How Experienced Brand Activation Agency Manages Logistics

Logistics, Logistics, Logistics

Experiential marketing differs from conventional marketing and advertising in many ways, but one of the biggest differences is in the execution. With a conventional print ad, social media ad, or TV spot, the path from concept to delivery starts and ends with the creative team that assembles and edits the words, graphics, photos, and video.

With experiential, the creative is only the beginning — the bulk of the work is in the execution, and the execution involves a lot of moving parts. It all comes down to logistics.

A full-service brand activation agency offers not only the creative aspects of experiential marketing planning but also technical and strategic support. Behind every amazing activation or wildly successful pop-up are a team of logistics pros, managing the behind-the-scenes details and negotiations that can make or sink an event.

For experiential marketing events, logistics services can encompass everything from identifying the perfect venue, setting the schedule, and transporting people and materials, to hiring on-site staff managing numerous relationships with vendors and locations.

Hiring an agency with experience in brand activations can offer several benefits to businesses that are planning or executing experiential marketing campaigns. Experiential marketing involves complex logistics, including event planning, venue selection, transportation, and on-site setup. A dedicated brand activation agency can handle all these logistical considerations efficiently.

Choosing a Location & Venue

Location and venue scouting are critical pieces of any experiential marketing project. Logistics team members work closely with other agency experts as well as clients to help narrow down the state, county, city, neighborhood, and venue best suited to the event.

This is about not only finding a rich concentration of the target audience, but also locating the event within an area those consumers will find convenient and desirable. Some of the considerations include traffic conditions and whether the venue is within easy walking distance of adequate parking and public transit.

The logistics team will also evaluate each potential venue to see if it’s properly equipped for the activation or pop-up. Location scouting will cover available space, footprint, accessibility, safety, and amenities like electricity, water, restrooms, internet access, HVAC, storage, and (if needed) kitchen equipment.

Optimal Timing

Many factors combine to determine the best timing for a brand activation. Some of these are distinctly local — Will there be bothersome construction in the area during the event? — while others have to do with regional issues like weather. If the range of proposed dates falls within blizzard season, the logistics team might recommend an alternate plan to avoid impacting not only attendance but also transporting materials and staff to the event. In a city that has seasonal population shifts — like a popular tourist destination or a college town — the logistics team will be prepared to assess the impact on timing for your activation.

Competing events can be another factor. Several major events in the same area around the same time could increase or reduce attendance at your brand activation. It could also make sense to partner with one or more of those events provided the demographics are a good fit. “An event can have 100,000 participants, but if only 5% are your target demographic, you will spend a lot of time and money marketing to people outside your target.” A brand activation agency’s logistics team will research upcoming events to look for those with a high concentration of your target demographic to help focus your resources for success.

Navigating Rules & Regulations

Every town and city is unique in its business environment and the complex web of permits and fees a brand must resolve to offer an experiential marketing event. Even locals can find this environment challenging.

Perhaps the biggest benefit to working with a brand activation agency is that the agency, by virtue of its experience, knows what to look out for and what questions to ask. You don’t know what you don’t know, as the saying goes, and experienced brand activation agencies are familiar with the most common regs and rules applying to events as well as the particulars of specific locations where they’ve hosted events before.

Logistics team members are also “skilled at identifying and mitigating potential risks associated with experiential marketing events,” says c-suitenetwork.com. “This can help prevent issues and ensure the safety of participants.”

Knowing the Key Vendors

In addition to general collective knowledge about event planning and execution, logistics pros at experienced brand activation agencies often have working relationships with individuals at municipalities and venues across the U.S., so brands can trust that the agency is getting good information about local tastes and interests, social/political climate, demographics, and trends. Food-focused brand activations like mobile sampling tours obviously need the expertise and resources of culinary professionals, but so do events that aren’t food-centered — free food, after all, is a strong draw for consumers in any environment. A brand activation agency typically has contacts in food industries, both local and regional, that can help, with services combining custom menu creation, food logistics, and on-site research like taste tests and comparisons.

Recruiting, Hiring, and Training Staff

While the brand’s own team and ambassadors will be a great asset to the activation, in far-flung locations, local help may be required. Brand activation agencies know from experience how many people and what kind of help an activation requires, and have the contacts and resources to source, hire, and train qualified, enthusiastic personnel to pull off the activation.

Sure, it might be possible to plan, design, and execute a brand activation using only in-house resources — after all, who knows the brand best? But creating a successful brand activation requires not only a keen understanding of the brand and its audience but also the experience and connections to deliver high-quality events in multiple markets. A brand activation agency’s logistics expertise makes all the pieces come together seamlessly.

Promobile Marketing is a dynamic experiential marketing agency based in New York City. For over a decade, Promobile Marketing has collaborated with a range of brands—from budding startups to major CPG brands—on immersive marketing campaigns. Get in touch to discuss your next project.