How to Make Your B2B Brand Activation Stand Out

Unique trends for attracting attendees, engaging your audience, and maximizing business investments are essential in today’s landscape. In today’s fast-paced world, people are flooded with endless information. To cut through the clutter, B2B brands are taking a page from the B2C playbooks and venturing into innovative activations to capture precious moments of their audience’s attention. The world’s foremost brands are reinvesting in their exhibitions, activations, and third-party experiences. Industry giants converge at flagship events, and the pressure to participate and make a memorable impact is palpable. Events like CES, SXSW, and Mobile World Congress transcend the boundaries of convention centers, transforming entire cities into immersive environments in which brands engage with their audiences through captivating, entertaining, and informative touchpoints.

Inside the expo booth or outside the convention center, successful companies take their brand identities and shape them into tangible environments, stimulating all five senses to evoke powerful emotions from the audience. The ultimate mark of success extends beyond presence; it involves reimagining the essence of a brand in creative and unexpected ways, bringing it to life in the third dimension to welcome attendee engagement, media impressions, and viral social media moments to generate an elevated return on investment. We’ve curated a list of trends and tactics to help your brand stand out among a sea of activations. Let’s dig in.

AI and Tech

AI is captivating the event industry, and it's leading to sophisticated activations that combine cutting-edge technology and surprise-and-delight moments. AI experiences should be authentic, tangible, and intuitive. Most importantly, they should complement the brand's essence through storytelling, value proposition integration, and emotional connectivity. Some engaging examples include:

• Brain-scanning technology turns thoughts into words
• The Dreamkeeper and other AI dream imagery turn written dream descriptions into images
• AI-enhanced photo booths give attendees a captivating, themed visual that echoes the spirit of your event
• Movie-scene activations to make your attendees the star of the show
• XR (extended reality) simulations like climbing walls, racing simulators, and product demos
• Holographic technology for speakers and entertainment

Art and Environment

Attendees crave immersive experiences where they can lose themselves in another world. While this isn’t a novel aspiration for event leaders, new creative trends provide a vibrant backdrop for brand activations. In 2024, psychedelic and Y2K aesthetics, maximalism, and whimsy will drive the creative landscape. Take it from leading brands like Jell-O, Pepsi, and Slurpee, who recently opted for bold rebranding.

Some environmental trends that are top of mind for us include:

• Color trends that evoke emotions, like Color Marketing Group’s 2024 Key Colors Connection, Follow Me!, Busco!, and Azoic
• Immersive art installations, like Artechouse and Wisdome
• Psychedelic designs and exploratory spaces like Meow Wolf, Hopscotch, and teamLab
• Vertical expansion with two-story builds, floating rigged decor, slides, and dynamic lighting
• Grand entrances to lure attendees in, like TikTok’s SXSW party
• Unexpected shapes and settings like in-the-round spaces, tents, and inflatable spaces

Sustainability and CSR

In an increasingly value-driven society, consumers invest in brands that reflect their values through messaging and action. With consumers feeling it is more difficult to live according to their values, the brands that look forward, anticipate, identify, and help close the values-behavior gap will flourish and create more meaningful relationships with their customers. A few value-led sustainability and CSR activation approaches include:

• Builds using sustainable materials (mushrooms are all the rage)
• Give-back activities like tree-planting games or clean water-giving projects
• Climate-positive activities where attendees generate energy to offset the event’s footprint
• Programs that reward attendees for their sustainability efforts, such as initiatives where participants contribute to environmental cleanup

Summary of Activation Trends