A Guide to Brand Activation Marketing

Posted on September 16, 2022June 19, 2024 by britney

Experiential Marketing

Experiential activations are a great way to bring your company into the limelight. Whether it be a pop-up, mobile tour, or guerrilla takeover, experiential marketing tactics like these can elevate your brand name in ways that other more traditional marketing methods can’t.

With that being said, you may be unfamiliar with the ins-and-outs of ‘brand activations’, or may be skeptical that experiential marketing is just a buzz term that doesn’t actually yield results. In this blog, we will discuss what brand activations are and convince you that it’s a marketing method worth mastering across all industries.

What is a Brand Activation?

In the long history of marketing, the term ‘brand activations’ is fairly new, so don’t worry if you’re not familiar. Simply put, the term ‘brand activations’ refers to different event types or marketing campaign efforts that result in a specific set of consumer experiences that are more long-lasting and emotional than what traditional advertisements evoke. This means that brand activations can be initiated in different ways, but will ultimately accomplish the goals of bringing your brand to life, garnering attention from new audiences, and redefining how your existing audience perceives you.

Why are Brand Activations Important?

Brand activations are especially important this day in age. Today, most brands are fighting for attention in the digital space, and as a result, people are restoring their appreciation for in-person experiences. Instead of trying to be the loudest brand on the internet, brand activations create live, face-to-face experiences that gain online attention organically, so you get the best of both worlds.

Again, you may be wondering what a brand activation might look like for you. There are various different types of activation campaigns that you can use, overall proving to be a good way to show a business’ personality and identity.

Brand Activation Examples For The Fall

With September in full-swing, we’ll discuss brand activations examples that are relevant during the fall and winter seasons.

Fall in particular is a great time to employ in-person, experiential marketing tactics because with the cool, enjoyable weather, you’re able to activate outside and capitalize on foot-traffic in a major market of your choice.

Keep in mind that Food Truck Promotions specializes mostly in outdoor activations, transforming vehicles into branded experiences that passer-bys can stumble upon, and fall is our busiest season. Winter, too, has proven to be a as a good time as any to bring brand awareness with experiential marketing activations. One, because being outdoors is not necessary, and two, because when you do activate on the streets, you bring a sense of excitement during chillier months.

Of all the different ways our clients have used our experiential marketing services to put on brand activation campaigns, the examples we will discuss all include one special element: hot chocolate! Many of our clients opt into our culinary services as a way to attract consumers, and one especially effective way to do it is by offering free hot-chocolate during sweater weather! Here are some success stories:

Christian Louboutin Pop Up

It goes without saying that New York is a city full of excitement, but even so, there are few things that have stood out on the concrete jungle’s streets more than Christian Louboutin’s bright red mobile crêperie.

Because of this promotion, Christian Louboutin was able to give New Yorkers of every age and background a taste of world-class French fashion and food by serving up crepes and hot coca from a branded vintage vehicle.

Expectedly, their store was left packed with excited customers ready to reach in their wallets and show their undying love for Louboutin.

Go Puff Brand Activation Campaign

Gopuff partnered with us to put on a brand activation campaign in October through March of this year! The brand extended its initial partnership with us because of just how impactful they found our experiential niche was in bringing brand awareness.

During the chillier of those months, the brand served up delicious, complimentary hot chocolate in exchange of a QR scan and app sign up. Gopuff was able to gain thousands of new subscriptions while being able to establish itself as the #1 delivery service.

Rose Inc Mobile Tour

We teamed up with Rose Inc to bring their brand on an international mobile tour. In the states, we hit Los Angeles and New York, and overseas, we activated all the way in London, UK, marking our first-ever international activation.

In addition to custom branding three different vehicles and securing permits in multiple, high-priority locations, our team also executed the creative details of the campaign, creating a product display wall that gave guests the opportunity to sample Rose Inc’s Skin Enhance Luminous Tinted Serum or read the Rose Inc newspaper while they waited in line for a cup of hot cocoa— hot cocoa that we specially customized to represent the inclusive range of skin tones this makeup is suited for.

These elements came together to create the perfect mobile pop-up that both promoted the micro-encapsulated makeup and truly captured Rose Inc’s vision of clean and sustainable beauty for modern women.

