Brand Activation is the art of driving consumer action through brand interaction and experiences. In simple terms, the key aim of these sorts of campaigns is to get consumers to act. It’s about bringing brands to life via experiences and forming long-term emotional connections

Consumer brand activations are a very crucial part of building a positive perception of a brand

Most brands fail to command attention and market equity because they were introduced to the marketplace with advertising instead of Public Relations. Do you ever imagine putting a horse before the cart? What happens? Do you just imagine building a house without first laying the foundation? Advertising seems to be used by most companies to introduce new brands. While a hefty advertising budget is needed to maintain a brand, advertising won’t get a new brand off the ground or out of the manufacturer’s store.

PR plays a long-term role in creating a positive perception for new brands. We now live in a more communications conscious society where people come across several commercial messages on hourly and daily. For a brand to launch itself into the limelight and create a chance in the much-saturated marketplace, it must be able to generate and command favorable publicity in the media amongst other things.
Powers of PR in Building Brands
– PR creates the environment for brand activation, brand exhibition, brand education and brand after-sales-services. – PR helps to create brand understanding & education and also build customer loyalty to the brand. – Most people hardly believe what they see in adverts, but attach more credibility to what is communicated through PR. – PR can be effectively used to mitigate and manage a brand-related crisis. – PR shapes opinion, inspire action and change perspectives about brands. – PR in a way strategically helps the company to hold on to its brand promise, credibility, and consistency. – PR is about building perception and managing reputation. It is the bridges that connect the brand with customers.it builds the relationship and sustains the perception. – PR places more emphasis on two-way communication, that is, it completes the communication cycle by ensuring feedback from customers to ascertain brand experience and value. – PR enforces the strong and constructive relationship between the company, brand and customers, suppliers and dealers and to a larger number of interested public. – PR includes a variety of programs to promote and protect a company brand image. It analyses market trends and predicts likely consequences to brand image and equity.

PR helps standardize brand promotional activities ensuring their alignment with the company’s communication policies and reputation. You might agree with me that some brand promotional activities have brought about the crisis to the brand and its manufacturer in conclusion, today’s brands are not built at the expense of the company (manufacturers) reputation and not introduced at the expense of Public Relations. It is worthy to note that before you use PR to introduce your brand, ensure your brand is a ground-breaking brand, novel, unique, new and has a story to tell.

Public Relations for brand activations
PR plays an important role in creating a positive perception for new brands and new products. For a brand to come into the limelight and be successful in the much-saturated marketplace, it must be able to generate positive publicity in the media amongst other things.

Powers of PR in Building Brands

•  PR creates the environment for brand activation, brand exhibition, brand education and brand after-sales-services.
•  PR helps to create brand understanding & education and also build customer loyalty to the brand.
•  PR shapes opinion, inspire action and change perspectives about brands.
•  PR in a way strategically helps the company to hold on to its brand promise, credibility, and consistency.
• PR creates the environment for brand activation, brand exhibition, brand education and brand after sales-services.
• PR helps to create brand understanding & education and also build customer loyalty to the brand.
• Most people hardly believe what they see in adverts, but attach more credibility to what is communicated through PR.
• PR can be effectively used to mitigate and manage brand related crisis.
• PR shapes opinion, inspire action and change perspectives about brands.
• PR in a way strategically helps the company to hold on to its brand promise, credibility and consistency.
• PR is about building perception and managing reputation. It is the bridges that connect brand with customers.it builds the relationship and sustain the perception.
• PR places more emphasis on two way communication, that is, it completes the communication cycle by ensuring feedback form customers to ascertain brand experience and value.
• PR enforces strong and constructive relationship between the company, brand and customers, suppliers and dealers and to a larger number of interested publics.
• PR includes a variety of programs to promote and protect a company brand image. It analyses market trends and predict likely consequences to brand image and equity.

Examples Include Social Sharing With Press Releases

If you need to write a press release, find a way to support and extend the message via social sharing.

Keep in mind that journalists rely heavily on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms to source and research stories. When you share your story socially, you are meeting them where they are instead of interrupting them in their inbox.
Halogen story package

Halogen includes social options for a recent research report.

For example, a story about a charitable contribution would translate very well to video (building up your YouTube channel). Or you can share data via an infographic that fans can pin, tweet and share from your blog or Facebook.

The marketing team at Halogen Software tries to make every story visual and social. The company released an industry report in June 2014 and added social components with a Twitter campaign, an infographic and a blog post.

Public Relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other. Public Relations broadly applies to organizations as a collective group, not just a business; and publics encompass the variety of different stakeholders.

According to PRSA (Public Relations Society of America), “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

At its core, public relations is about influencing, engaging and building a relationship with key stakeholders across a myriad of platforms in order to shape and frame the public perception of an organization.

The following terms are used in the definition of PR:

‘Organisation’ can be a government body, a business, a profession, a public service or a body concerned with health, culture, education – indeed any corporate or voluntary body large or small.’Publics’ are audiences that are important to the organisation. They include customers – existing and potential; employees and management; investors; media; government; suppliers; opinion-formers.’Understanding’ is a two-way process. To be effective, an organisation needs to listen to the opinions of those with whom it deals and not solely provide information. Issuing a barrage of propaganda is not enough in today’s open society.

The Publics involved in a PR Function can be categorized as Internal Publics and External Publics.

The Internal Publics includes the Employees, Board of Directors and Owners.

The External Publics of the organization will include Suppliers, Government, Local Bodies, Customers, Shareholders, Associates, Banks and Financial Institutions, Competitors, others and Society at large.