Brand activation
What is brand activation? The phrase essentially refers to the process of making your brand known to people, increasing awareness and engagement through some kind of brand experience.
Think about when you first start a business. Nobody knows who you are and they sure as hell aren’t aware of your brand. Your brand is effectively lifeless. Not alive. And it needs to be ‘activated’ before it can be of any use.
But it doesn’t just apply to new brands. If a business wants to rebrand itself it can’t just make a few changes and hope people notice. It needs to go through the process of switching people’s minds over to the new brand and making them aware of it.
You may thinking, that’s just brand marketing. Yes, kind of, except it specifically refers to the process of getting your brand from one state to another, better, state, whereas brand marketing is the all-encompassing ongoing process of promoting and maintaining your company’s brand.
If your brand is lifeless, brand activation is what will resuscitate it. Here are a few examples of brand activation and the different types of activities it might involve.
How do you ‘activate’ a brand? Perhaps the best way to activate your brand in people’s minds is by allowing them to experience it first-hand.
Experiential marketing has become increasingly prevalent in the last few years. This type of campaign can be a powerful way to get your brand in front of people and make it stick in their mind. is a marketing strategy that directly engages consumers and invites and encourages consumers to participate in the evolution of a brand. Rather than looking at consumers as passive receivers of messages, engagement marketers believe that consumers should be actively involved in the production and co-creation of marketing programs, developing a relationship with the brand.
But the experiential element of a brand activation campaign could be something more stripped-back. It could simply mean giving people the opportunity to try your products. Giving out free samples of a new product can be a great way to introduce people to your brand and get them talking. But make it timely and be creative to ensure the best result.
Another opportunity to activate a brand is through in-store promotions or events. Again, this comes down to creating an experiential element whereby customers can touch and interact with your brand.
The end goal of a brand activation campaign is about raising awareness and opening a two-way dialogue with potential customers about your brand. It is about creating an emotional connection between them and your brand so that it sticks in their mind and they are more likely to engage with it and become long-term customers.