Miu Miu Marketing Activation

When we partnered with Miu Miu back in 2019, it was hardly a question that our vintage E-tuk was the perfect vehicle to create the brand activation they were looking for.

The uniqueness of the E-tuk would allow us to bring out the unconventional spirit of Miu Miu, while fully customizing the exterior to include the brand’s new graphic. Meanwhile, the interior of the vehicle would allow us to explore its versatility: a food truck from which we would serve hot gourmet hot chocolate to New Yorkers passing by, and a showroom to display the Miu Miu’s Spring season handbags. This made the perfect fall pop-up!

Chanel

Whether or not you’re a fashion connoisseur, there is one thing to know about the French fashion house Chanel: their iconic color red. In fact, it was founder Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s favorite lipstick color herself, which inspired the brand’s very first lipstick debut, “Allure Rouge” in 1924. As part of the Chanel’s month-long pop-up in New York City, aptly named Le Rouge Chanel, they partnered with Food Truck Promotions to extend the very-red interactive beauty experience from their store and onto the streets, culminating in an all-out rouge holiday wonderland.

Chanel worked with our in-house culinary team to craft a perfect, rich and creamy Hot Coco to entertain guests with a complimentary luxury treat on a cold winter day. The Hot Coco Trucks created lines around the block, with over 10 thousand servings of Hot Coco given out each weekend. The campaign drove over 5 million impressions throughout the month and in the weeks following the event, but more importantly, it cultivated new customer relationships while strengthening existing ones.

Make Use of Our Experiential Marketing Services

Experiential marketing can be done in many different ways. Even in the mobile/vehicle niche, we have found a diverse range of ways to create branded environments and experiences that resonate with consumers.

If you’re looking for a truly creative way of marketing your brand that actually is impactful, then brand activation campaigns should be one of your main considerations. We hope that in the upcoming, chillier seasons, you decide to make use of our experiential marketing services!

Learn more about us and contact us today to get started on your next brand activation!

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Marketing NFT Collections: Examples and Strategy

Posted on August 30, 2022May 2, 2024 by britney

Experiential Marketing

Whether you’re an artist, individual investor or a collection group, there’s value in knowing how to market NFTs so that more people understand the value in this new commodity. And, more accurately, why your NFTs are more valuable than the next.

If you work in the rapidly growing industry of NFTs, this blog will give you examples and strategies for marketing your collection.

While on the flip side, if you’re someone who hears words like ‘crypto’ and instinctively recoils, but you work for a marketing agency, then this blog will also give you an opportunity to learn the basics of NFTs so that you’re able to serve clients within this flourishing field.

What Are NFTs?

These days, it may feel like NFTs are at the center of the zeitgeist— but still, many of us don’t actually understand what NFTs are, and maybe are too embarrassed to admit it. Fear not, because it’s really not as complicated as you might think.

NFT stands for non-fungible token, and it’s associated with a particular digital or physical asset. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the blockchain and can be transferred by the owner, allowing NFTs to be sold and traded. What this means, more simply, is that NFTs can be anything digital— such as drawings, music, and even funny tweets. People buy and sell digital original copies of something online for sometimes millions of dollars at a time.

What Gives an NFT Value?

An NFT has value because the buyer and their community believe it has value—which is true for all art and collectibles. And as time goes by, an NFT gains more of its own character, based on factors like who’s owned it and how they’ve used it.

How Do You Market NFTs?

Without understanding what NFTs are, and what their traders and owners find valuable, NFTs can be difficult to market. This goes without saying: after all, how well can you market something you don’t understand?

That’s why the best first-step NFT marketers should take is to understand the basics of NFTs and communicate what’s appealing about them to the right audience.

Again, marketing NFTs is no easy feat, because unlike apparel or beauty products, their value isn’t so straightforward.

Really, their value is determined by nothing else than people’s perception. With that being said, this means that the right marketing approach can play a really powerful role. When it comes to NFTs, perception is everything— which means marketing is everything.

