Top 15 Brand Activation ideas For boosting event engagement

Traditional advertising methods are becoming less and less effective these days. It is the age of out-of-the-box marketing ideas and Brand Activation Ideas is exactly what you need. 

Consumers crave loyalty, engagement, and a deeper relationship with their brands. Brand activation events bridge this gap, transforming brand messages into immersive experiences that resonate with target audiences.

The statistics make it clear:

• 91% of consumers say they are more likely to buy a product after a positive brand experience.
• 74% of consumers report feeling more attached to a brand after participating in a brand engagement program.
• Brand experiences are 34 times more memorable than traditional advertising.

These numbers highlight the undeniable power of brand activation events. But what is it, and how can you use it to achieve success? Let’s get into it!

What is Brand Activations?

Brand activations is a campaign or event through which a brand can move customers and drive actions. This strategy helps spread brand awareness like fire, build strong customer relationships, increase sales, and boost interaction with the target niche. 

If your brand aims to generate interest and encourage customers to act, then you need to take some action through activities that help you achieve these goals and more. 

These activities can be exclusive sales, premium access to the collection, or running social media campaigns, which ultimately help you come closer to your target audience and goals. 

By activating your brand, you can stand out from your competitors, establish a loyal customer base, and achieve results. 

Whether through immersive events, influencer collaborations, or social media campaigns, brand activation is essential to any successful marketing strategy as it helps you lure attention and use it tactfully. 

What are Brand Activation events?

Brand activation events are creative ways to bring your brand to life during the event. They go beyond just displaying your brand; their goal is to create memorable and immersive experiences that engage attendees emotionally. Here are some key characteristics of brand activation event ideas:

• Communication: Go beyond static displays. Encourage attendees to engage, explore, and immerse your brand in their memory.
• Experience: Focus on creating an experience that goes beyond emotion. Aim to evoke positive emotions and build lasting relationships with your brand.
• Social Sharing: Today’s programs are fueled by social media. Make your brand activations as engaging as possible and encourage attendees to share their experiences online.
• Measurable: Track the success of your brand activations. Metrics like social media mentions, engagement, and lead generation can help measure the effectiveness of your efforts.

15 Best Brand Activation Ideas For Events

Brand activation for events brings along a sea of benefits, therefore selecting the best brand activation ideas becomes crucial.

1. Interactive Photo Booths

Transform regular photo booths into high-tech, interactive entertainment stations! Use intriguing accessories, set design, and photo-frame options that are perfectly coordinated with your visual style. Distribute branded selfie-sticks and encourage attendees to create content with them. Post it on social media using a specific event hashtag to create social media buzz and brand awareness.

2. Pop-Up Shops

Design a pop-up store that does more than simply exhibiting your products. Transform  it into a vibrant and interactive “retailtainment” destination. Endorse new products along with special collections or event discount coupons to encourage visitors to explore and buy.

3. Product Demonstrations & Workshops

Run interactive sessions or at least have live demonstrations that teach the audience about your product and its value proposition. This gives the attendees a closer look at your product, provides the freedom to ask important questions, and gives them the necessary information to make a sound purchasing decision.

4. Live Music & Entertainment

Collaborate with artists/entertainers whose sound and performance vibe aligns with your audience. Design a memorable space that is energetic, welcoming, and unique to your audience to make the event experience more enjoyable.

5. Gamified Experiences

Integrate games and interactive tasks that resonate with your brand and its values. Use collaborative events to increase participation, improve event engagement, and enhance the event experience.

6. Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented Reality (AR)

Offer cutting-edge VR or AR experiences that speak to your audience on your part. Let participants interact with your products and services in an immersive way, creating a lasting impression and solidifying brand loyalty.

7. Live Polling & Q&A Sessions

Foster dynamic audience interaction by incorporating live polling, quizzes, and engaging Q&A sessions. Encourage attendees to participate in discussions around your brand or industry, fostering a sense of community. This also provides valuable insights into your customer’s needs and preferences.

8. Branded Contests & Giveaways

Host exciting contests or giveaways that incentivize participation and generate buzz around your brand. Offer attractive prizes, encouraging attendees to share their experiences online and spread brand awareness through social media channels.

9. Charity Partnerships

I know that @carlsberg want me to tweet this – but I can't stop myself. Hats off pic.twitter.com/k7OCNv2Knk

— Stuart Aitken (@stuart_aitken) April 8, 2015

Associate your event with a charitable cause that resonates with your brand values and social responsibility goals. Organize an activity that allows attendees to participate and give back to the community. This fosters positive brand associations and demonstrates your commitment to social good.

