What's up brand builders Stephen Houraghan here at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video
you're going to learn what brand activation is with top brand examples so you can understand
why modern brands are activating their experiences and get some inspiration to activate yours
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now the term brand activation has been growing in popularity over the last few years or so
now the first time I came across this term was about five or six years ago when I was actually
doing freelance work for a brand activation agency and they were working on a ton of really
really exciting projects and those projects were all about bringing the brand to life
through engaging experiences so what is brand activation anyway well brand activation is
a strategy used by modern brands to bring their brand to life now if you think about
how noisy markets are today and how difficult it is to stand out you have so many different
options within any industry and so many different businesses vying for the attention of that market
and it's becoming increasingly and difficult to get that attention so brands are having to think
outside the box and they're having to think of their audience's day-to-day lives what they do
on a day-to-day basis and come up with creative ways to pull them out of their monotonous routine
so that they can get that engagement and they can plant a memory in the mind of their audience
so why is brand activation so important well it's important because today's environment and
the way we deal with brands has really changed over the past 10 or 20 years this
digital environment that we find ourselves in has almost become this virtual reality and a lot of
the relationships that we have with brands tend to be virtual and there is a lack of tangibility
to that and it can get lost that relationship can get lost so brand activation is all about bringing
that brand to life and bringing a tangibility to that engagement to remind the audience hey
look this relationship is real our brand is real and we're about more than just this transaction
so let's have a look at a few examples of brand activation but before we do don't forget to like
and subscribe and that notification bell will let you know when I release new videos just like this
now brand activation comes in many forms but one of the most impactful and one of the most
popular is experiential marketing now experiential marketing is all about providing the audience with
a memorable experience that they can take away and recall later on and experiential marketing tends
to form long-term memory structures that consumers and the audience will remember in years to come
now there are a few really outstanding examples of this but none more so than red bull with their
stratus campaign now in case you weren't around or you don't remember red bull sent a skydiver up to
the edge of the atmosphere and broadcast it live as he jumped out and created a world record for
a skydiving in doing that they created a lot of scientific data for future pioneers and it because
it was broadcast live you had this huge amount of earned media coverage and that brand experience
really stuck in the minds of the audience as this skydiver jumped from space so this is a great
example of experiential marketing and as I said that earned some tremendous media coverage that
really amplified this campaign but of course not everybody has a multi-million dollar budget to be
able to run experiential campaigns just like that so let's bring this back down to earth a little
bit now another another beverage brand Lipton iced tea they ran an experiential marketing campaign
called rise and slide and quite simply they put a water slide in the middle of London and they ran a
campaign and captured all of that and amplified that across their channels as well and in doing
that they aligned with this feeling of summer and that's an association that they really want within
the reputation of their brand now although these campaigns were both completely different they had
similarities as well both brands were aligning with associations that they want built into the
reputation of their brand they were both providing an out of the ordinary experience for their
audience and they were both leaving long-lasting memories in the mind of their audience as well and
that is what brand activation is all about so what's the goal of brand activation well as i
mentioned earlier it's all about that engagement and grabbing that attention but that's only the
first step once you've done that the goal is fourfold the ultimate goal of brand activation
is to drive consumer engagement to drive consumer response or action to increase brand awareness
and to increase recall and salience now brand activation tend to be one-off campaigns but if
they're executed well enough they can achieve the holy grail of brand activation which is earned
media coverage earned media coverage happens when a brand's marketing activity becomes newsworthy in
its own right often with the help of pr the news media picks up on a story of a brand's activity
and reports on this activity amplifying the reach and effectiveness of the overall campaign now we
all know that as a brand you need to stand out how many articles or videos have you come across
giving you tips and tricks of how to stand out in the marketplace but the reality is most brands
tend to do the same thing they follow that beaten path but if you're able to break out of that if
you're able to create a memorable experience for your audience through brand activation and plant
a long-lasting memory in the mind of your audience you might just earn that brand recall
and salience and ultimately sell more stuff for your brand now if you really want to get creative
and give your audience an unforgettable experience well then this video on experiential marketing
will help you out until next time brand like a master and I'll see you in the next video you