The process of making a brand known to the public, usually involving an expensive physical stunt or handing out branded pens that cease working immediately.
What they actually mean
"We are paying £50,000 to rent an empty shop for three days to hand out lukewarm oat milk."
Heard in the wild
"We need a physical brand activation in East London to really drive engagement with Gen Z."
The untraceable sharing of content via private channels, usually consisting of employees messaging each other to ask if the company's new campaign is as embarrassing as they think it is.
Our latest promotional video is getting a lot of traction on dark social, though mostly via encrypted WhatsApp chats.
Translation
People are mocking our brand in private group chats where our tracking pixels cannot find them.
The delicate art of redesigning a corporate logo with a soft leaf motif to divert attention from the fact that the company’s main export is non-recyclable plastic.
"If we sponsor a local beach clean-up with a catchy hashtag, we can successfully greenwash our Q4 distribution metrics."
Translation
"We bought a handful of carbon offsets from an unmonitored woodland in Devon to ease our collective guilt."
A highly versatile verb used to avoid saying the word 'use', thereby making a mundane administrative task sound like physics.
"We need to leverage our existing brand assets to drive deeper organic engagement."
Translation
We are going to send another newsletter.