10. Cause-Related Installations

Create interactive installations that raise awareness for a social cause your brand supports. This allows you to visually communicate your commitment to social responsibility while sparking conversations and fostering community engagement.

11. Community Building Activities

Facilitate interactive activities that assist attendees to connect and share their experiences. This could involve team-based challenges, collaborative art projects, or social media scavenger hunts. By fostering a sense of community, you create a more engaging event experience and strengthen brand loyalty.

12. Influencer Meet & Greets

Partner with influencers whose audience aligns with your target demographic. Invite them to attend your event and host meet-and-greet sessions where attendees can interact with them. This leverages the influencer’s social media reach to generate buzz and excitement around your brand activations.

13. Sensory Experiences

Engage attendees’ senses beyond sight and sound by incorporating touch, taste, and smell into your brand activations. This can involve offering product samples, creating interactive scent experiences related to your brand identity. You can also host taste-testing stations that showcase ingredients or flavors associated with your products. By stimulating multiple senses, you create a memorable brand experience.

14. Custom Product Customization

Offer on-site personalization options for your products, allowing attendees to create souvenirs. This could involve engraving initials, choosing custom colors, or adding personalized messages to your products. Through this personal touch you enhance the perceived value and create a lasting emotional connection with your brand.

15. Social Media Walls

Showcase user-generated content (UGC) of your brand on a social media wall. This could include photos from your interactive photo booth, social media posts featuring your branded hashtag, or video testimonials from satisfied customers. By displaying UGC, you utilize social proof to build trust with potential customers, while simultaneously fostering a sense of community among existing brand advocates.

10 Best Brand Activation Strategies for Events

Forming strategies place us a step ahead of our competitors and this is why brand activation strategies hold major importance.

1. Define Your Goals & Target Audience

Begin by articulating your campaign’s objective because it will determine how you proceed with brand activations. Do you want to advertise and create an enhanced brand presence, create leads, or announce a new product? Make the brand activation event personalized for the target customer.

2. Location & Integration

Select an event venue that will resonate with your brand identity and support work with the concept of event activation. Include metrics such as number of pedestrians passing by, positioning of the brand in terms of the event’s overarching message/ideology, and technical constraints.

3. Partner with Strategic Sponsors

Choose sponsors that have a matching perception and that will be able to add value to the overall experience. Use co-branding and exploit their large consumer base to increase the event’s visibility and awareness.

4. Amplify with Pre-Event Hype

Gently nudge attendees to your brand activation by pre-game marketing. Leverage social media, email marketing, and influencer collaboration to create buzz and drive attendance.

5. Invest in Engaging Staff

Train your event staff to be brand ambassadors who can effectively communicate your brand message and engage attendees in a friendly and informative manner. This in turn would boost the event’s engagement as attendees would feel valued.

6. Leverage Technology

Use technology to enhance the user experience of your brand activation. Incorporate tools like digital signage, interactive apps, and social media integration to create a dynamic and engaging environment.

7. Data collection and Measurement

Develop a plan to track key metrics before, during, and after your event. This data, including social media mentions, lead generation, and attendee feedback, will help you measure the success of your brand activation.

8. Sustainability considerations

Incorporate eco-friendly practices into your brand activation where possible. This may include using recyclable materials, reducing waste, and collaborating with sustainable vendors.

9. Action after action follow-up

Don’t let the partnership end in the process! Maintain momentum by sending follow-up emails to attendees, sharing event highlights on social media, and monitoring any leads generated.

10. Continuous improvement

Review the background of the event and gather feedback from attendees and staff. Use these insights to prepare your brand activation plan for future events, ensure continuous improvement, and get the most out of your investment.

Types of Brand Activations

The brand activation strategy you choose to go with will bring in results and define the outcomes. 

The choice of which type to use often depends on your brand’s objectives, target audience, and the nature of your products or services. 

So, we have carefully listed some methods that you can decide to take on, read, and find what works for you.  

1. Brand Activation Events

Brand activation events are one way to bring the attention of new customers to your brand. They serve as a platform for introducing and promoting a brand and product. 

These events can be product launches, shows, or seminars, but you can add a touch of excitement to them by adding some games and activities. 

The main objective is to showcase the brand’s offerings, increase interaction, and create a buzz. 

