I have no qualms in admitting that I’m a hypocrite. Well, at least as far as advertising and marketing are concerned. I’m an agency man that hates being sold to. I ignore TV commercials, tune out of radio spots, have ad blockers on every device I own, and hate spammy ‘branded’ Facebook content.

But nothing grinds my gears more than activations and experiential marketing, ironically one of the biggest building blocks of my own agency. I just can’t comprehend how someone out there had the brilliant idea that brands should be interrupting people in the public sphere and spamming them in real life too. Evil genius, I tell you.

But alas, as it happens to be, experiential marketing is a very detrimental medium to brands in Pakistan today. Everybody and their cousin are somehow connected to the activation industry. Here’s what they’ve been up to the in the last six months:

The social do-gooders
This is by far the most exciting development in the Pakistani activation industry lately. Inspired by the plethora of branded experience showcasing videos on their proxy-powered YouTubes, Pakistani brand managers seem to have finally realized that an activation needn’t achieve the numbers on ground, and that digital amplification is no longer just a buzzword.

Olper’s was one of the early adopters in this category, and continues their legacy with some really interesting work in Ramazan through their #OlpersMeherban campaign. The idea revolved around a redistribution scheme: food cooked by ‘privileged’ people is distributed to more deserving members of society. Add a pack of milk to each box, and you’ve got a nice little trial and experiential drive sitting squarely on their current ‘table’ campaign.

Next in line is Lifebuoy’s ‘World Class’ Samosa content drive, which is essentially a fictionalized content leg to their tactical activation and trial generation campaign. Taking a straightforward BTL idea (let’s make it easy for people to wash their hands in public places), mixing in a PR angle (unwashed hands equals germs equals sickness), and topping it off with a cute and relevant story made the campaign a hit with over 1.6 million plays on their videos. It’s virality like this that is all set to challenge traditional BTL number crunching.

Hot on the bandwagon was Brooke Bond Supreme with their Eid ke Musafir campaign, which was based on a rather ingenious realisation that Pakistani trains are super slow. By interacting with travelers from a station of origin and asking about their wish lists, Supreme was able to arrange the items – tablets, bikes, umrah tickets, and the like – in time for their disembarking at the final station. Simple, effective, and highly shareable, the expressions that came out of the activation were rather nice, though quite reminiscent of similar executions by Coke’s Open Happiness campaign in markets overseas.

Trapping the mall rats
Once the crème de la crème of activation channels, innovative experiential campaigns at malls have been few and far between lately. Skyrocketing rental prices for space at malls coupled with stricter rules and regulations enforced by the authorities have made mall activation a true test of brands and agencies’ BTL muscles. Nonetheless, this also presents a golden opportunity for those who do have the will to capture this channel as both the increasing footfall and venues available for activities make this channel quite the prestige point.

The most distinct example of late is the Sunsilk Dreams platform executed primarily in malls and extended to other public locations as well. The underlying idea of a makeover was nothing to write home about, but the finesse in production and execution made the activation a real head-turner. A wall of user-submitted dreams written on colorful post-its gave the platform a uniquely intimate feel, whilst digitally augmented photo ops and customer engagement points made the makeover quite an interesting affair.

Sunsilk's 'makeover' van.

A decidedly more interesting instance is the Sprite Street Challenge, a thematic activation campaign whereby audiences were engaged from point of purchase to a series of innovative games designed around street culture and rewarded accordingly. What I loved about this activity was the complexity of its execution and successful avoidance of clichéd games. A bunch of random wires going into a ball pit? Check. Spray painting tags? Check. Even the gifts were interesting, the bright yellow Hummer bikes and guitars were not something you typically see in the gift list of mall activities.

Another activation that I feel was able to create a thematic impact was Zong’s BizXcess 4G activation. (Full disclosure: I was involved in the planning of this activity.) In line with their F1 themed campaign, we created an interactive setup whereby the audience was able to sit in a cocoon of TV screens that mimicked the experience of sitting in a racecar as the track buzzes by from all sides. Add in a little tech magic via screen mirroring and we were able to give an interactive demo of the 4G services while the customers interacted with an F1-inspired racing wheel retrofitted with a 4G-enabled tablet.

Another big activation that had mall-goers very excited was the Lux rose themed campaign. Using larger than life displays made from thousands of fake pink roses, the activation area was turned into a huge photo-op with periodic bursts of fragrance giving audiences a multi-sensory experience of the product’s proposition. While walkthrough activations are a pretty standard affair, this activation even managed to integrate escalators into the setup, crafting a very immersive experience for their audiences. Even though Capri did something similar a couple of years ago with real roses, the scale and attention to detail in this activation made it one of the highlights of Pakistani BTL executions in recent months.

Unfortunately, apart from the usual grapevine channels, there are no exhaustive online archives of BTL activities. And behind the jaded ad man getup, I’m still a relative newbie in the rapidly expanding experiential marketing industry of Pakistan. Hence, there might still be some other interesting activation campaigns that I may not be aware of. Can you think of any? Share in the comments below!

Umair Kazi is a partner at Ishtehari. umair@ishtehari.com