Experiential Marketing For NFTs

Because NFTs are commodities that exist in the digital space, a great way to market NFTs is with an in-person experience that makes a digital asset tangible in real life. At this year’s NFT.NYC Conference, Food Truck Promotions partnered with NFT investment firms and collection groups to promote their digital art in an immersive and interactive way, which brought awareness around these NFTs and drove up their value.

Experiential marketing is a great approach to marketing NFTs because it allows people to associate an experience with the commodity that they’re thinking of purchasing.

Examples of Marketing NFTs With Experiential Marketing

Below are some examples of NFT marketing that Food Truck Promotions has taken on this year.

1. Sneaky Vampire Syndicate

Sneaky Vampire Syndicate is a collection of 8,888 unique Sneaky Vampires, 12,345 Sneaky Vampiresses and Sneaky Bats by Bored Ape Yacht Club Artist Migwashere. Using MetaMask, Coinbase, WalletConnect, or Fortmatic, you can purchase the spooky and fun digital art pieces.

To get the word out about their collection, Sneaky Vampire partnered with us to have a food truck branded just outside the NFT.NYC conference in Times Square, where they could effectively reach their collectors, and bring awareness to a high-volume of potential buyers.

Serving complimentary tacos, the truck engaged face-to-face with hundreds of collectors and garnered thousands of impressions. We even branded a QR code on the truck that took people straight to Sneaky Vampire’s collection in a few clicks!

2. Menches Bros

Similarly to Sneaky Vampire, we partnered with Menches Bros and Metaversal at the NFT.NYC to celebrate burger history— twice. Menches Bros is accredited with creating the first-ever burger back in 1885, and this year, the company took their Mainstreet Burgers to the Metaverse with lil Mench NFTs.

The company handed out burgers following their famous recipe from a flashy red branded truck right in the midst of the NFT.NYC conference.

3. Bored Ape Yacht Club

Last but not least, Food Truck Promotions used our company’s experiential marketing expertise to help promote three collections from the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club. For those of you who are not familiar with NFTs at all, BAYC might be some of the most notable NFTs that even you recognize!

Partnering with Bored Taco, Dr. Bombayse, and BorednHungry, we lined up three food trucks at Pier 17, offering three different cuisines for BAYC holders: tacos, burgers, and ice cream.

How Brands Leverage NFTs for Marketing

At the same time, it’s not just marketing NFTs that is valuable— it’s also using NFTs to market a certain product, service, or company. Many businesses and brands have found that NFTs and crypto as a whole are a great way to expand their marketing strategy.

3 Examples of Brands Using NFTs For Better Marketing Results

1. Coachella Music & Arts Festival and the NFT Blooming Flower

This year, in addition to quintessential Coachella features from years past, a specific attraction caught the attention of the festival-goers: NFTs. The festival offered all paying participants an NFT digital image of a flower that bloomed on the two Fridays of the festival. This brought the real-life experience of Coachella into the digital space.

Coachella 2022 also brought other technologies, like Metaverse and cashless payment, to mix up in-person experiences with virtual marketing, and it became a good example of the importance of engagement Marketing in the post-pandemic era.

2. NFTs as Event Tickets

Some companies realized the attraction of their consumers towards collectibles from their brands and decided to join the passion of collectors of physical items to the world of NFTs.

In order to provide the experience of collecting tickets from their consumers, some brands have already decided to launch their tickets in a fully digital version. This is the case of the NFL franchise, which decided to turn tickets from its biggest annual event, the Super Bowl, into collectible NFTs.

3. NFTs as digital merchandise

Last March, the virtual platform Decentraland held its first fashion show, creating a completely virtual and immersive Fashion Week. Brands such as Dolce & Gabanna, Tommy Hilfiger, Forever 21 and Paco Rabanne walked the runway at fashion week, and the platform generated fan engagement, opened new precedents for fashion shows and ways of approaching the public. In addition to the experience of participating in a fashion show, the event also sold NFTs of clothing and accessories from the brands present in the shows.

Potential Drawbacks and Cons of Branded NFT Marketing

With all the positives and exciting opportunities that NFTs can offer, it’s equally as important to know the potential drawbacks of NFT marketing. Here a couple you should look out for:

Environmental Impacts

It may come as a surprise, but NFTs are at least partially responsible for the millions of tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions generated by the cryptocurrencies used to buy and sell them.

