However, to be successful and maintain a significant impact, a brand activation must be targeted and intentional with a detailed plan. Building a successful brand activation plan requires a conscious effort that involves several steps, from understanding your audience to setting clear objectives.
A brand activation is an event or engagement opportunity for audiences that allows your company to engage directly with target consumers. In a brand activation, the key component is that consumers have a chance to experience something or engage with the brand or product in some way.
An activation can take many forms, from in-person events to virtual opportunities. The most appropriate type of brand activation depends on your brand and your goals.
Examples of brand activations include:
The benefits of brand activations include reaching new audiences, developing new leads, and gaining customer data for future communications. Any brand can benefit from carrying out a targeted brand activation as long as they have the right approach.
The foundation of any brand activation is a close connection to what your brand is all about. Any brand activation must be recognizable in the overarching theme and identity behind your brand. Taking the steps to understand your brand gives you a formidable foundation to work from and empowers you to build the most meaningful activation possible.
Your brand identity defines who you are and is the jumping-off point for informing what a brand activation should look like. With an understanding of your brand identity, you can build a brand activation that resonates with the key themes of who your brand is.
Answer questions like:
Your unique value proposition is what sets your brand apart from others. This proposition should answer what consumers can get from your product or service that they can’t get elsewhere—essentially, what problem you solve for the customer.
Determine the unique value proposition of your brand so you can clearly communicate it during your activation. Maybe your brand has unique production practices, a personal mission consumers can support, or solves a problem that other brands cannot.
This unique value proposition should be clearly present during your activation.
Understanding your target audience is an essential component of building out a successful brand activation. After all, there’s no point in carrying out an activation if it will not be useful or interesting to your target audience.
To understand your target audience for a brand activation, you must know two things. First, what types of consumers are most likely to buy your products and second, how much of your full audience you want to target in your activation.
Understand your target audience by taking these steps:
A brand audit provides a picture of where your brand sitsis at in the market right now. Understanding your successes and potential areas for improvement in your current market is crucial in determining the scope of a brand activation that speaks to your goals.
The key facets of a brand audit:
Once you have this information, you can use it to improve upon your current strategy and fill any potential gaps.
What are you trying to accomplish with your brand activation? Always answer this question before diving in. Set clear goals for your activation so you know what success looks like and how to get there.
Examples of activation goals may include:
When you set your goals, make sure they are specific and reasonable enough to serve as a helpful guide in your process. SMART goals provide an excellent template to utilize for this.
The criteria for a strong SMART goal is:
Once you set your goal, determine how you will measure your success using key performance indicators (KPIs) and progress monitoring metrics. Consider metrics like reach, brand mentions, conversions, and sales.
After you develop a clear foundation and formidable goals for your event, you can begin mapping out the framework for the activation itself. In this process, you should consider what type of event will most likely resonate with your target audience and how you can maximize its impact.
Decide which channels make the most sense for your brand activation. As you decide between channels, consider which will best support your goals. Does your activation make the most sense for an in-person or virtual setting? Do you want to maximize reach or prioritize direct interaction? Which channel is most likely to feature more of your target audience?
Channels you can utilize include:
Social media is great for maximizing your reach since there are no physical limitations on who can join, while in-person events are the most memorable as they allow attendees to be completely immersed in your brand and the experience.
A brand activation can also span across multiple channels if you prefer. For example, an in-person event that you also live stream on your social media channels.
Content is what will engage your audience before, during, and after your activation. Compelling content will generate hype for the event and effectively summarize the events afterward.
Ideally, good content will also help attendees remember the event and highlight the key takeaways for those who did not. It will also allow you to capitalize on the opportunity for sales and conversions while the activation is still fresh.
To craft engaging content:
A firm budget and resource allocation plan are essential for a successful activation. The returns from your activation should justify the spending used to make it happen to ensure the activation is truly worth it.
When developing a budget, consider the following:
With all of the background work out of the way, you can start taking the steps to implement your plan. The implementation phase should be guided by detailed logistics and thorough planning that accounts for any contingencies or extraneous factors.
As you prepare for implementation, take the following steps:
The work doesn’t stop after the implementation phase is complete. During and after the activation, review your metrics to determine how successful your initiative is—this will inform future brand activations and guide your strategy so you can have an even greater impact with each one.
Monitor the success of your activation by taking the following steps:
Brand activations are meant to be bold and memorable. The following brands have carried out successful brand activations that fit the bill.
Throughout the 2010s, beloved potato chips brand Lay’s held multiple competitions under the Do Us a Flavor campaign, asking their audience to suggest new chip flavors for the brand to produce. To spice it up even further, the winner of the contest with the best flavor would win a million dollars.
The campaign resulted in fun ideas like Cheesy Garlic Bread, Sriracha, and Chicken & Waffles. The initiative engaged consumers, getting them to suggest new flavors, buy bags of the finalist flavors, and then vote for their favorite on social media.
During and after the contest, Lay’s sales soared as customers went to try the new flavors and likely grab a bag of their favorite classic flavors, too.
Food and spice company Zatarain’s is known for its bold flavors and New Orleans roots. Both of these factors played into a successful brand activation. At PETERMAYER, we capitalized on this boldness by designing a social experiment called “Will it Fri?” where viewers decided what standard food items, or random household objects, to fry. This event was held as an hour-long livestream hosted by New Orleans favorite Tariona “Tank” Ball.
This activation gave people the chance to interact directly with the brand, allowing them to vote on what objects to fry in real time through social media. The event also showcased the Zatarain’s Fish Fri product front-and-center in the process. The successful campaign resulted in over three million views, 61 million impressions, and 326,000 engagements.
Brand activations offer the opportunity to engage a wide audience and bring in new leads. A successful brand activation can take many forms, from in-person events to virtual events, while making a lasting impact on your target audience so they continue to interact with your brand in the future.
At PETERMAYER, our agency can support you in building a brand activation that drives engagement and makes your brand memorable in the eyes of your target audience. From helping you craft meaningful campaign initiatives to guiding each step with relevant data and analytics, we support your business in every facet of the process, spreading joy and creating relationships in the process. We have experience supporting brands with a wide range of successful brand activations and are ready to support you too.
Schedule a discovery call with us to learn more about how we can help you build a memorable brand activation.
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