Four Ways Brands can make the Most of Cultural Moments
By Carlton Wilcoxson • January 27, 2016
It’s critical to focus on an event where your brand plays some role in the participants’ or audience’s actions, and one that celebrates the values your brand stands for. We always start with opportunities that have scale, but a moment can happen anywhere—people just need to be open and engaged.
Creating brand experiences that are meaningful to real people is the hardest thing to do in marketing. It requires a great creative idea or platform, an activation strategy that maximizes it, handcrafted planning, and the ability to execute in fine detail. In other words, all the elements of a campaign need to work together seamlessly. It’s hard to do, but, when it does happen the power is undeniable.
When using these moments to alter or augment a brand’s identity, there needs to be a thread of brand relevance that people can grasp, or better yet, a direct explanation. Most brands are eager to appeal to younger demographic, for example, but so often the connection and relevance of the brand to that target is nowhere in sight. It sounds obvious, but that connection has to be there before embedding yourself in moments that are important to that target.
Lastly, we want to give people something to do. How can people take on and express the idea themselves? We want audience members to feel like they’re getting something out of their interaction, aside from a video they create to get an incentive (win a free trip!). When people can take an idea and make it theirs, your brand becomes part of who they are.