Brand Activation What's this all about

This is one of the most abused word in a Marketer's lexicon. This can mean anything from Events, Promotions, road shows and host of other activities which marketers can not club under any other name gets clubbed under activation. Every industry has evolved its own definition of activation. Media owners (Radio & Press) are masquerading their clubbed offerings and value deals as activation. So we have outfits offering brand activation without understanding what exactly is this. So we have notions like Activation is about Implementation, its Below the line, its tactical, it is what non-advertising people do….. The non traditional stuff like Brand Experience… 360 degrees…behaviour transformation… “invite, amplify, experience”…media neutral…BTL…”last mile”, and Activation at touch points…value addition etc etc.

So much so that after spending around 9 years in the brand activation domain I still get confused by the jargon of activation and the way different people use it.

If I have to put a definition to activation, it would be, "Consumer engagement with a defined and specific objective, wherein a particular emotion related to the brand world is fired/activated in sync with a specific consumer insight at relevant mind points". This engagement is not subservient to the media vehicle. The reach out media can be the traditional mass media as well.

Mind points are communication hooks which can help us connect the brand better with consumer with the specified objective. e.g. when Nokia was losing relevance with youth, it came up with mind connect point of "Defend Your Turf", this was based on a key insight about youth that they are tribal in their bonding and any challenge to their territory or turf unites them and they then connect with each other to the nemesis of the opponents.

This gelled well with Nokia's proposition of connecting people as, this brand initiative helped youth to connect with each other!