Market Uncertainty

Like mentioned before, NFTs don’t have any intrinsic value; their value is contingent on public perception, which means that their value can be volatile.

Start Marketing!

Whether you’re marketing NFTs, or you’re using NFTs to bolster your marketing, we hope we could provide you some useful insight into this growing industry.

NFTs are a relatively new commodity, but they have taken the world by storm which makes them a great opportunity for all kinds of businesses. Contact us if you’re interested in marketing NFTs or using NFTs to expand your marketing!

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Back to School Marketing Ideas and Campaigns

Posted on August 22, 2022November 30, 2024 by britney

Experiential Marketing

The back to school season marks a new chapter, and for businesses, a new marketing opportunity. If your business targets the student/Gen Z demographic, or even younger, August and September are great times of the year to deliver a marketing campaign that bolsters your sales.

This blog will discuss the ins-and-outs of back to school marketing, as well as general college-geared promotions, that will hopefully inspire some new ideas for your business!

What's So Special About Back To School?

The back to school season is the third largest spending season, only behind Black Friday and Christmas. And while most people don’t associate buying a new backpack or laptop for school with mall stampedes like on Black Friday, it’s still definitely a time that businesses should capitalize on.

You may wonder, what kinds of businesses should capitalize on a back to school promotion? How do you know if your company would benefit? To measure this, we need to look at spending trends in the United States during these fall months in the previous year.

Spending Trends for the 2021 School Year

In 2021, in the US alone, a whopping $19.5B is spent on apparel during these back to school months, which makes sense. When you put yourself back in the shoes of a teenage or college-aged student, you realize that going back to school means an opportunity to reinvent yourself. In other words, for students especially, August and September are the delegated months for buying a few new pants and tops that exude a new persona.

At the same time, an incredible $9.7B is spent on dorm and apartment furnishing, and each average student spends a total of around $1.2K on apparel, electronics, and home and living products during the back-to-college season. If you’re a business focused on selling any of these amenities, you can capitalize on back to school.

2022 Spending Predictions

Back to school spending is expected to reach new heights this year, as we return to normalcy from the Covid-19 pandemic.

It’s projected that shoppers will shell out upwards of $34.4B for K-12 students, which would be roughly a 5.8% increase over last year and 24% since 2019, according to the 2022 Deloitte Back-to-School Survey, released last week. The approximately $661 spend per child is 8% better than last year and 27% since 2019.

As for college-aged students, economists are expecting a raise from $1,200 per person in 2021.

Where Are Back to School Shoppers Spending Their Money?

So, as we discussed, the majority of the average consumer’s money is spent on clothes, shoes, electronics, and furniture. However, this doesn’t mean there isn’t something to be gained for businesses that are different in nature and sell different products/services.

For example, maybe you’re a company that sells granola bars. The back to school season is the perfect time to promote your food products as the perfect school snack! So even if your product or service doesn’t fit into the back to school season seamlessly, there are creative ways to advertise yourself to appear in line with the back to school spirit.

When Should You Begin Marketing for Back to School?

In the United States, you can expect the back to school season to begin as early as July and as late as the mid-end of September depending on the state.

As for back to school shopping, you can predict for shoppers to be most active during late July til early August for the 2022-2023 school year. This means that the earlier you jump on the bandwagon, the better— but there’s no clean-cut start or end-time.

Who is Gen Z?

Suffice to say, Gen Z appreciates the unconventional. So, when you’re thinking about how to execute a successful back to school promotion, you should really be brainstorming ways to communicate with this demographic in a way that leaves a lasting impression, which can be hard to do if you’re not a part of the generation, or up with the latest trends, yourself.

What’s often misunderstood about today’s 14 to 22 year olds is that because this is a generation that grew up with the internet and can hardly remember a time without social media, the best way to reach them is through the digital space. And yes, while you’re pretty much 100% sure to reach this target audience through social media, you may not be leaving as strong of an impression as you would through a different focus.

Alternatives to Social Media Marketing

Of course, social media advertising is one tactic, and it can be successful, but by the same token, it’s a marketing approach that is overdone and saturated.

