Brand Activation Companies: What They Do

Key Takeaways

91% of consumers say they're more likely to purchase after participating in a brand activation, and 40% say it made them more loyal to the brand, per EventTrack.
Brand activation companies typically work across three tactics: event marketing, social media marketing, and guerilla marketing, often blending all three.
A Little Bird's national retail tour for Yasso distributed more than 700,000 samples as part of one immersive brand experience.
A good brand activation agency follows a clear process: determine objectives, understand the target audience, plan the campaign, then measure results with a post-campaign report.
Nearly 80% of experiential marketers use outreach events to increase sales, making brand activation one of the more reliable investments a brand can make.

Brand activation companies can help any business make meaningful connections with its target audience by creating memorable brand experiences. Whether your company is brick and mortar or fully digital, brand activation fosters brand loyalty, boosts consumer engagement, and generates buzz to help you stand out in a crowded marketplace.

What Is Brand Activation?

Brand activation is an innovative approach that builds brand identity and drives consumer action, which is more critical than ever in today's competitive landscape. Brand activation campaigns work to bring a brand to life and create a bond with its target audience.

Customers appreciate and notice companies that invest in brand activation campaigns. In an EventTrack survey, 91% of consumers reported that they'd be more inclined to purchase a brand's product or service after participating in a brand activation or experience, and 40% felt they became more loyal to the brand.

That said, brand activation takes work, so many businesses choose to partner with brand activation agencies. This article explores what a brand activation company does and how it does it, so you know what to expect and why you might want to invest in this type of partnership.

What Is a Brand Activation Company?

A brand activation company is a marketing agency focused on using the right information about your business, your goals, and your audience to develop the best consumer engagement strategies.

Brand activation agencies can use several different experiential marketing methods to captivate audiences.

Q: How is a brand activation company different from a traditional ad agency?

A: A brand activation company focuses on live, hands-on consumer engagement, events, sampling, social activations, rather than producing traditional ads. The goal is direct participation with the brand, not just an impression.

Types of Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing campaigns focus on providing unique and immersive brand experiences to consumers. These experiences typically require consumers to engage directly with content, whether digital or in person. Let's discuss the various tactics used to promote global brands' products and services.

Event Marketing

Event marketing can be a conference, party, trade show, or product sampling event. These events serve as engaging, live opportunities that help showcase a business's products or services. A pop-up shop is another popular method of brand activation. These events can teach consumers more about a brand and its products while letting them have fun at the same time. While there are certainly instances where events have been held virtually, they often don't have the same impact, the pandemic taught many brands this the hard way.

We've worked on many event marketing campaigns at A Little Bird. In our work with Yasso, we launched a national retail tour to teach consumers about Yasso's mission to sell a healthier product. We distributed more than 700,000 samples as part of this immersive brand experience.

Event marketing is an incredibly powerful tool, especially in an era when the general public is eager for genuine connection. Research shows that 70% of attendees become customers after marketing events, making this one of the best investments a brand can make.

Social Media Marketing Complements Brand Activation

Social media marketing is increasingly important for brands in all industries. As social platforms continue to develop e-commerce tools, they also allow for the potential of higher-than-ever ROI.

Short-form video has become one of the most lucrative ways to promote brands, especially on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Social media videos both provide information and entice viewers to explore a brand's content.

Social platforms can also bring brand activation agencies and influencers together. Social influencers drive brand awareness by creatively demonstrating the real-world applications of products and services. In a Disney brand activation, for instance, the company invited influencers to attend its theme parks with the understanding that they'd create content while on location. This experiential marketing method features followers' favorite icons having a great time, which will hopefully lead them to visit the same locations.

Social media can support other experiential marketing efforts as well. When hosting immersive brand experiences, we always recommend using social media to amplify the event and garner attention before, during, and after the activation. Social media can also help brands increase their followers and build their online community.

Brands can also encourage attendees to use social media to create their own shareable content. A hashtag, like the one A Little Bird created for the #YassoGood campaign, can help encourage user-generated content, build a brand's online presence, and boost engagement.

Ultimately, experiential marketing agencies know successful activations rely on a mix of different strategies, and social media and live events can go hand in hand.

Guerilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing creates memorable brand experiences by applying experiential tactics in unexpected ways. This might be a flash mob, an interactive scavenger hunt in a public space, or street art that leverages striking visuals. In planning immersive brand experiences, the brand activation agency should prioritize authenticity and creativity.

The key to producing a great guerrilla marketing campaign is to ensure it's hyper-targeted toward the brand's audience in terms of what they love, how they communicate, and where they live, work, and play. When the consumer doesn't know they're going to be involved in a marketing campaign, it has to be something that will surprise and delight.

One of the benefits of guerrilla marketing is that brands can connect with consumers for a fraction of what it costs to produce other types of campaigns. What's more, guerrilla marketing is fun, spontaneous, and more likely to be memorable, making it a great way to develop emotional ties between a brand and its customers.

