The Importance of Brand Activation: What Is It and Why Do You Need It?

What is Brand Activation?

Brand activation is an effective way for businesses to create meaningful and lasting relationships with their target audience. Brand activation is the process of actively engaging with your target audience to create awareness and increase engagement for your brand. For large businesses, this means expanding the reach of your brand beyond your existing customer base. The objective of brand activation is to amplify your brand’s presence and stimulate consumer action through various channels, both online and offline. To achieve this, it’s essential to stand out from your competition by offering interactive brand experiences such as pop-up stands, sampling, and new product exposure that leave a lasting impression on your target audience. This approach can help you attract new customers and build a loyal following.

Is Brand and Marketing Activation the same thing?

The terms brand activation and brand marketing can have similar connotations, but they provide different processes and results. Brand marketing is mainly about the full ongoing package of promoting your company’s brand, whilst activation is dedicated to bringing creative live experiences to your audience. The goal is to create a deeper connection between your brand and your target audience, which can lead to increased sales.

Why is Brand Activation Important?

Whenever you see something out of the ordinary online or in the street, you can’t help but stop and want to find out more. This is the importance of brand activation. Your overall branding strategy will have many strings to help it reach more people. Audiences are longing for engaging and interactive events, and through creative thinking, your company could fill that gap. It’s vital because it demonstrates a connection that isn’t just us and them, but the two form a tangible relationship that is real, and one that consumers are pleased to share.

What is the goal?

There are four main objectives to achieve results in brand activation. From increasing brand awareness to driving consumer engagement, pushing consumer response and action, as well as increasing brand recall, these are all powerful ways to hit your goal. Brand activation usually forms part of an overall marketing strategy when launching a new brand or product. A one-off injection of excellence can last from a few hours to a few days, with the aim of getting people talking about it online, in the media and in person. It can become newsworthy in its own right – when you’ve got the backing of an effective public relations team to garner even more reach.

Types of Brand Activation

When looking at what type of brand activation is the best for your company, there are a variety of considerations to think about when looking at how to take your branding forward to achieve maximum impact.

Experiential Marketing

A ‘go big or go home’ approach to getting your name out there is experiential marketing. Taking your product or service out to the wider public and doing something out of the ordinary for onlookers and the media to share photos and videos on social media platforms and raise awareness. One example of experiential marketing is our collaboration with Car Park Panto, we set up an integrated campaign for Coca-Cola to display their recycling ethos across the whole Panto tour. Freemans utilised a variety of touch-points including: digital platforms, social media competitions, digital screen content & event collateral which was distributed at each car. The results of this activation was a resounding success, with over 35,000 people attending and over 3.5 million large screen impressions.

Sampling Campaigns

If you’re a new brand or you’ve launched a new product then sampling is a great way to allow potential customers to try your products first-hand and buy a full-sized item, whilst opening up an opportunity to provide more information about the brand. Any company can do this so it’s important to think about how to do this differently and in a timely way – whether that’s targeting certain events or celebratory holidays. An example of effective sampling can be seen in our work with KitKat, who wanted to sample 60,000 of their new 4 finger KitKat Orange product. Samplings took place over a total of 6 days in Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff, and had some great feedback, complimenting the exciting branding and taste.

See What Freemans Event Partners Can Do for You

Now that we’ve established what brand activation means, it’s time to consider how you can implement this within your own company. Freemans Event Partners create effective campaigns with well-established food and drink names that leave lasting impressions at some of the best regional, national and international events and festivals. We develop and deliver memorable moments by targeting specific audience profiles that match your consumer profile and increase interaction and product engagement. Our years of experience, expertise and network of events and brands create unique avenues and successful outcomes.