’s story in an engaging new way in the physical world. At an extreme level, think of the Barbie movie or Barbie’s pink Malibu Mansion, where you can stay as a guest. These are huge initiatives to bring the Barbie experience into the world and to tell the Barbie brand story in a new way. If you don’t have the budget to transform a home, what can you do? If you’re a medical device, for instance, could you create a life-size journey of how your device saves people’s lives? Today’s multimedia technology can create immersive storytelling experiences, such as the traveling 3D Van Gogh Experience. It uses 3D projections, light, and sound to bring Van Gogh’s artwork to life. Augmented Reality (AR) Experiences Augmented Reality is a cool technology where you explore digital layers over the physical world, seen only through a smartphone. You can create engaging virtual treasure hunts where attendees have to find specific objects (related to your brand) in physical spaces to win prizes. Another way to use AR at brand activation events is to use it for unexpected photobombs or planned photos with partner celebrities or other meaningful IPs. In Pokémon GO, the augmented reality mobile game, users capture virtual Pokémon using their smartphone. Sampling and Giveaways Sampling and giveaways are staples of brand activation events. However, you can distribute them randomly, or you can use them strategically. Samples are the cornerstone of trial programs but should not be distributed without a call to action to move the prospects toward a sale. In the same vein, giveaways should (1) relate to a core brand message or benefit and (2) should be distributed as part of a larger engagement, such as a game. Workshops and Seminars It may not be obvious, but educational workshops and seminars also fall under the category of brand activation events. These educational sessions can be engaging and entertaining, while also delivering meaningful value to your prospects to help shape their perception of your brand. Among its other benefits, workshops and seminars help position your brand as an expert in a field. They also provide strong content for social media campaigns to further extend your reach. Themed Events Every brand has built-in excuses to throw a party. Anniversaries don’t need to be limited to founding dates. Explore creative opportunities to celebrate, such as the founder’s birthday, the anniversary of your first product launch, commemorating a failed tech (maybe that led to something better), or any other date that could bring you and your prospects together. Consider how seasonality could play a role: are your product sales seasonal? Is there a key date that matters to your audience, like the beginning or end of tax season for accountants? Once you have a theme, let your creative brand activation ideas flow, and plan the party and its engaging elements around your theme. Sponsorship Opportunities Sponsorships deliver a wide range of benefits to sponsoring brands, but only if you take advantage of what the sponsor has to offer. At its core, passionate fans of whatever you are sponsoring will naturally show a stronger affinity for your brand. However, it’s up to you to ensure that those passionate fans know about your relationship. In other words, if you don’t promote the relationship, they won’t know. Sure, you will get brand visibility by having your logo on event materials or signage, but you will gain more traction with a powerful brand activation idea. You don’t need to break the bank, but you do need to understand the psyche of the passionate fan. When you can tap into their fandom, you will them over. Brainstorm what their bucket list reward would look like, and create a game around it. Or repackage a piece of that vision as a giveaway. Small budgets, cleverly executed, win the sponsorship game. Then, engage your social media team to get the word out and spread the reach beyond the in-person event. Personalized Experiences Do you have a small, high-value audience to target, like the ABM 1:1 people at the top of the pyramid, or an elite group of clients you want to thank or impress? Leverage the power of technology to create personalized experiences for these attendees with the use of apps or wearable tech. You can create these personalized experiences inside a larger event, like a VIP experience. You can create personalized experiences inside an event app, like unlocking access to a special event area, delivering personalized greetings, or offering special rewards for engagement. Conclusion Innovative brand activation strategies enable you to out-think and outwork your competition by deepening your relationship with customers and prospects in non-traditional ways. Brand activation ideas belong in your marketing and sales playbook as a way to maximize engagement and impact, moving prospects further down the funnel and building trust in you and your brand. Whether you choose to bolt on one of these brand activations to an existing event or create a standalone workshop or popup shop, you can’t go wrong if you are looking to drive engagement and elevate your brand’s perception in the marketplace.