Q: What's the biggest advantage of guerilla marketing over a traditional campaign?

A: Cost efficiency and memorability. Guerilla marketing reaches consumers for a fraction of the cost of larger campaigns, and the surprise factor makes it more likely to be remembered and shared.

How Do I Plan and Execute a Brand Activation?

Planning a marketing event can be difficult and time-consuming. Live events, social media experiences, pop-up shops, sweepstakes and limited-edition items, and private parties are all examples of brand activation techniques and activities.

Brand activation agencies can act as an extension of your team and bring their expertise to designing, budgeting, executing, and measuring a brand activation. They can provide strategies that deliver experiences to attendees that ensure your marketing dollars drive clear and measurable ROI.

How Brand Activation Companies Operate

Effective experiential marketing agencies do a deep dive into your brand before they begin to pursue solutions. It's the approach A Little Bird has always favored in its experiential marketing campaigns, and it's why we've been so successful delivering exceptional results. Let's break down the marketing services involved in brand activation.

1. Determine Event Objectives

Before a brand activation agency can begin working on your campaign, it must know key details about your brand, budget, goals, and more.

It's important to acknowledge that all brands operate on different budgets. Many of the world's most successful brand activation examples have been in service of Fortune 500 companies with money to spare. That doesn't mean smaller companies should feel discouraged; rather, it means adjusting expectations and being meticulous about which marketing strategies will have the most impact.

2. Understand the Target Audience

Brand activation agencies must deeply understand their client's target audience, event needs, and purchasing motivations to create successful content.

You can't drive brand loyalty without a clear understanding of consumer pain points, priorities, and needs. An experienced experiential marketing agency focuses on defining a brand's audiences to determine the most impactful campaign. They typically:

Conduct industry and competitive research
Create buyer personas
Develop and implement a strategy to engage with consumers in a memorable way

3. Plan the Campaign

With a clear sense of marketing objectives and the target audience, a brand activation agency can begin the planning process for creating events and engaging with customers. The agency focuses on deciding which method, or mix of methods, will best build relationships with consumers.

When customers develop personal connections with businesses, they're more likely to make a purchase. This has been demonstrated time and again by various marketing agencies; in fact, nearly 80% of experiential marketers use outreach events to increase sales.

With that in mind, there are a few important elements of activation campaigns that agencies must always consider in their strategic thinking:

Consistency: Experiential marketing agencies can help diverse industries drive engagement and reach potential customers, but they also ensure the brand activation fits with general brand messaging and business values.
Quality: Brand activation companies aren't typically hoping to reach millions of people. Rather, they focus on inspiring targeted groups to become loyal customers with high-quality, personalized marketing strategies.
Immersion: Immersive experiences help create memorable moments. Before launching a brand activation campaign, a brand activation agency will bring a diverse team together to develop a unique, engaging, and measurable brand experience that makes a lasting impression.
Reach: Unlike other marketing methods, brand activation is often finite. However, if planned strategically, a single event, or a series of events, can become the springboard for a larger, even evergreen brand campaign.

4. Create a Post-Campaign Report

After the event, a brand activation company will help your business track the success of the event. This might be through examining important metrics, such as NPS (net promoter score), a measure of consumers likely to recommend your brand to others. You might also track engagements, shares, samples distributed, and more.

It's important to note that even the best brand activation agency can't build lasting customer loyalty overnight. Often, you'll need to create an overall brand presence that consistently includes immersive brand experiences to build lasting loyalty.

Finding the Best Brand Activation Agency for Your Business

Any business exploring a partnership with a brand activation agency should search for teams that will spend time determining the company's needs, developing key target audiences, and carefully building and launching the campaign.

At A Little Bird, we approach every brand activation campaign, every project, with meticulous attention to detail and passion for our customers.

Our experiential marketing team has worked with some of the largest businesses in the world, and we'd love to continue making a positive impact. If your business is pursuing a brand activation strategy, please contact us today.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a brand activation company?

A brand activation company is a marketing agency that designs live, experiential campaigns, such as events, sampling, and social activations, to build brand loyalty and drive consumer engagement.

Why should a business hire a brand activation agency instead of doing it in-house?

Brand activation takes specialized expertise in event planning, audience research, and measurement. An agency brings that expertise as an extension of your team, along with existing playbooks and vendor relationships.

What types of brand activation tactics are most common?

Event marketing, social media marketing, and guerilla marketing are the three core categories, and most successful campaigns blend more than one.

How long does it take to plan a brand activation campaign?

Timelines vary by scope and budget, but the process generally follows four steps: determining objectives, understanding the target audience, planning the campaign, and reporting on results after execution.

Who can help my business plan a brand activation?

A Little Bird has executed brand activation campaigns for some of the largest CPG brands in the world, including a 700,000-sample national retail tour for Yasso. Contact us to talk through your goals.