If you’ve used social media campaigns in the past, and are looking for something different that resonates, mobile brand activations— and experiential marketing at large— might be the perfect option for you.

Back to School Marketing Campaigns and Tips

By partnering with Food Truck Promotions, you get the opportunity to create a unique, in-person experience that this young, unorthodox demographic values more than the same old Internet and social media approach.

What’s perfect about immersive brand activations, too, is that it creates an experience that is geared more towards an enjoyable and memorable in-person experience while also being easily captured and posted on social media. Because let’s face it, at the end of the day, Gen Z is still the generation most active on Tik Tok and Instagram.

Food Truck Promotions and Campus Promos

Like stated earlier, you can still use marketing aimed at student demographics even outside of fall months. When you’re targeting this age group in general, experiential marketing activations are a great way to bring your products or services to them, by actually going to schools and college campuses.

Below we’ll reminisce on some on-campus, student-directed marketing our team has done in past years. We hope that some of our work brings you inspiration for your next marketing campaign!

1. Shaka Tea

Most recently in terms of on-campus marketing, our team partnered with Hawaiian beverage brand, Shaka Tea. The company hired us to brainstorm and execute ways to get them more brand awareness on the US mainland, which led to the idea of a cross-country mobile tour.

The tour started in Seattle, then made big stops in Denver, Miami, and Charlotte. It was in Charlotte specifically that we employed back to school marketing; just last weekend, the Shaka Tea truck drove around the University of North Carolina’s campus to target the late teen-early twenties demographic.

The eye-catching design of the truck, as well as the promise of complimentary iced tea on the first day of class, garnered the attention of thousands of students. Especially during the kick-off months of school, Shaka Tea was able to capitalize on the excitement of back to school to make their brand more appealing with this target audience.

2. Alpha Foods

Alpha Foods is a company that offers plant-based alternatives to the traditionally meat-based foods we all love. A lifestyle admittedly much more appealing to younger generations, Alpha Foods decided to get their ‘meatless meals in minutes’ into the hands of college students all over California. But, how?

By partnering with us for an efficient and memorable way of getting consumers sampling their product in high-volume. The activation also included a branded, signable photo-frame that encouraged students to interact with the Alpha Foods brand while waiting in line. Thankfully, the built-in photo-ops also encouraged organic social media coverage!

3. Aerie

Our partnership with Aerie is another great example to look at if you want to stand out to your target audience this new school year.

To promote the brand’s new Waffle clothing line, Aerie stopped at different college campuses all over the country during the fall.

The stops included Boston University, George Washington University, and Ohio State, and the brand attracted large groups of people by giving out Belgian Boys waffles and Aerie socks and coupons from a truly unique experiential vehicle.

4. Schmooze

Schmooze is a fast-growing dating app that evaluates people’s compatibility based on something completely revolutionary: their affinity to memes. That’s right, depending on what memes you like most, the algorithm will match you with someone who appears to share the same interests and sense of humor.

This completely modern approach to match-making is something that, of course, we felt needed to be marketed on college campuses. That’s why we branded a cart and got Schmooze on MIT, Northeastern, Harvard, and Boston University. The cart brought awareness to the Schmooze brand in a truly unconventional and impressive way.

5. Chewy

We helped Chewy capitalize on the back to school momentum by giving out Chewy bars and lunchboxes in New York City. The goal of the activation was to reach kids, students, and parents, and promote Chewy’s brand as the perfect school snack while also fundraising for Adoptaclassroom.org. Not to mention, the person gifting New Yorkers with lunchboxes and Chewy bars was the one and only Neil Patrick Harris!

Chewy was clever enough to capitalize on the fact that their bars make the perfect snacks for students of all ages— which makes targeting students for a back to school promotion (that also supported a good cause) the perfect marketing strategy. All in all, our team was extremely happy to help them and thousands of dollars were raised for Adoptaclassroom.org while reinforcing a positive brand-image for Chewy!

Last Thoughts on Back to School Promotions

When you’re targeting elementary, high school or college-aged students, from a marketing perspective, it’s important to know the right ways to communicate. It’s also just as important to know when to try to get a certain message out.

