Hey artist, have you been seeing a lot of on-site brand activations on your Instagram lately? With the festivities right around the corner, brands want to curate a unique and memorable experience for their customers who’re shopping for the season. It’s one of the most exciting things we get to do as artists, while I share a lot of pictures from the events on our Instagram, I thought I’ll demystify the BTS for you today
On-Site brand activations are when brands or businesses hire an artist to be on the site and create custom personalized gifts for their guests or clients. We at The Bombay Lettering Company offer personalization in the form of engraving, calligraphy and bottle painting as well!
Now if you’re wondering why brands run such activations, let me take you through it…
1. Brand activations create a memorable experience for the customers, it shows that the brand went the extra mile to create a personalized product.
2. Who doesn’t love seeing their names written beautifully, especially right in front of them. And while this is something mundane for us because we see it day in and day out, others find it very fascinating. It’s one of my greatest joys to see a smile on the customer’s face as they enjoy the process of personalization and see the final product.
3. If you’re hired for events where there are influencers or even happy customers, it’ll increase the brand's social media presence because they may just share their products or snippets of the personalization process on Instagram.
4. This may not hold true for all range of products but such activations also help in increasing traffic to the store which can generate higher sales. This is more applicable for products in a lower range because the complementary service can be a driving decision whereas for high-end products, this is aimed to create a beautiful experience than driving sales
A question that we get asked very often is how can we as artists reach out to these brands to get such gigs.
The first way to go about it is to identify luxury brands in your city who may want to hire you for such activations. You can then try to connect with their marketing team and see if they have any such requirements.
Secondly, of course, these luxury brands don’t have outlets in all cities, in that case, you can reach out to local brands and stores and pitch your services to them. This may be a very new thing and you may have to be persistent to reach out to a couple of stores before you can actually land a gig!
PS: Be sure to reach out to brands with a deck listing your services along with beautiful pictures of your work!
One thing to understand is your role as an on-site artist and the value you bring to the brand. You want to engage the customers in a good conversation with a forthcoming attitude, taking them through the entire process and making it a very smooth experience. Happy customers write to the brand about how they loved the personalized products which validates the marketing team's effort to bring in artists for on-site activations.
It's crucial to understand that on-site work is different from client commissions that we usually work on. If you're present in a store, you'll be under a time constraint to do it quickly and in front of the customers. But when done correctly, it brings life to the entire event.
Would you be interested in offering your services for on-site activations?
- Yes (Fill the form below)
- No
We're trying to put together a network of artists so if we get any requests for brand activations and I'm already booked for the day, I can pass them on to another artist. Fill out the form below and our team will connect with you if a requirement arises.
Hope this gives you an insight into this world, if you have any questions or DM's, drop them in the comments or write to us at contact@bombaylettering.com and we'll be happy to answer them for you!