By: Eric Brouillet
In collaboration with: Josh Socket
From our experiential roots and beyond
VIBRANT has been rooted in Experiential Marketing for quite a while. Live activations have a near and dear place in our hearts. As a collective though, we are growing and have evolved into a full-service commercial marketing firm. We offer custom, a la carte services that extend beyond experiential marketing.
VIBRANT’s expertise extend beyond a single marketing channel to end-to-end marketing design. Strategy, Creative and Branding, Live and Virtual Events, Sales and Trade Marketing, Digital and Content, and Data Collection and Reporting. The goal is to drive and deliver growth with engagement. Brand growth, product awareness growth, sales growth.
As a collective, VIBRANT is capable of bringing your ideas to life with strategy, brand, colour, experience, all the way to sale. It all connects in a cohesive ecosystem. A brand is an experience, be it a physical experience or just an interaction with a touch point, we ensure that all aspects of your brand, product, or service are memorable. Beyond memorability, we design your trade marketing strategy and get feet on the street encouraging sampling, educating potential consumers and driving sales based on the needs of your brand.
What is a Commercially
Integrated Brand Touch Point?
A brand touch point can sometimes feel vague or metaphysical, so we’re going to set it straight. A brand touch point is any part of your brand that interacts physically or digitally with your target audience (or anyone for that matter). In short, it’s a point where your audience and your brand touch. Branding content, digital assets, social media, virtual reality, in person or digital activation, merchandising, packaging, all of it and more counts as a touch point because it interacts with the public. More than anything else, it also represents your brand and requires a consistent message.
When we say we provide end-to-end support, it means we design the strategy, coordinate the product, and ensure it finds its way into the hearts and minds of the people that will drive your sales and growth. And no two products are the same. Every product fits into a different category and requires a specific set of tools and strategy to be successful. Developing a message and tying that message to a product in a matter that drives sales are two different tasks. Understanding your sales channels and the who, what, where, when, why, and how of a path to conversion for a product or a service is a necessary function of a commercial marketing firm.
Being the touch point for your brand and interacting with your retailer and distributor networks is the next step. We can act as a consultancy for you and educate you on how to optimise your sales channels or we can be your sales and merchandising department. As a B2B/B2C agnostic firm, we touch every part of the sales process to ensure the best visibility at the places your products get sold. Commercial integration starts with your branding and messages and travels all the way through your sales process and customer journey to boost your sales.
Principle No. 1: Building Brand Equity
Brand equity is perceptual. What kind of space does a brand occupy in the mind of B2B buyers and B2C consumers? The people who choose what products go on their shelves in retail settings and the people who buy and consume the product as an end-user.
VIBRANT is all about experiences. Digital, social, in-person, events, retail, activations. Experiences don’t need to be in-person and they don’t need to be seen at as media stunts. All of which must be cohesive and all of which must drive home the same messages. But building a brand’s equity doesn’t stop at perception or awareness. For a commercial marketing firm, it’s part of a multi-layered process.
The experience generates memories, positive attitudes, but it also drives engagement with calls to action. Driving that call to action encourages a relationship between the consumer and the brand, and it also encourages sampling and further sales.
Principle No. 2: Commercial Architecture or how to optimize your “route to market”?
Engaging with an audience and building brand equity that occupies space in consumers’ heads needs to happen as part of Commercial Architecture, or the route to market. Understanding who your audience is and building rapport with them is one thing. But learning where they shop, how they shop, and what drives their purchases is an additional piece. Which includes having your products/services where they shop and driving those conversions.
Content, experience, branding, media, they’re all part of a commercial ecosystem. This system links with sales. VIBRANT’s philosophy is that creating a positive experience for consumers and driving engagement should work to create positive sales growth. This also includes having brand ambassadors and salespeople as part of our extended team to get that feet on the street experience. Or into that retail/distributor network. Depending on your product.
Even with the best salesforce, there’s bound to be blind spots or holes. Having VIBRANT as part of your sales team means having a 360-degree view of your sales with reporting technology and a key understanding of that customer journey. It also gives you the ability to fill out those blind spots. One can only dance at one wedding at one time. You can’t be in two places at once. But VIBRANT’s team can be where you need them most with the tools to measure success. The customer journey starts with brand equity and ends with measured success and repeat purchases. Building brand equity isn’t enough on its own.
Case study: Building a community hub for Kronenbourg:
A prime example of this multi-part commercial ecosystem where engagement drove sales is the Project 1664 campaign that VIBRANT got to run with Carlsberg’s brand – 1664 Kronenbourg. 1664 was looking to grow its presence in Toronto and the best way to do so was to leverage our experiential and sales expertise.
For Kronenbourg, we focussed on building a community. We created the 1664 hub on Queen West, a pop-up shop where we partnered with local artists. Artists were able to exhibit their art at the pop-up shop and use it for events, but they also became a part of the 1664 community. We essentially decorated the 1664 Hub with local community art and used the space to host events for local tastemakers. By doing so, we drove emotional, relevant engagement.
Beyond that, there was also a community ambassador who went and encouraged sampling by going to hotels, restaurants, and venues with the right licensing to get them serving Kronenbourg at their venues.
In order to showcase the community, we also developed the ‘Great Taste Guide Booklet’. A book about the local artists who had contributed to decorating the 1664 Hub and making it a community spot. The booklet was entirely content about our new friends and the community and it gave people a sense of the local flavour. The guide booklet was actually given away as a means to drive Kronenbourg sales.
Throughout this journey, we had 30 events hosted at the 1664 Hub by local artists, sponsors and partners. The commercial ecosystem was based around community, social proof, and experiential events. Ultimately the positive engagement and experiences drove sales for Kronenbourg and helped to build a community around Kronenbourg.
Please check out the video case study HERE.
A trusted solution to drive your business
Many brand owners have multiple products or services across multiple categories. To be able to drive total growth with a robust strategy is no small feat. No two categories are the same and it requires a cohesive understanding of the brand, consumer, customer and the sales process. It can be especially challenging when the client’s brands fit into a variety of verticals that may not always feel linked. VIBRANT has the experience and ability to be not only an experiential marketing firm, but a full-service sales and marketing firm. It’s a collective that can create brand engagement, make its way into hearts and minds, and drive sales!