Brand activation is where your brand comes to life. It’s the act of building awareness–and ultimately brand equity–among your customers and employees alike.
Even the most strategic positioning and dynamic brand identity are useless until they are brought to life by brand activation. Brand activation is the shot in the arm a new or recently rebranded company needs to hit the ground running in the marketplace.
But, what is brand activation, exactly? And why is it so pivotal to your brand’s success?
In this post, we’ll answer these questions and more, as we unpack everything you need to know about activating your brand.
CONTENTS
- What is Brand Activation?
- What’s the Difference Between Brand Activation & Marketing Activation?
- What Does Brand Activation Include?
- What are the Benefits of Brand Activation?
- The Takeaway
What is Brand Activation?
Brand activation is the process of introducing key stakeholders to a newly defined brand. Those stakeholders include internal stakeholders like employees and investors, and external stakeholders like customers and the media.
Internally, the goal of brand activation is to ensure all stakeholders are aligned around the positioning and trajectory of the new brand. Internal brand activation includes brand training to ensure stakeholders understand the new brand and how to communicate it.
Externally, brand activation includes an official brand launch, the implementation of a new brand across its various touchpoints, and a communications strategy for boosting brand awareness and building brand equity.
What’s the Difference Between Brand Activation & Marketing Activation?
While the two terms are often confused or used interchangeably, there is a difference between marketing activation and brand activations.
Marketing activations are one-off events designed to generate excitement and ephemeral awareness around a brand, product, or service. Marketing activations can include everything from experiential marketing to promotional events to product launches.
Brand activation, rather, refers to the strategic process of introducing a new brand to the world. It is an ongoing process designed to boost brand awareness, build brand equity, and lay the groundwork for further brand-building initiatives.
What Does Brand Activation Include?
There are a number of things that are essential to any thorough brand activation initiative. Each of the following elements are key to brand activation’s primary goal: bridging the gap between brand strategy and brand experience.
Brand Launch
The brand launch is where your new brand is introduced to the world. But a successful brand launch is no easy feat.
From email announcements to social media channels to marketing collateral, the number of assets that must be executed for multiple audiences on a precisely choreographed timeline is enough to make your head spin.
It’s critical to begin planning early in the branding or rebranding process, and pay close attention to details like key audiences, communication, timing, and follow-through.
There are challenges and risks to consider with any brand launch. The larger and more visible the brand, the greater the risks. And when a brand rename is involved, there’s even more at stake.
To account for these risks, it’s important to have processes, checklists, and QA procedures in place to make sure the transition unfolds with minimal disruption to the brand’s existing presence.
Your brand should always be launched internally first, followed immediately by the internal brand training outlined in the next section. Only then can you launch your brand externally, introducing it to the world with a deliberately planned rollout.
Internal Brand Training
Building and maintaining a strong brand starts from within. From executives to frontline staff, your company’s internal stakeholders are the most important and immediate expression of your brand.
Brand training ensures stakeholders have a deep understanding of what your brand stands for and how it should be executed before you introduce it to the world.
Brand training is an opportunity for the leadership team to rally the troops around the organization’s new direction, inspiring confidence with core messaging like your brand compass.
Just as important as the direction your organization is headed are the shared values that will get you there. Brand training is also an opportunity to ensure internal alignment around the core values that will come to define your company culture.
Brand training also includes familiarizing employees with your new brand guidelines. The guardrails outlined in your brand guidelines are designed to ensure your brand’s visual and verbal identities are consistently executed in every possible scenario.
Brand Implementation
Implementation is the process of executing your brand across the various touchpoints where internal and external stakeholders will experience your brand from launch day on.
Brand implementation involves all the hands-on, detail-oriented work it takes to ensure your brand’s visual and verbal identities are meticulously incorporated into real-world print and digital assets like marketing and sales collateral.
From websites and apps to billboards and signage to packaging and environments, brand implementation is where you create the touchpoints that will comprise your new brand experience.
Implementation is where the critical importance of well-articulated brand guidelines comes into play. In branding, consistency is everything, and implementation is the first opportunity to ensure your brand will be consistently executed across its many touchpoints.
Brand Communications
Just as important as implementing your brand is communicating that brand to the world. A brand communications strategy outlines all the various channels where your brand will be communicated.
From your website and social media accounts to your email marketing and paid search campaigns to your traditional advertising and public relations campaigns, your brand exists across a wide spectrum of interconnected touchpoints.
It’s essential to ensure your brand is consistently and cohesively communicated at each and every one of these touchpoints. Your communications strategy also outlines the various target audiences at which your brand is aimed. This includes both internal and external stakeholders.
