Technology assists you in activating a brand without really running a production line in a factory countryside, dealing with transport, and taking part in profitable hot raw material factory sales.
In the following article, you get 30 brand activation ideas useful for food, fashion, e-commerce, service, product, retail, online or offline brands.
These ideas would be useful for general readers to know how modern brands are activated using innovative, cutting-edge design and packaging solutions. But those of you who are searching for new ideas to develop a brand activation strategy, whether a product offering brand or a service provider, can read this article to get noteworthy ideas.
Read more: 10 Brand Activation Examples From Big Brands
What is Brand Activation?
Brand activation means providing a brand experience for customers to increase brand awareness and brand presence.
The interesting news about brand activation is that it could happen in any place to provide a surprising brand experience. From music events to beauty salons and even local restaurants use brand activation methods and provide special offers at least in their first stages of establishment.
Brand activation aims to provide a different, new brand experience for the target audience to make them brand ambassadors and representatives. Various companies use several practices to enhance brand presence in customers’ lives by offering a unique experience. Brand activation marks the difference between your business and the competitors.
Read more: A Simple Step-by-Step Guide for Brand Activation
Benefits of Brand Activation
- Creates and improves interaction with customers using various methods to increase their brand loyalty.
- Provides new and better ways to communicate with customers and stay connected to impact them emotionally. Research shows these types of interactions. Help customers choose your brand between so many suppliers.
- Increases brand awareness by providing a unique and remarkable brand experience.
- Used for rebranding purposes to introduce new features or services.
- Directly bring your marketing campaigns and giveaways to your target audience.
- Reduce marketing costs and expenses to a better known, workable interaction with customers.
- More effective, whether including other marketing and digital marketing campaign or adequately to individual customers at a local level.
30 Brand Activation Ideas
Various local and global brands use several types of brand activation campaigns to increase their interaction with customers. Industry events, trade shows, or free trial campaigns, to name a few of various types of brand activation ideas.
Here you have a list of 30 ideas. Cool, innovative & creative ideas, possibly good for food, fashion, e-commerce, service, product, retail, online or offline brands.
1- Different Brand Experience
Providing a different brand experience lies at the core of every serious business, and it's what makes a single difference between a brand and its competitors. Gaining an advantage over rivals in the market requires a better and more distinct brand experience.
Providing individual free samples of brand products for customers always works, but especially after the covid-19 pandemic, it is more effective.
2- Giveaways and Customer Promotions
It is a good brand activation idea to identify products or brands' target audience to give them the product freely if they write about it on social media or, even better, if they share its pictures with its giveaway's hashtag. Several types of businesses, from wearing and fashion brands to consumer electronics and food brands, use free giveaways to increase brand awareness and provide a unique and amazing experience for their customers.
3- Try to Solve a Problem
We all know that every business solves a need or problem. What makes a well-known and reliable brand different from its competitors is how it solves a problem and makes a difference. Problem-solving thinking and ideas have an important impact on brand activation. Several ways are accessible to showcase your business solutions, and brand activation boost all these marketing actions. To gain more market share, brands should clearly describe their unique service or product.
4- Find What Target Audience Likes
Every business has its target audience and customer base according to its products/services. A classic example is that if you want to sell paint to young artists, you can use a large urban canvas with several types of colorful pigments to please your target audience. However, economical returns should be considered carefully to avoid any marketing loss. The point of brand activation is to please brand or business customers with what they like rather than what the brand offers.
5- Track Problem Solving Process
As you know, businesses don't sell products/services to people, but they provide solutions for their problems. The problem-solving process might take a while, and that's when a business can take advantage by tracking the problem-solving process. For example, weight loss supplement providers run social media campaigns. Their social media users' customers share their experience with their social network connections who might be brands next customers. The tracking problem-solving process could happen smartly using various drip or variable-based content marketing.
6- Participate in Trends
Every month, several trends could happen in various types of social media networks that represent people's behavior and lifestyle. Well-known brands take advantage of trends by participating actively in them and representing their closeness to their customers' interests. Modern brands take part in various opportunities by offering special offers and seasonal discounts to better market share. Trends show people's sentiments, and a brand can attract customers emotionally by active participation in trending-related topics.
7- Brand Activation Events
One of the most effective brand activation ideas is to organize a special event to host very important people. Wearing and fashion brands regularly use this idea to make people more excited and curious about their new shop or products. However, several types of events are designed by various brands, but their primary target is to build and reinforce a close network of relationships. By the way, this exclusive event can take place in a café, restaurant, or a party in which people interact with each other and enjoy brand companionship.
8- Technology is Available to Use
Today, the digital product concept is a part of people's everyday experience, and they interact with several types of visual content. Brands use various advantages of technology to make sure their procedures take place with high returns. Using innovative technology for start-ups and new technology brands is a must. Even clothing and design brands, beauty and skincare brands, and restaurants can use technology to automatize some of their everyday activities.
