Pranil Chandra June 3, 2024
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In today’s competitive business landscape, brands are constantly seeking innovative ways to engage their audience and create memorable experiences. Pop-up brand activations have emerged as a powerful strategy to capture attention, generate buzz, and forge meaningful connections with consumers.
Join us as we explore the pop-up display in depth – its purpose and potential – and take a sneaky peak at six pop-up brand activation examples to get your creative juices flowing!
Those who work in the marketing industry know all about pop-ups. As they might sound, they refer to a temporary display which ‘pops up’, entices and entertains its audience, then, after a set period (a few days to a few weeks), it’s gone. As such, they are the perfect way to promote a product or service quickly, throwing a brand in front of as many potential customers as possible in-person while shouting “Hey, you! Come over here and check ME out!”.
And here’s how the mighty pop-up can benefit your brand:
By creating a buzz. Pop-ups are meant to be lively. Make them so loud they can’t go unnoticed, and you’ll have a swarm of people around your pop-up like bees to honey.
By generating brand awareness. It’s your primary purpose with a pop-up: letting the world know you exist. While you’re busy showing off a product or service, you’re simultaneously alerting people to your wider brand, your values and all that you offer.
By fostering brand loyalty. Getting in front of consumers is critical when it comes to making genuine connections and instilling trust. Showing you are real people and not just a series of online posts or emails goes a long way when you’re building relationships.
By delivering an impact. Once you have a crowd, you need to wow them. What better than a pop-up stall for putting on a show and making an immediate impact. Go big or go home!
It all sounds a bit easy, this setting up a temporary stall and winning loads of business. It can be – although however temporary their life span, Pop-ups require lots of prior planning to execute them well and reap the rewards later.
So, how can you be sure of getting the best from yours?
Without question, pop-up displays form an integral component of a modern marketing strategy. Digital communication is incredible – yet nothing connects with consumers quite like a physical interaction. Enter, the pop-up.
Consumers flock to stores in their droves, hunting for the latest gear, gadgets and get ups for wearing, watching, listening and eating. Particularly in bustling department stores and retail shopping malls, brands have a difficult job being picked out among the masses.
And that’s where an in-store pop-up steps in!
Consider the pop-up as your personal stage. A place to elevate your wares and hold them aloft, high above the hundreds of other brands striving to connect with potential customers and draw the hungry crowd in YOUR direction.
Once your audience arrives, then it’s up to you to impress them – and there are several ways you can do so.
Interactive displays: engaging your audience by letting them touch and feel products
Live demonstrations: showing your audience what your product does
Immersive experiences: indulging your audience in a feeling
Be SUPER creative, here. Modern-day marketing can never be dull and less so with pop-ups, where those potential customers are within your physical grasp for a limited period. Don’t waste an opportunity to completely bowl them over!
We can’t talk about pop-ups without considering the role of printing.
Because nobody will notice a bland display, period. Thankfully, retail printing has evolved dramatically in recent years, reaching a point where technical advancement and affordability have met up, bonded and become inseparable, giving visual designers and marketers the chance to bake just about any type of creative cake AND eat it too!
Technically, you can achieve all kinds of incredible looks for a pop-up display using retail printing solutions. From large format printing to single soft-textured pieces, transforming a blank canvas into a wonderfully colourful masterpiece has never been easier – and, speaking of canvas, it goes nicely onto fabrics, card and eco-friendly materials like Re-board.
Put simply, print solutions can completely enhance your retail activation using visually appealing signage, banners, and promotional materials to create a cohesive brand experience.
So, you’ve whetted the appetite of shoppers and passers-by with your incredibly attractive, jaw-dropping display. Now what?
If yours is an interactive or immersive pop-up, you’ll want those consumers to get busy and quickly!
There are different ways you can do this, and nowadays, technology proves a clear winner. The likes of touch screens, AR and VR provide incredible opportunities to showcase a product or service in a highly engaging way, where consumers are thrust directly into your world and have to act in order to learn. These types of marketing methods create memorable experiences for consumers, lodging your brand into their minds for an eternity and enhancing their perception of you. Next time they’re thinking of buying ‘X’ product or service, those virtual dots will appear between you and said product or service in a flash.
As with any marketing initiative, measuring its success is critical, evaluating impact on brand engagement and customer satisfaction.
There are several ways to do so:
Ready to see some pop-ups at play? Here are a handful of our favourites.
Bright brand colours and curves helped bring this beautiful pop-up to life for cosmetics giant Clinique. Resembling a London tube train carriage, consumers meandering Pitt Street Mall in central Sydney could follow the ‘Hydration Line’ towards healthier skin, with samples to support the immersive and interactive experience.
Global auto manufacturer Volvo proved how pop-ups can work effectively without colour when promoting their V60 electric hybrid model. Using a white car, bright lighting and an all-white eco-friendly Re-board stand, consumers couldn’t help but stop for a look – and a quick seat at the wheel!
Here’s an incredible piece that was ‘popped up’ by NEXT partner Nordwerk for one of their customers recently. Another Re-board assembled display, entirely colourless and cut meticulously to create a winter wonderland for consumers to meander through, this display stopped nearby shoppers in the tracks to soak up its magical feel while marvelling at the detail.
Travellers returning to our major cities enjoyed a warm welcome ‘Ho-Ho-Home’ thanks to the pop-ups courtesy of Qantas (and NEXT!). Displays in the arrivals area at Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth in December 2022 brought plenty of Christmas joy, immersing consumers in the brand to create awareness at the perfect time: post-pandemic.
The Pim Group wanted to demonstrate their range of serums in a series of pop-up ‘classrooms’ created with sustainable materials. NEXT used Re-board, brand colours and eye-catching features like over-sized product bottles to provide an immersive experience where shoppers could visit each class and learn more about the serums.
With Smee are legends in creating pop-up events for all types of brands in all manner of venues. Our team and theirs had an incredible time working on a Wanderlust world for cosmetics company Benefit, creating five activations at a private residence to deliver a beauty salon experience in the great outdoors.
We have seen how important the pop-up has become in today’s marketing world, increasing engagement and shining a positive light on your brand.
Combining creative ideas, sustainable materials, advanced print solutions and cutting-edge technology, brands can develop spectacular displays to immerse consumers, capturing their hearts and minds – and most of all, their wallets!
It’s time to take your pop-up displays to a new level with NEXT Printing. The home of creative, immersive and sustainable displays using forward-thinking materials and technology.
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