A few years ago, when I first heard the phrase “brand activation”, I actually thought it was an “invention” by some trainer to attract learners. members for their courses.
But as I researched and learned more about brand activation, I gradually realized that it is an interesting topic, a new direction, and sometimes a new revolution in the brand and marketing industry.
This article will help you learn what brand activation is, and how they help businesses today. Finally, the answer to the question of whether the end of traditional branding has come?
What is Brand Activation?
Brand Activation is the process of making your brand known, increasing brand awareness and interaction with direct brand experience activities.
Think of your company, your business in the early days. No one knows who you are and of course what your brand is. From the point of view of “Brand activism”, an unknown brand is a dead, lifeless brand that needs to be “activated” before it can be used.
Brand activation – brand activation is not only applied to new brands. Sometimes businesses that want to rebrand – rebranding also need to change the minds of customers and help them re-identify their brand.
Isn’t that brand marketing?
In a nutshell, yes. Except that they focus on the process of transforming the brand, while brand marketing is the process of continuously promoting the brand and maintaining the brand.
If your brand is a coal mine hiding behind the dark, cold mud, “brand activation” is the divine fire that helps you turn your brand into flames and “bright”
To better understand, here are some examples of brand activation as well as some of the actions they include.
So how to activate the brand?
Advances in technology create countless channels and brand touchpoints that you can connect with your customers.
Let’s explore some of the methods:
1. Experiential Marketing
Perhaps, one of the best ways to activate a brand in a customer’s brain is to experience it first-hand.
Experiential marketing has become one of the hottest trends in the past few years, and it is impossible not to mention a campaign of Carlsberg.
>>> What is Experiential Marketing? 10 Creative Campaigns That Can’t Be Ignored
These types of campaigns are sure to be a powerful tool to help your brand stick in the minds of your customers.
Let’s see another example of water sports equipment company Tribord. To help customers identify the new life jacket, Tribord created a drink called “Wave” made from seawater packed into cans.
This idea is formed from the actual experiences of each person, going to the beach and drinking sea water, an extremely horrible experience. This approach will help your brand be remembered hundreds of times more deeply than online banner ads or spam emails day in and day out.
>>> How to create brand identity?
2. Sample product giveaway campaign
Experiential campaigns with your brand are sometimes something simpler, less fussy, that is giving users a chance to try your product.
Giving them free samples of your products is a great way to showcase and get customers to mention you.
But you need to pay attention to both time and creativity to ensure the highest efficiency.
Mountain Dew ran a sample campaign to activate the brand in 2012, they used pickup trucks, behind them a large water bottle, and moved across the country, to events and festivals. take place.
Surely this approach is much better than having a stand in front of a university gate or a weekend promenade handing out free samples.
3. Brand activation in store
Another method to activate your brand is to use promotional events inside the store. Again, this is another way for customers to experience and interact with the brand.
John Lewis used this approach for his “Monty the Penguin Christmas” campaign in 2014.
They created a “Monty’s Den” in 42 stores around the country, using technology to be able to convey the message throughout the campaign.
Combined with actual products, such as Monty toys, Monty clothing and even an app version of Monty’s Christmas Storybook – it helps John Lewis truly bring his brand to the in-store shopper experience.
Summary of Brand Activation
As mentioned above, today’s world has a lot of different channels for marketing and branding. And certainly no one can deny the importance of connecting customers with brands through touch-points, Brand Activation is a great approach to help you solve that.
If you are planning to create a specific experience campaign, do not ignore the social networking tool, because that will be the place where the interaction with customers is extremely effective.
PR is also an important part of the brand activation process. It’s not like customers will suddenly join your campaign, you need to create certain tipping points to bring the viral element to the campaign.
3 Things to keep in mind when implementing Brand Activation
Brand Activation is an important element in Marketing. However, they are still part of a large marketing campaign, which will continuously nurture customer interaction over time.
Use different types of campaigns, platforms and methods to implement Brand Activation: Use Social media to interact, use Digital channels to increase brand awareness, and deploy different types of content marketing to increase brand awareness. Build brand identity and personality.
Don’t think that Brand Activation is just an ordinary event type.
Here are 3 notes when implementing brand activation activities:
1. Estimate the budget
Set a clear budget for how much your business will spend on this brand activation campaign. If you are a newbie and do not have enough experience, you can ask for advice and support from the big Agany parties.
2. Clearly define the purpose
Having a clear understanding of what you want from your campaign is critical to the success of your brand activation. If the goal of this campaign is to turn customers into followers on your business’s social media pages, make sure your activities are supporting that goal.
If you want customers to come into your store to try out a sample product, make sure you’re putting a lot of effort into getting them to do it.
3. Everything must be unified
All media publications, brand touch points, and even human resources in the business need to ensure consistency.
What is the ultimate goal of Brand Activation?
As with all experiential marketing, the effectiveness of brand activation should not be measured by sales growth.
Of course, the ultimate and important goal of every marketer is to increase revenue for the business, but in essence, the main task of brand activation campaigns is to increase brand awareness and open connections . , interact with potential customers only.
It’s all about creating emotional bonds between your brand and your customers, the more they interact with your brand, the more likely they are to become loyal customers.
Create an emotional element through interaction
With brand activation, the task of creating emotional elements through the process of interacting with customers is a particularly important goal.
Often, people’s first experiences with a brand are what influence their decisions the most. Whether you make them laugh, cry, angry or excited (depending on the product and your client file), you should create some emotional string to help them remember the great experience forever. with brand. That is the goal of Brand Activation.
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