9- Teamwork And Involving People
When brands run a party to introduce their new products series or brand activation of their new lines, they offer some free testing to their representatives and salespeople and receive feedback. They use this feedback to ensure that the final customer is satisfied with the product. Before coronavirus pandemic beauty and make-up brands used to distribute their new products in such exclusive events, today they used a single package for hygiene. They can send it to customers using cutting-edge beauty sampling technologies.
10- Funny And Engaging Brand Activation
Brand activation is not necessarily a press release or formal annunciation. It can also be more funny and interesting to please people with their desired items. However, arranging an engaging program to entertain your guests is not such a simple task. You should make sure that everything is planned pleasantly and consider engaging participants with suitable programs. This is a wonderful situation to turn your potential customers into loyal customers who act as your brand ambassador.
11- Host Influencers
People love influencers and celebrities, and it's always a good brand activation idea to feature some influencers on the program. They have their followers who will add to the regular audience of a brand activation campaign. Some influencers and bloggers are famous in their industry, making their comments and recommendations more effective in developing marketing activities and brand activation. Depending on the service/product, the principal theme of brand activation, they could invite professional and popular influencers to spice up the event.
12- Multiple Surprising Elements
Depending on the duration of the event and its type, brand activation should feature several surprising elements to engage and entertain very special guests. Brands invite many guests and perform several programs to balance entertaining all guests from various generations. For example, in brand activation campaigns, one surprising and amazing item is featuring singers and music artists who perform a memorable song right in the event. Consider brand activation as a party with very important guests, and do your best to please and entertain your guests.
13- Consider Pop-up Stores
Pop-up stores appear suddenly in various neighborhoods across cities, and local people are surprised to see them in their neighborhoods. Pop-up store brand activation is fun and engaging, making it a great solution for some brands, especially for chain restaurants and fast food brands. Site-specific brand activations, including pop-up stores, are great for building new customer bases and establishing new customer networks. People pass their daily routes and one day see a new store. Of course, they slow their speed and understand the story to tell others.
14- Plan Activities That People Love
Many businesses that sell tools and equipment for different tasks use their experience to host and companion customers in mountain climbing, swimming, and various camping types. This type of activity is great for team building by brands to have deeper connections in local branches. This type of planning activity is also great for gaining a reputation in industry and sport; a bicycle provider who arranges riding hours is more acclaimed than a seller with no local team activities in their industry.
15- Annual Events
Anniversaries are great opportunities to announce the success of a business to last on a network of customers. However, annual events should not address brand issues, as they establish many annual events every year. Various brands showcase their products/services in such annual events and use them as a great opportunity for brand activation and reshaping their image in their audience's minds. Annual events are among the best accessible marketing plans for brand activation ideas.
16- Let People Say About Quality
Engaging people and users on social media networks to rate and comment on their experiences can also debut a brand's reputation. Many mobile apps use a devoted user interface to receive feedback directly to their CRM programs. While it could help trend technology apps, other businesses and brands can also hear feedback from their customers and users to convey their success. It is not good to produce content about the quality of products/services where people can share their experiences with their friends and followers on social networks.
17- Celebrate Brand's Values
Depending on the brand's products/services, several types of professional and moral values are celebrated. Banking brands celebrate trustworthiness and governmental support, while Defi apps celebrate privacy and decentralized structure. Brand values depend highly on its type of activities, but it's a great way to communicate with more customers as a brand activation idea. Participation in various local celebrations is one of the oldest known marketing activities, and today it is still worth trying. A free service for a certain date to celebrate can be a great way to engage even more customers.
18- Showcase Features
The rule here is the same with trying to solve a problem. You should not show your product, but its job and how it does that. As another marketing rule, any business has a core brand experience that makes it different from others in the same industry. So the core brand experience should demonstrate in showcase events and performances. Several types of content are available for making a slide show or visual demonstration that various brands in different industries could use. Visual showcases can produce technical and commercial information. Infographics and motion graphics are popular mediums to showcase features.
19- Direct Sell with Conditional Payment
In a high competition market, one of the most effective ways international and local brands use is to sell their product monthly. Some more aggressive marketing methods practicers like fire prevention capsule providers also directly send their product/service to the customer's place and receive the payment after a while. Sending a sample of a product to customers freely, however, is a polite and gorgeous attempt to engage them with the product or brand.
20- Partnership and Cooperation
Another great brand activation practice is to feature another brand in the main brand experience. Partnership programs are common in technology. Some companies and brands regularly run consumer electronics and various partnership campaigns. A brand partnership could happen in a brand activation event using other brands' tools or raw materials. Several ice cream brands make money by featuring a large Nutella logo and chocolate in their ice creams, like mobile and laptop producers that feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon or Intel or AMD platform.