We hope that by discussing the back to school season while we’re in the swing of it, you feel inspired to use this time period to execute creative and successful marketing campaigns. Contact us if you’re interested in experiential marketing on wheels!

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Top 7 Event Marketing Strategies and Ideas

Posted on August 8, 2022May 2, 2024 by britney

Experiential Marketing

When it comes to event marketing, you don’t have to start from scratch. Meaning, you can — and should — look at other companies to see what approaches they’ve taken in the past that can inspire your next event marketing campaign. Keep reading to discover the best 7 strategies you can employ for your brand that will make you more attuned to your target audience, and therefore, drive up visibility and sales.

What is Event Marketing?

Event marketing is the experiential marketing of a brand, service, or product through memorable experiences or promotional events like webinars.

Simply put, this approach to marketing is characterized as experience-based and in-person, taking place at locations such as fairs, exhibitions, conferences, presentations, sporting events, cultural festivals or parades, and even in virtual events.

Essentially, whatever occasion a brand can find to communicate with a high-volume of potential consumers face-to-face (or computer camera-to-computer camera) is an opportunity for event marketing.

Why Are Event Marketing Strategies Important?

The reason event marketing strategies are important is, of course, because as a company, there is so much to gain from events, including increasing sales, maximizing brand exposure, and reaching your target audience. So much of being a successful brand is finding ways to cut through the noise, rise above competitors, and be the brand your customers go to first. All of this becomes more attainable when you look to experiential and event marketing.

Event marketing is also an excellent way to establish authority and expertise in your field, earning the trust of your consumers that will go a long way as far as company success and longevity.

In fact, a report by the Content Marketing Institute revealed that 75% of content marketers found in-person events to be the most effective content marketing strategy.

Who is the Target Audience of Event Marketing?

Of course, whether the event you choose to promote your brand is a seminar, a startup launch party, a 5K, or a golf-outing will depend on the specific demographic you’re trying to reach.

When you’re considering event marketing, you should be considering who you’re trying to connect with, or in other words, who your target audience is.

A target audience refers to the group of attendees that will be specifically interested in your brand. An event’s success, then, depends on how well the marketing is geared towards a specific group.

Take the example of Zara. Zara activated at the Gay Pride Parade in 2021 to show the company’s support for the LGBTQ+ community, which in turn, leads to better brand-to-consumer relationships with that specific demographic. But it’s not just the queer community that Zara had the opportunity to connect with; their event marketing also reached a general younger demographic which is perfect for Zara’s visibility and favorability over other retail brands.

Marketing Strategy Ideas For Your Next Event

Here we’ll dive deeper into the specific strategies you should consider using for your next event! Take a look at the 7 best strategies.

1. Add a culinary component

Food is the ultimate attention grabber. If anyone knows about the benefits of incorporating a culinary component to your event marketing campaign, it’s our experiential marketing agency.

Food Truck Promotions specializes in using gourmet, custom food and custom packaging to make experiential promotions more memorable and personable.

Let’s say your intention is to drive more people in-store or to give consumers the opportunity to sample your new product; whatever it is, offering a free cup of coffee or pastry can be the pull your consumers need.

2. Implement a photo-op or social media call to action

When we went on a mobile tour with Alpha Foods, we saw the success of implementing a photo-op and social media call to action first-hand. This is how we thought to structure the activation flow:

As guests waited for their plant-based food, they had the opportunity to sign up and enter for a chance to win a fully stocked Alpha Foods freezer. All they had to do was scan the QR code and sign up.

But that’s not all. Customers had the chance to snap a pic with the Alpha Foods branded photo frame and post it online using the #AlphaOnTour hashtag. This extra interactive element made all the difference, helping drive brand awareness of Alpha Foods in the digital landscape and taking the product sampling activation to another level.

Another example of this was our event marketing campaign with Instagram. We activated during Latin Week 2021, using the buzz around this event to create traction for Instagram’s new posting feature: reels.

3. Offer prizes or giveaways

Who doesn’t like hearing the word ‘free?’ One of the best ways to gain traction and build excitement around your event is by offering anything complimentary. This could mean free samples of your product, free food, drinks, merch, and more.

Whatever you decide, the opportunity to take home and enjoy something special is more than enough to create positive associations with your brand name.

