When done well, brand activations can be hugely successful in driving awareness, consideration, and sales. However, there are some common mistakes that brands make when activating their campaigns – mistakes that can undermine the success of the entire activation.
Not Knowing Your Objectives (or Having Too Many of Them): When planning a brand activation, it’s critical to know what you’re trying to achieve with the campaign. Whether your objective is to increase awareness or drive sales, you need to have a clear understanding of what success looks like before you even start planning the activation. Trying to accomplish too many things with a single activation is a recipe for disaster!
Not Incorporating Activation into the Overall Marketing Mix: A common mistake made by brands is treating brand activations as isolated events instead of part of a larger marketing strategy. To be successful, your activation must be integrated with other marketing initiatives—including digital, PR, and traditional advertising—to create a holistic campaign that delivers a consistent message across all channels.
Not Measuring Results (or Measuring the Wrong Things): Another mistake brands make is failing to measure the results of their activation campaigns. Without measurement, it’s impossible to know whether or not your activation was successful in achieving its objectives. It’s also important to make sure you’re measuring the right things—if you’re trying to increase awareness but only measure sales, you’re not getting an accurate picture of your activation’s success.
Make sure you have tangible KPIs in place before launching your brand activation so that you can accurately measure its success against your objectives.