There’s an intriguing and mysterious-to-some couplet of words often bandied about in the marketing sphere. Present-day, it has successfully made its way into the mainstream lexicon and is an MKMCreative bestie: Brand Activation.

Connecting with customers in a meaningful and personal way isn’t an aspirational goal — it’s a necessity to make a brand stand apart and out. Strategically designed, expertly crafted and executed, brand activations are the ideal conduit.

An activation is when a program goes live – whether that’s in the form of a festival, conference, event, website launch, digital marketing and everything in between – whereby the brand and target comingle in a highly curated and customized experience. 

The main goal of any brand activation is to showcase a brand’s differentiators, offering, product, service, look, tone and messaging in a way that brings in and speaks to the target constituencies.

Brand activation, in its most basic form, is a rich engagement with customers.

As the world turns and evolves, customers and companies become more sophisticated. While the interwebs enable access to anyone, anywhere, it’s important for brands to cut-through and connect with their target audience(s) in a meaningful way.

Brand activations provide a reason to share news and serve a means to connect with consumers/users one-to-one.

Activations bring the brand and consumer in direct contact and collapse the consumer adoption model. 

Awareness, trial, affinity, recommendation and repeat purchase happen in rapid succession. Other marketing methods such as digital ads touch a huge swath of people – on the bullseyes or way off – with hopes of a small percentage converting. 

Crafted with client goals at the center, MKMCreative’s methodology is to then map those objectives to the customer journey. Once complete, in comes striking and good creative. Creative should be a part of the process, as opposed to the lead, it begins to reveal itself as an organic output. Final stage is to bring the program or campaign to life flawlessly via production. 

Brand activations can be any size and scale, particularly when they are integrated with a real world, digital and social element and includes a throughline, baked-in narrative and reason for being that crosses overall and touches the target in a way that drives action.

In a world where online rules, people still want to touch, feel and engage with people. 

Brand activations are more than events and pop-up shops.

A brand activation can look like any number of things: a website launch, rebrand, virtual conference…the list goes on. Real-life experiential activations are the OG of the space, yet they no longer solely occupy.

Experiential Marketing is when brand and consumers come together for an engagement that emotionally resonates, is sticky and generates awareness to accelerate adoption. In addition to generating attention for the brand, when executed properly it proves to be a powerful brand device that directly touches people one-to-one and is often used as an acquisition tool by our clients. This process generates awareness and accelerates adoption while creating a community of advocates that continue to espouse the brand via word of mouth.

MKMCreative executed the Light L16 camera’s brand launch into the marketplace with an exclusive sneak peek event for media and influencers. The following year, with the camera in-market, we opened up the event to the public. With the new camera as the centerpiece, guests were immersed in a curated hands-on experience – silent discos, exploding-camera-meets-mueusm-exhibit, interactive digital photo walls that highlighted product features resulting in awareness, excitement and action.

A new brand or product launch is a time to celebrate and yell it from the rooftops, right? If your big launch falls on seemingly deaf ears, it’s likely because it wasn’t sticky enough and your consumers weren’t actively engaged. By creating a multi-faceted, strategic brand activation instead of a typical marketing campaign, brands can cut through the clutter of traditional channels with truly engaging content that will stay with target constituencies for the long haul. These launches can take many forms depending on the brand’s KPIs and target audience. The sky is the limit.

JUST Egg, a plant-based food company unveiled their new offering – eggs made from mung beans – which was planned to be the signature item of the brand. To introduce the company and product into the world with the goal of getting them on the shelves of grocery stores and open doors of distribution, a formal launch was concepted, planned and activated.

MKMCreative concepted and produced 200+ unique product launch events whereby 100,000+ bites were distributed to prospects who were in the mindset and the time to engage. Vetted and qualified influencers put their own spin on how to use, make and eat the product. Followers were feverish about the content and product and every engagement goal cracked like a…wait for it…egg.

Digital campaigns make it possible to reach target audiences beyond a physical footprint and often give brands a myriad of metrics to improve future activations. In many cases, digital campaigns are a portion of larger, multi-faceted brand activations. However served up, they are extremely valuable.

Virtual events are a stellar way to take digital efforts to a new level. With various, ever-advancing technologies making the digital world increasingly engaging for consumers, virtual events – when executed strategically and with the right constituencies – are as viable a solution as traditional, in-person brand activations.

Lagunitas was coming out of the 2020 lockdown as the #1 accessible craft beer company in the nation. They retained MKMCreative to share that news and so much more via a vibrant and dynamic two-way experience.

For this National Sales & Marketing meeting, MKMC took to the studio and produced a three-camera broadcast show complete with a charismatic emcee with improv chops and a dynamically changing wardrobe, robust and informative presentations, striking creative, sketches with hooks, drama and intrigue, schwag giveaways and a fabricated set that emulated everyone’s favorite spot on campus.

The reviews are in…high praise from leadership, speakers and most importantly — attendees who consensus-style — highlighted the production value and said this was the best show yet due in part to the rich, compelling, two-way audience engagement. Beer cheers to that!

The practice of influencer marketing is complex and nuanced. While it’s inclusive of what’s trending on the ‘gram or what TikTok taught you — that’s simply not all that’s to it. It is the art of leveraging endorsements from the creators of a specific industry or niche. Brands organically inspire and often contract these individuals to publicly advocate for their product or service…wait for it…influencing the sphere they’ve worked hard to build. We break down this type of marketing in more detail on our blog Influencer Marketing Deconstructed.

We helped One Medical grow from an incubator in San Francisco to a national public company. When we met them, they were looking how to solve entering other markets taking into consideration their brands’ nuances – asking prospective patients to switch from their doctor to a relative stranger and pay for it via a membership fee.

Over the course of five years, MKMCreative served as One Medical’s acquisition tool as they expanded across the country with the objective of growing patient panels and easily did what was once deemed difficult for the brand.

After identifying, recruiting, vetting and securing, MKMCreative engaged well-known trendsetters and tastemakers in the real world (social was introduced and incorporated 2+ years into the program) and digitally in target markets nationwide. During a 10-market influencer campaign, 8,000 people received a rich, intimate introduction directly from the brand resulting in sign ups exceeding expectations by double digits.

If you’re still looking to activate your brand in a more meaningful way, reach out to us at MKMCreative.

Whether the output is a new website launch, a virtual event, conference, or {fill in the blank}, brand activation is how product, service and offerings are introduced to their target audience. From start to finish, we’ve got you covered, your goals become our goals. Explore our services. Let us know how we can support.