21- Themed Parties
It's always a great idea to throw a memorable party for brand activation. Themed parties help businesses to engage people in a better way. When considering a themed party for brand activation, brands try to balance between informal or pleasing aspects of the program and the formal aspects, which are profitable. However, in practice running a themed party is not a simple task, and people require a little bit of experience to make it a great party memory for participants.
22- Loyalty Programs
Technology today lets businesses run large and engaging campaigns in which loyal customers enjoy participating in their favorite brand's loyalty programs. For running a great loyalty, program brands need to determine a reward. The reward should carefully tempt people to enter the competition and be related to the business activity. It's also a good idea to provide some reward packages including products/services of the business to promote and advertise them.
23- Using Screens
In the past, shops and local stores used their vitrines to showcase products and services. After the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses used online sales as a safer way to bring their products or services to their customers. Screens work great to showcase the products and services of any business. Modern brands use high-quality motion graphics and various graphics and video content to address their activities and solutions to audiences from the internet and social networks.
24- Traditional Methods
They do not limit brand activation to online and digital methods. Many shops and local stores use traditional marketing methods to make people aware of their activities and offers. Some businesses active in more traditional activities can exploit the traditional marketing methods like paper flyers and billboards to achieve more customers. Traditional marketing and local methods are more expensive than their digital alternatives, but they have greater effects most times.
25- Providing Immersive Experience
Brands use several types of visual content to engage people more with their new products and services, from AR beauty apps to virtual tours describing hotel space and real estate items. Businesses with a place to show can take advantage of new panorama and 360 videos to make visits easy and high-tech for customers. In close future immersive visual experiences will become as normal as video items and streaming platforms, so high-tech start-ups and technology enterprises sooner or later should confront this demand.
26- Accept Cryptocurrencies as Payment Method
In 2021 cryptocurrency market has shown that it is not a passing trend, and people trust several crypto projects like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Cryptocurrencies are here to stay, so it is not a bad idea to accept them as website or application payment methods, just like prepaid and credit cards. A new brand should accept new payment methods to compete with others.
27- Interactive Installation
One of the most interesting brand activation ideas is to design an interactive installation to engage customers with a different experience. Pop-up stores, site-specific brand activations, and programs in restaurants and public salons traditionally use sample distribution and product testing in their period of run. To design an amazing interactive installation, brands use several creative solutions to make a strong, memorable brand experience.
28- Online Broadcasting
A few years ago, brands required a TV channel or Radio Station to broadcast their messages to their audience. Today with a free SoundCloud or Instagram account, they can make live programs featuring a few hundred thousand users and participants. So it's not a bad idea to run a live program, especially if a business has interesting features for the public or accompany influencers and well-known popular social network figures.
29- Consider Freemium Plans
Freemium plans should be arranged in a fair and useful way to have a strong effect and return good conversion of free plans to premium ones. After the Covid-19 pandemic with saturated markets, it's a great idea to offer fair freemium plans, especially when the target audience loves to continue using an app or a service. Freemium plans are modern-day sale plans, and brands to get a bigger market portion should try their best to make it easy for customers to buy or level up their plan.
30- Sending Marketing Gifts
One of the most classic and working brand activation ideas is to send well-design gifts with the brand's logo and contact information. People use gifts from paper envelopes to notebooks and calendars to act as an effective channel through time. Sending product samples or simply marketing catalogs can also work in a brand activation campaign.
Brand Activation with Peekage
Peekage is an innovative solution provider for brand activation that combines packaging and distribution of samples using artificial intelligence to choose the right customers and track various marketing plans.
New brands that need a base to find a customer network uses Peekage for their brand activation.
By sending the right products to the right customers, you can have a functional brand that works at some stage of its life. You can use Peekage as a digital product sampling platform to connect with the right customers and gather insights.
Contact us if you have any questions.
Be Creative with Brand Activation
Brand activation is a unique marketing campaign that aims to make a different experience to increase brand awareness. Brands typically use the newest items to gain the attention of their target audience in these activation campaigns.
Brand activation should be fun and contain surprising and innovative elements to engage people effectively. Depending on the activity of the brand, several solutions are available to communicate with more customers and achieve the target audience.
Pop-up stores, giant machines, different scenarios, and providing a unique experience are the main features of brand activation campaigns by popular global brands.
Creativity has an important role in designing an amazing experience as designers seek creative, different ways to interact with customers.
Brand activation is not limited to site-specific or physical activities as several experiences are designed using virtual reality and AR technology. Some online solution providers also offer tailored brand activation services to find the target audience and deliver suitable products and samples to the right customers.
Key Takeaways
- Brand activation is to provide a unique experience that people desire.
- Creativity lies at the core of any successful brand activation.
- Brand activation can happen in a physical place and on online platforms.
- Like other marketing campaigns, brand activation seeks to make hashtags or content viral.
- Brands use all accessible facilities to make sure the brand activation is cool and interesting.
- Online methods distribute individual samples to the target audience and require nothing but a creative plan.