4. Pre-promote your event

Promote your event beforehand, using online calendar listings, your social channels, email marketing, your website, press releases, influencers, and more!

There are many avenues you can take to get the word out about your event— but it’s up to you to share the features of your event promotion in a way that entices you. Use creative and colorful language, images, and more to get people as engaged as possible.

Think to yourself: what’s special or noteworthy about my event? And make that as clear as possible to your target demographic pre-event.

Though post-event marketing has no bearing on how well the actual event goes, it’s a great way to still share the experience your brand created with people who may have missed out. Create a Tik Tok or IG reel that makes people feel like they were there!

5. Hire influential speakers

Guest and keynote speakers can make a tremendous impact on your event. Even if your speaker is not necessarily well-known, if they’re informed and engaging, they can bring a lot of value to your promotion by simply adding another layer of communication with your consumers.

Interpersonal connection is extremely important for positive brand associations, and creating a dialogue or Q&A with a guest speaker can be a significant source of positive reinforcement.

6. Partner with influencers

In the digital age, there’s few things more powerful in terms of event marketing than influencers. Make room in your budget to partner with an influencer who can attend and capture engaging content at your event. In other words, hire influential people to both capture and, in a way, recreate your event so that it can be experienced not just by actual event attendees, but

This kind of social coverage can go a long way, and definitely pays out if you approach it correctly. Do your research and find not only influencers with an appropriate following for your budget, but also ones that fall into a specific niche that applies to your brand or event.

It also may be worthwhile to create longterm partnerships with influencers who focus on different social media platforms, from Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, and Youtube. That way, you’re getting your brand name across as many social channels as possible.

7. Location, location, location

Location is of the utmost importance when it comes to event marketing. Choose locations strategically, based off where you think you’ll have the greatest reach with your target audience.

At Food Truck Promotions, we use a technology called Placer AI to pick brand activation locations based off real data. Though everything is kept anonymous, we can see everything from how populated an area is at a certain time to what the interests of that demographic are. Using this knowledge, we can make the best call for your event.

Apply These Event Marketing Strategies to Expand Your Brand!

Event marketing is highly effective for achieving business goals, boosting revenue, and making strong connections with prospects and customers. However, with that being said, you have to know what strategies to use to able to leverage the advantages of this marketing approach.

We hope that the 7 main pieces of advice discussed in this blog have been helpful and inspiring. Partner with us when you apply these strategies to your next event marketing campaign!

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How Mobile Retail Store Trucks Are Changing the Modern Marketing Campaign

Posted on July 11, 2022May 3, 2024 by britney

Experiential Marketing

Whether your retail business is just starting, or it’s in the process of growing, you may find that mobile retail stores offer benefits that brick and mortar stores don’t— and there’s a few reasons this is true.

In this blog, we will discuss the emergence of mobile retail store trucks, list their different uses, and look at some real life examples of mobile retail that will give you inspiration. Even if you’ve never considered mobile retail before, all entrepreneurs should keep reading to can find out why this kind of business can be so successful.

Mobile Retail as a Marketing Campaign

Mobile retail can be a permanent option for your business, or it can be a temporary, creative way for you to market your brand and drive traffic to your brick and mortar store location.

In other words, rather than opening a permanent store location from somewhere transportable like a food truck, van, or cart, you also have the option of opening a limited-time pop-up as a marketing effort that helps your business gain exposure.

Especially during the first waves of the pandemic, bringing consumers to an outside, COVID safe location offered an interactive marketing experience that consumers had been missing for months, making it that much more impactful.

Even now, things like branded food trucks offer an opportunity to create an immersive experience that can be really impactful for your brand.

Mobile Retail Truck Examples

Below are some specific examples of mobile retail trucks, both permanent mobile businesses and temporary experiential marketing ventures.

Adidas

Adidas celebrated the launch of their P.O.D. System sneaker line with a branded mobile kitchen pop-up in the heart of Times Square. Guests who made not only were treated to Baohaus cuisine, but also had the opportunity to buy their own pair of P.O.Ds. vokes an emotional response and positive affiliations that are beneficial to the company at large.

