Creating Experiences that are True to Your Brand

There are many ways that businesses can make their live activations and experiences true to their brand. Lots of strategies promote a greater presence of the brand logo and tagline, or even oversaturating the experience with brand colors and images. However, we feel that there are three key ways of sharing the true personality and purpose of your brand.

First, you can start by ensuring that there is consistency in your communication to participants. For instance, the online invite or advertisement needs to share (in your unique brand language) what the experience is all about. You can take it a step further to ensure that any signage, graphics, or informational pieces created for the experience speak the same language. And ultimately, this should all align with how you converse with your community of customers daily. Here's a great example of how the monster marketing maven, Nike, uses brand voice consistently across all marketing channels.

As you can see, on social media, through a commercial campaign, and within their live activations, Nike consistently exudes its active, inspirational, and cool personality.

Next, you can (re)introduce your brand to those participating in the experience. Some participants may not know anything about your brand, and some may need a refresher. So, take this opportunity to explain what you sell or serve. This can be done through signage, an event host, or a short video presentation integrated throughout the experience but make sure that you do this succinctly and compellingly. Because, as we all know, in this fast-paced world, you sometimes only have moments to captivate your audience's attention.

You can further integrate your brand into the experience by doing a quick "vibe check" in the planning phases. Throughout the process, take a second to assess the overall experience. Then ask yourself, "Does this feel like the brand?" Let me emphasize that this is more about the look and feel of the experience than about the brand identity. Anyone can slap a logo onto a meter board for quick brand infusion, but based on past activations, we can tell you that living the experience is what is most captivating to your customer. And this notion is not just conceptual. Scientific studies show that brand experiences strongly affect customers through the development of feelings, sensations, and behavioral responses and in how these experiences positively influence brand trust, satisfaction, and loyalty.

Using these three methods, you are sure to develop a clear presence that speaks to your core community of customers even without words. And with this clarity, a true expression of your brand will emerge through your next experience.