Create a Sponsorship Activation at your next event! Brands love to utilize sponsorships at events that enable them to reach and engage with their audience in a very natural, unforced way. If you’re eager to wow your sponsorship prospects with smart activation ideas, the below collection is sure to make for a productive brainstorming session with your team. Keep reading for more information on each idea as well as tips for implementation.
Sponsorship activations have many advantages, but you’re still on someone else’s turf. Your brand’s exhibition will need something extra special to make it stand out from the crowd and leave visitors with lasting memories. The best brand activations engage visitors through multiple senses and include activities or interactions that appeal to people with different tastes and preferences. Expect that your visitors will be online while in attendance. Add elements to your exhibit that combine online and offline activities and encourage them to share their experience on social media.
What is a Sponsorship Activation?
A sponsorship activation is a type of brand activation that involves partnering with another organization to appear at their event. Usually, brands pay a sponsorship fee to have access to the event organizer’s attendees, but sometimes sponsorships may take the form of in-kind considerations. For instance, a food manufacturing brand might agree to supply the teams’ meals before a sporting event or a clothing brand might provide the wardrobe for presenters at an awards show. From naming rights to an acknowledgement in the program, sponsorships are a common channel for earning goodwill and increasing name recognition among sports fans, affinity groups and within communities.
Listed below are a few creative ways to attract your audience via Sponsorship Activations and capture their attention & increase engagement with your Brand:
Pop-Up Experiences
How can you generate a sense of FOMO in your audience at your next sponsorship event? It’s easy! Pop-up experiences. Pop-ups are limited-run, exclusive places to participate in themed experiences or buy goods that themselves are often exclusive and limited-run. People line up around blocks and blocks for a pop-up shop because they know that once those goods run out that it’s game over. Plus, the shop itself is only open for a short time, usually just a weekend.
Now imagine if the only way to gain access to the pop-up area was through your event. You can expect a spike in ticket sales, especially if you have several high-demand pop-up experiences on the event grounds. For this activation idea to work, you must know your audience innately well to confirm that they’re interested in the sponsor’s products. The sponsor should also be a semi-recognizable name.
Event Gamification
Add an element of gamification and competition to your event and sponsor a sports activation at your Special Event. If you know for a fact that your audience is looking for more excitement out of your events, then games are one of the best ways to get their hearts pumping so you make a fun, lasting impression.
Adding Gamification to your event increases engagement and fosters a deeper connection with your audience as they try to win prizes and accolades. Some interactive game examples can include Multi sports simulators including Golf, Soccer, Basketball, Football and Baseball. There can be internal branding within the game as seen here for in-game branding within the sports arena, or external branding on the outside of the setup enclosures providing signage and logos. The sponsor can come up with the game or activity, which should somehow be tied to their brand, messaging, or products and services.
Video Interview/ Podcast Booths
Video and Podcast booths are a great way of attracting VIP and “A” Talent to interview and share the content online. Draw in potential customers and generate new clients, while also building new partnerships and strengthen existing ones. Anytime you have a conference or an event, it is an opportunity to capture content. You can create a whole year’s worth of video or podcast content by capturing these interviews!
Podcast Interview booth/stations are a great way to achieve these goals. Conventions and Trade Shows can be a great way to promote your show, sell related merchandise, and build relationships. Whether you have a product launch, promoting your services or contributing content to your community, podcasting is a great way to generate a new audience and reach new people, while generating interest onsite at your special event.
This is an emerging activation that is becoming more popular and a tried and true way for getting traffic to your booth and popular activation idea. Have your potential customers approach you or strategically invite target prospects for scheduled interviews throughout your show.
Headshot Photo Activation
A Headshot Photo Activation is a very popular sponsorship opportunity commonly used at Conventions, Trade Shows and Corporate Meetings. It provides high impact with your audience- everyone needs a fresh new headshot for their professional affiliations and Linkedin profiles.
Our Digital Headshot booth is the perfect solution for higher volume on-site portrait and headshot photography at Trade shows, Meetings, Conventions & Conferences. Attendees & guests can immediately see their best headshots taken and select their proofs and send their digital headshot image onsite ad receive instantly a branded email with the attachment. We also provide data capture onsite for client to collect valuable information about their guests like email, title, company or custom info fields for your promotional marketing efforts.
NextGen Event Co. provides highly trained professional photographers that pose and advise the subject to capture precise angles and lighting to capture their best look. We offer a variety of different color backgrounds to choose from customized exactly for your Special event. Maximize your booth presence by driving traffic & generate new sales leads with our Headshot Booth/Digital Photo Lounge today!
Interactive Projections & Displays
Interactive Projections & Walls services are very popular with providing for an interactive element to your Conference or Trade Show. They are highly sponsorable and easily branded- Immediately draw attention with our gesture-controlled interactive walls that can function as a traffic builder for your events, retail promotion or workplace activity.
The ultimate gaming or branding vehicle at your Special Events, stopping your audience traffic and attracting them to you booth. Our projection mapping services and Interactive Virtual Wall has been a proven performer and has been used by many recognizable brands to successfully enhance their product launches, specialty events, and corporate or retail spaces. We offer games and event experiences including aquarium, catch the butterflies, bubble magic and sports games to name a few. Our Interactive wall will be sure to entertain both kids and Adults alike!
RFID Wearables/ Bracelets
RFID bracelets are becoming the norm at events, so if you’re not already using them, you should strongly consider doing so.
Radio frequency identification, which is what RFID is short for, uses radio waves when scanned to read the data on the RFID tag. That data quickly goes to the back-end computer and is stored for later. All along, users don’t have to touch anything, just hold up their bracelets.
How can you use RFID bracelets as activations? In so many ways. Event attendees can use their bracelets to get into exclusive VIP areas. If you have a quiz contest, users can scan their bracelets or wristbands to participate.
A contest that involves leaderboards or support walls is another excellent way to use RFID technology. Who doesn’t love seeing their name on a big LED board proclaiming to everyone in the area that they’re the best? You can connect the sponsor to RFID technology in one of two ways. First, the bracelets they hand out could be branded so people walk around all day promoting the sponsor.
For more information on ways to create sponsorship activations at your next event that sell, or to host a current activation, please contact us to schedule a consult and discuss all the possibilities!
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