Chanel

Few names are as iconic as Chanel. We partnered with the high-end fashion brand to bring their store to the streets of New York City for a guerrilla marketing campaign that played into their brand’s staple red color. Combining social media and in-person views, the branded tuk tuk gained over 5 million impressions, all by serving something as simple as Hot Cocoa. That’s the power of mobile marketing.

Ralph Lauren

After different guerrilla campaigns from 2017 to 2019, the iconic vintage Citroen coffee truck became a hallmark of the designer coffee brand. The original Ralph’s Coffee truck was such a popular hit that Ralph Lauren has replicated it and opened a permanent Ralph’s Coffee mobile coffee shop located at Rockefeller plaza.

GoGo Books

Based out of Charleston, South Carolina, GoGo Books book truck sells children’s literature out of a mobile retail truck. The business came about after the pandemic closures, allured by the low-cost and flexibility that a mobile business offers. Unlike the other examples before, GoGo Books doesn’t use its truck as a marketing effort aside from their brick and mortar store. This is a permanent business that reaps the benefits of no rent, high exposure, and more.

How to Start a Mobile Retail Store Truck

The good news is that starting a permanent mobile business involves significantly less startup money than a brick and mortar store. However, there are still significant costs you’ll need to account for, such as vehicle acquisition and renovation, necessary mobile retail truck permits and licenses, and other operational costs you’ll need to get going.

And like any business, you’ll face ongoing costs, like ordering new stock. However, according to business owners in the mobile space, it seems that the most expensive cost of a mobile retail store truck is keeping the vehicle on the road: gas, oil changes, new tires, a parking spot, etc.

The benefits of a mobile shop are plenty, but of course, it comes with its own challenges— challenges that you can easily overcome with the right information and tools!

Why Mobile Retail Truck Marketing Works

Mobile retail truck marketing includes everything from experiential marketing showrooms to mobile boutiques and pop up shops. The ability of these types of storefronts to move to event locations and areas in their city with more foot traffic increases the likelihood of bringing in a new first-time customer or demographic.

This marketing approach is so impactful because it provides businesses a fast and flexible solution to promote their brand without being limited to one location, giving brands the opportunity to do everything from build engagement, test new markets and products, build buzz and awareness, and boost visibility and sales. Entrepreneurs understand the need to reach new audiences, but achieving this in person can be difficult without some level of mobility.

Mobile Retail Trucks vs Brick and Mortar Stores

The term “brick-and-mortar” refers to a traditional street-side business that offers goods and services to its customers in an office or store that the business owns or rents. Most businesses are brick and mortar— your local grocery store, nail salon, and corner bank are examples of brick-and-mortar companies, for example.

On the other hand, a mobile business or mobile retail truck is exactly what it sounds like: a business that is mobile, allowing you to travel to provide your products and services to your customers in different locations.

As mentioned before, for owners of mobile retail stores, this model offers versatility, adaptability, and flexibility to remain in operation with low overhead cost.

With food trucks being so successful, the “fashion truck” concept came not long after, with owners hoping that this kind of alternative to brick and mortar would follow the success of regular food trucks.

Not only is “mobile fashion” an alternative to brick and mortar clothing stores, it’s also an alternative to e-commerce, which has gained popularity in recent years. By offering people the opportunity to shop in different kind of vehicles (a food cart, an airstream, a concession trailer, etc.), you’re sure to be staying at the forefront of the latest business ideas.

Pair Your Mobile Retail Campaign with Social Media Marketing

As impactful as in-person marketing experiences are, a successful marketing campaign wouldn’t be complete without social media marketing.

Without much conscious effort, these kinds of creative, experiential events that mobile retail stores on wheels offer make excellent photo-ops and Instagrammable moments that organically bring awareness to the digital space.

In addition to this organic coverage, however, adding your own social media marketing can be that extra touch that brings your promotion to the next level. Hire photographers and videographers or capture your own content for your social channels!

Looking Forward - Your Mobile Retail Store

Hopefully, this article has given you more information about what a mobile retail store is, why they’re worthwhile business options and how they can be used for marketing purposes as much as they can be for a permanent business.

To learn more about the marketing side of mobile retail, contact us. Get your mobile retail store on the road!