University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The Activation Imperative
Book

The Activation Imperative

How to Build Brands and Business by Inspiring Action

William Rosen and Laurence Minsky
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2018
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Well Structured
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

In today’s fragmented marketing landscape, advertisers must choose among social media, print, broadcast, mobile, Internet and database marketing – and more. Despite this expanding complexity, consumers expect a seamless experience across all marketing channels. Marketing experts William Rosen and Laurence Minsky offer the “Activation Imperative Method” for achieving “cross-functional synergies” in all of your promotional efforts across every channel. The text shows marketers how to leverage and align various media channels to enhance the impact of their marketing and offers a logical, helpful approach to consumer-centric marketers.

Summary

“Brand Activation”

To compete effectively, marketers should consolidate their long-term brand-building activities and their short-term sales-building activities. The brand activation approach transcends traditional brand-building. While essential, brand-building alone is no longer sufficient. Adding brand activation moves your marketing from telling consumers “what a brand is” to explaining “what a brand does.”  

Brand activation’s goal is achieving measurable behavioral change among high-value consumers – an absolutely critical audience. Astute marketers organize brand-building activities to encompass all relevant marketing tools, techniques and specialized activation disciplines.

These channels incorporate traditional advertising with newer forms of shopper, mobile, social media, digital, experiential and direct or database marketing to increase sales, build customer loyalty and improve return on investment (ROI).

Modern marketers can employ a diverse array of tools and technologies in their communication and branding efforts. To be effective, marketers must master, employ and align all these tools, and to achieve maximum integration...

About the Authors

William Rosen, CEO at VSA Partners, a branding and marketing firm, is a former president and chief creative officer at Arc Worldwide, the global marketing arm of Leo Burnett Worldwide. Laurence Minsky, associate advertising professor at Columbia College, Chicago, authored or co-authored many books, including How to Succeed in Advertising When All You Have Is Talent.

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