It’s probably not often that you can say that you have unlimited possibilities to achieve something. But we are ambitious every time we talk about events.

I was talking last summer on the blog about how important brand activations are for the company’s image and which are the most interesting directions experienced by us within the events created under the #theUNIVERSUMexperience brand.

We return to the small screens and talk about the importance of brand activations at a festival. ?

Regardless of the season, there are constantly events that attract thousands, tens or hundreds of thousands of participants from the general public. Depending on the target audience of your business, whether you are HR or Marketing, festivals with a large number of participants can bring a huge return to the company. And sometimes it can be a much better idea to invest more in activations. 🙂

The festivalgoers, who are hundreds of thousands at this festival, crossing the boundaries of the event have one goal: to have fun. Make the most of it has become a slogan used more and more often among the festival audience, and we prove them right :D.

Probably the first and most obvious lesson in brand activations at a festival is not to sell the customer your raw product. He doesn’t want to sit around and hear about injectors, personal loans, hops and malt, or what percentage of the population consumes gluten. He wants to have a lot of fun, interaction, and if he experiences something at the same time, so much the better.

Recently I was in the heart of Cluj, at the Untold.

festival
We brought the park to life and energized the participants in a story context (as the festival promises with each edition). We took the stake as such, and relied on interaction and lots of fun. MUCH FUN. Said and done. Less than two months before the event, our colleagues, Cătălina (Business Development Manager) and Eliza (Project Manager) got to work. And together with our client they started the action plan for the festival.

It was clearly about one activation, maybe even two or three. And there were four in the end. Our basic idea was Feel the human energy at UNTOLD! With ENGIE you have renewable energy sources. Both at the festival and at home, appealing to the responsibility we have towards the environment.

Starting from the premise of using renewable energy, we launched the challenge to the participants to generate their energy in the most natural ways: through sports, dancing and especially through relaxation. A month and a bit of sketching and production, plus a day and night of editing, resulted in:

It is clear that we could not prevent the major causes, but action had to be taken against them. And especially in the context of a summer rain that cooled the Central Park in Cluj. It was probably the biggest impediment I encountered in the 4 days. It was clear that we had to prepare for any type of weather but we were clearly hoping that it wouldn’t rain constantly during the activation. Because the capricious weather was taken into account, the team prepared with super branded capes waiting to be used. Although two to three weeks of implementation was quite a tight time, I went through all the actions one at a time, leisurely. Again, the most important lesson for me was, the team. Proactivity, presence of mind, flexibility, availability, involvement, care, attention to details. How beautifully Eliza tells us :).

As I wrote at the beginning, the focus on the interaction between the finished product and people seems to be the most important aspect.

This and in the context where the activation must be perfectly combined with the theme of the festival and especially with the venue. We combined the park and the relaxation area with hammocks and poufs. We combined the fun of the interactive stage with the production of energy. And we combined cycling with lighting. Thus, during the four days of the event, 2,673,332 Joules (over 31,000 watts) were produced from the three prosumer activation zones.

For both the customer and us, the tens of thousands of attendees interacting with the stand are probably the best feedback.

Company and product promotion (activation stakes) aside, it’s critical to keep the customer’s needs in mind when implementing them. No matter what industry the product or service we’re promoting comes from, whether the activation nurtures, relaxes, energizes, tests your general culture, introduces you to new technologies or helps social causes, when we talk about brand activations at festivals it’s all about what’s at stake be on networking.

Sometimes pictures are not enough.

They convey the thousands of words that we can’t cover, but when we talk about the emotions of the festival goers… well, we can’t reproduce them. We try our luck with the following images but it all boils down to the clarion callyou have to be there!

If you want us to create memorable experiences together for your company or product, and especially during a festival, don’t hesitate to contact us contact!

We are super friendly!