2. Digital Campaigns

Digital brand activation campaigns are a cost-effective way to engage with consumers online. 

These campaigns involve various techniques, like email marketing, online advertising, website content, and many more, giving you an edge over the technology.  

The beauty of digital campaigns is that they can be highly targeted, enabling you to reach your niche audience anywhere in the world. 

3. Virtual Interactive Events

Virtual events have become a popular way to connect with people. This virtual brand activation event is considered adequate and result-driven as it helps people enjoy and participate in the online community. 

These events come in many forms in virtual spaces, from webinars and virtual trade shows to live streaming and online workshops. You can use short-form video content to catch the eye of your attendees without taking too much of their time. 

Not only that, but they can help you increase audience engagement and participation, creating an immersive experience that can be enjoyed anywhere in the world.

4. Promotions

A store offering a 20% discount on all items for a limited time is an example of a promotion. This promotion creates a sense of urgency among consumers to purchase before the discount expires. 

Promotion discounts can also help you increase your sales, as this tactic can lure people to double their purchases and help you clear out the collection. 

Similarly, stores can offer special deals or coupons during the break season to attract customers and increase sales, which can work wonders with adequately planned and executed holiday marketing.

5. Social Media Contests

Social media contests are like virtual games in the form of contests and giveaway campaigns that can be started on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

One such example of this type of brand activation strategy is brands asking their followers to tag a friend in the comment section of their post or share a story about the brand and more. 

These contests encourage users to engage, bring in new followers, help the brand raise awareness, build stronger relationships, and create more content about the brand and its products. 

You can also showcase your social media feed on your web pages, events, and campaigns to attract eyes and up your conversion rate.

How to Measure Brand Activations?

Measuring the effectiveness of brand activations is essential to analyze the outcomes of your marketing and execution. 

Establishing clear objectives is the first step, as it helps us know what we aim for and how much of it is achieved. 

The next step is to employ an analytics tool that helps gather data and learn where we stand in our process. Additionally, collecting direct feedback from your audience can provide valuable qualitative insights. 

This step is most important as we can learn where we lacked effort and where we need to focus if we need to shift to another strategy or incorporate new techniques. 

Continuously adjust your strategies and benchmark against your competitors to refine your brand activation efforts to perform better in the future. 

In the next section, we’ve put together some interesting, and by reading brand activation examples, you can go through and see for yourself the worth of this strategy.

Brand Activations Examples

1. Revolve

Revolve took inspiration from experiential brand activation and hosted a campaign in collaboration with influencers. With these celebrities, the brand started a tour involving exciting activities, which added to the buzz and gave them a memorable experience. 

2. Foster’s No Worries Motel

In an attempt to leave an impactful and long-lasting impression in people’s minds, Foster set up unique motels in collaboration with AirBnB made inside shipping tanks in proximity to one of the country music festivals. 

3. GoGo SqueeZ: Goodness Machine

GoGo SqueeZ went along with automated machines and gained the attention of their targeted customers, be they children or adults. They set up large applesauce machines, allowing people to take regular applesauce products from it. But they also gave a few lucky customers a year’s supply, which led to excitement among others. 

4. Vitaminwater

Just like these brands, Vitaminwater also worked on generating leads and marketing their products. To attract more people, they used the most famous WayHome Music Festival to show their vibrant and colorful misting station, which helped those intolerant to heat cool down. 

5. CALM | Project 84

The charity organization Calm created 84 sculptures of life-size men who took their own lives, placing them on one of the UK’s top networking buildings they partnered with. They broadcasted their stories and talked about the prevention of suicide, hence spreading awareness of the cause. Not only this, but they petitioned the government to take severe action regarding the same.

How do Social Walls help in Brand Activation?

Social Walls is your go-to tool when you are planning a brand activations campaign. 

It caters to multiple services, such as aggregating various social media channels and managing content, moderating and customizing feeds, seamless integration, and publishing. 

Not only that, but Social Walls also offers solutions such as social wall, User-generated content aggregation rights management, and more to make your work smooth, saving a ton of your time and other resources. 

Whether it’s your corporate conference, virtual meeting, product launch event, in-store party, digital advertising, or social media campaign you are working on, Social Walls can help you achieve your goals efficiently.

Conclusion

Brand activations events offer a powerful way to connect with your audience, forge lasting brand memories, and achieve your marketing goals. By implementing creative brand activation ideas and strategies you can transform your event presence into a captivating experience. This drives engagement, brand loyalty, and ultimately, business success.

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