Informed by your verbal identity guidelines, your communications strategy should include a messaging matrix with examples of how your brand should be communicated in each of its channels and to each of its audiences.
By defining where and how your brand engages with its audiences, an effective communications strategy gives you the tools to ensure your brand framework is consistently and compellingly communicated.
Brand Management
Brand management is the ongoing process of maintaining and improving a brand’s many interrelated components, as the brand evolves in response to business growth and marketplace changes.
Brands are complex entities that exist in an ever-changing marketplace. With every passing moment, there are a million ways your brand can be misrepresented, misperceived, or just plain poorly executed.
That’s why brand management is so important. Brand management ensures your brand remains relevant and impactful as the market changes and your business grows.
Effective brand management bolsters positive brand associations, fosters brand loyalty, and builds brand equity, resulting in a measurably positive impact on a business’s bottom line.
In order for your brand to remain relevant and impactful in the eyes of your customers, it must be continuously monitored for consistency and optimized for effectiveness.
Employer Branding
Finally, employer branding is the process of shaping how a company is perceived by existing employees and potential employees.
Not unlike its outwardly facing counterpart, a strong employer brand is inspired by purpose. Unlike its external brand, however, a company’s employer brand is largely defined by its internal culture.
A strong employer brand is the most effective way to attract the most motivated and talented folks from a competitive job pool.
Employer branding can help ensure you are interviewing candidates that are aligned with your values and ready to deliver on your brand promise—employees that help foster customer trust and loyalty as spirited brand ambassadors.
What are the Benefits of Brand Activation?
Imagine trading in a middle-market sedan with 300,000 miles for a brand-new Tesla Model X, investing in all the interior and exterior upgrades available, parking your shiny new car in the garage—and then leaving it there.
That’s what many companies do when they invest in branding or rebranding only to fall short of activating their brand.
Branding, rebranding, and positioning work only set the stage for the growth that is the ultimate payoff from these sound business investments.
Your brand is how your company is perceived by those who experience it. But if your visual identity, positioning language, photography, etc. are never perceived—or if they’re only perceived by people who happen to stumble upon your website—they never get the chance to be a powerful, cohesive brand.
In an increasingly crowded and dynamic marketplace, it’s imperative your new brand is seen by your target audiences. That the messaging written expressly for their eyes and ears finds its way home. That your brand experience is cohesive and compelling from day one and every day thereafter.
This is why brand activation is so essential.
As we’ve seen, brand activation includes a number of important elements, each of which contributes to the overall success of your new brand and, ultimately, the growth of your business.
Many of the benefits of brand activation are evident in its elements, but let’s take a closer look at some of the most valuable ways brand activation can help your business.
Maximize Your Branding ROI
Brand activation ensures you get the most out of your branding investment by introducing your brand to the world with purpose and intent.
Properly activating your brand is the only way to ensure that the strategy and identity you’ve developed reach the audiences they were designed for with the impact you intended.
Create Brand Alignment
Internal and external brand alignment are the ultimate goal of any brand. And brand activation is the only way to ensure you’re on track to achieve them.
Internally, activation ensures your leadership and employees are aligned around key positioning tenets like your purpose, vision, mission, and values. Internal brand alignment is the mark of a healthy organization with strong company culture.
Externally, activation ensures your brand is aligned with the needs and perceptions of customers. Meeting the specific needs of customers and cultivating positive brand associations are the first steps toward building customer loyalty and amassing brand equity.
Build Brand Equity
Brand equity isn’t going to build itself, after all. It takes an impactful brand launch, skilled implementation, and persuasive communications for your target audiences to sit up and take notice of your brand.
This first step, brand awareness, is the all-important foundation upon which brand loyalty is built, over repeat engagements where customers come to recognize and be familiar with your brand.
Familiarity leads to trust, trust leads to loyalty, and loyalty leads, ultimately, to brand equity. But it all starts with effective brand activation.
The Takeaway
Brand activation is a critical but oft-overlooked component for the success of your brand.
Whether you’re a startup with a newly developed brand or a legacy organization undergoing a rebrand, the process of activation ensures you get the most out of your branding investment.
From brand launch and brand training to brand communications and brand management, activation includes all the elements your brand needs to make an impactful and lasting first impression that will boost brand awareness and build the brand equity that is essential to business growth.
Brian Lischer
A prolific blogger, speaker, and columnist, Brian has two decades of experience in design and branding. He’s written for publications including Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, HuffPost, and Brand Quarterly.
