How to build a successful brand? Your main focus needs to be on how it will connect and resonate with your target audience. 

This strategy needs to be incorporated into the brand from its inception. If you don’t have an excellent logo design and comprehensive brand guidelines, this is the step you will want to take before anything else. Look for an experienced branding agency in Dubai to help you build or revamp your brand taking into account your business objectives and target. 

But even when you have an amazing brand identity, you still need a chance to flaunt it and have it reach the people you want to reach. Further, you want to create brand recall, and have them not only notice you but remember you. 

What truly resonates with people are meaningful shared experiences. Interactive campaigns, memorable events, and other opportunities to interact such as mall activation build a lasting relationship with your future customers. This is why brand activation is so important when building a household name.

What most brand activations do is allow audiences to communicate directly with the brand. However, the very definition of brand activation often gets confused with normal branding strategies by less professional branding companies. Many clients believe that connecting with a reputable and experienced branding agency in Dubai will help them get the word out, but unfortunately, even here, a lot of advertising companies don’t have a good grasp on brand activation.

So to help you make the right choice, let’s understand the role of a brand activation agency. 

The Importance of Brand Activation

A brand might be well aware of who their target is, just not the other way around. Even your occasional clients and people who have seen your offer don’t necessarily have any positive associations or a deeper connection to your company, and therefore, no reasons to be loyal to it or act as your brand ambassadors. Brand activation needs to tackle that issue and give your audience a shared experience or a meaningful cause that will connect them to you. 

It can be enjoyable and fun, it can discuss a more serious issue they care about or speak to their beliefs and values, it doesn’t matter as long as it resonates and makes them think, feel and appreciate your role in this experience. 

The best brand activation agency whether it is in Dubai or elsewhere in the world will help your brand shine. It will also redefine how the audience perceives your brand.

When done right, brand activation will ensure that more than 90% of the audience you reach leave with brand recall and brand loyalty.

How Can I Use Brand Activation to My Brand’s Benefit?

Although the term might confuse many new business owners, any experienced brand activation company would recommend that you consider the following three things to maximize the impact. 

1. Give Your Brand a Human Touch

The fastest possible way for your brand to connect with the audience is to be relatable, human and genuine. After all, your brand is made of human beings just like your target audience, and by breaking that barrier and talking person to a person a real and lasting relationship will be formed.

Brand awareness, and advertising in general, should truly be looked at as building relationships. Your brand’s personality, values, a touch of humour or genuine care about a cause is what will imprint it into your target audience’s minds and create positive associations.

It does not matter what method of brand activation a brand chooses, it is more important to involve those who represent your brand. A giant billboard with a huge company logo will look nice on the highway but a booth run by your company’s employees will provide the customers with a personal touch. 

A thought-through brand strategy and brand identity are required to provide you with the right communication guidelines, including your tone of voice and personality. Your staff can then simply be trained accordingly and pick up on the same, building an excellent and cohesive company culture. Look for companies with good copywriting services as well as strong branding background to ensure you don’t come out with just a logo design, but with a distinct and fully-fledged brand image. 

2. Pay Attention to Feedback

Brand activation works best when it comes to interaction with your target audience. However, the interaction needs to be a two-way street.

The target audience should gain a deeper experience and appreciation for the brand. The brand should get invaluable new insights into their target that will help you improve your strategy even further. You may come out with brand new ideas on how to best communicate with your clients, or learn about a new platform they gravitate towards. Perhaps you will hear about a difficulty they are facing with your website or customer service that will help you improve. Keep your ears open!

Dubai’s best brand activation agencies would recommend getting your feedback before, during and after the event, and then spend some time analyzing and comparing the results. You have to come prepared and with an existing understanding of whom it is you are talking to, for that you need to know your target demographics, their behaviours, their expectations from the event. You should also be clear on what you hope to gain and what is the message you are communicating to them. 

Make sure to take advantage of social listening to understand the tone of the audience’s conversations regarding the campaign. Keep records of both negative and positive interactions, which will help you get an idea about what the audience wants.

3. Surprise the Audience

The best brand activation campaigns require taking a little risk, respecting the audience’s intelligence and time, and of course, getting the word out about your company. 

But the crucial first step is getting noticed and that can be excruciatingly hard in the sea of brands each trying to scream their message louder than the other and placing their logos everywhere. By now, a lot has been done before and keeps on getting recycled, and the audiences have become immune. They tune out all the interferences that keep popping out both in real life and on their digital platforms and move on. Their attention span is short and you only have a few seconds to make an impression. 

You just have to be different. You need to surprise them, subvert the expectations. This is one of the most effective marketing tools, but it shouldn’t be a random gimmick that will lose their attention as quickly as it drew it. 

Our recommendation? Surprise them by giving them something they are interested in. Tell them something that is relevant and has value to them. 

This is the difference between just placing a branded stall in the mall and creating an unforgettable experience your audience will talk about. 

Endnote

Branding defines your target’s perception of your company. Whether you’re in Dubai, UAE or anywhere in the world, Dubai is a good place to look for the right branding agency. Make sure it has an all-encompassing grasp of branding, from building brand identity and communication guidelines to experience with brand activation, creative campaigns and events. 

Brand activation is a great way to build lasting relationships with new audiences and create brand loyalty with your existing one. However, a lot of work and strategy goes into creating an original and impactful brand activation idea, and a lot of competence and experience is required to execute it properly. Only go with the best. 

Don’t wait to reach out and start discussing ideas before making the final call. Never settle.