Step into the Activation Hokey Cokey

By Evie Roberts

Sometimes, B2B activation planning takes you right back to the heady days of a musty community hall on a Saturday morning. 

It’s your classmate’s birthday, parents are nattering about chickenpox, while you’re riding the wave of a Jammie Dodger sugar rush. The strains of a familiar song creep out. So you polish off your Pom-Bears, gulp down some squash, and find yourself deep in the throes of the Hokey Cokey.

Except instead of a fun-fuelled three minutes of shaking limbs, it’s a constant juggling act of platforms, channels and tactics. LinkedIn is in, Facebook is out. OOH is in, long form is out. Then you shake it all about and find an article on how everyone in B2B is trying Reddit.

And this could all change fast. Just remember when Elon Musk turned Twitter into X and suddenly the month’s social media campaigns needed slicing and dicing according to the political stance of the brand they were for? Not to mention the impact of the whole will they, won’t-they TikTok and US saga.

Meanwhile in the age of short content for attention-light smartphone addicts, in-person events are back and with new expectations. Less tat, more eco-conscious, useful giveaways. Less standing around mingling, more fancy pants VR games. Less pretty printouts, more fun photo opportunities.

After all, if people are making the effort to attend, you’ve got to make it worth their time. And that might mean trying something different.

That’s what it’s all about

Whether you have rhythm or not, being up for The Activation Hokey Cokey is part of working in marketing. You’ve got to be ready to learn about new platforms. And relearn new uses of the ones you already knew. It feels messy, but it’s also fun. And remember, not everything needs reinventing.

The trick isn’t chasing shiny new formats or clinging to tired defaults. It’s knowing why something works before you put that left leg in or out. Just because everyone’s buzzing about Discord doesn’t mean your CFO audience wants to join a server. Equally, just because roundtables have been around forever doesn’t mean they’re shit (although many are): if they spark debate and drive pipeline, they’re gold. So try new things, but don’t throw out the classics just to prove you’re clever. 

Shake it all about

So, yes. Activations will change. But they’re also our sidekicks in keeping people interested, and our own brains interested in our work. The Hokey Cokey nature of it all make us think differently. A platform’s word counts push us to say things simply. Their time limits encourage us to show things in a smarter way. Their functionalities give us the opportunity to craft fresh experiences.

While the likes of virtual escape rooms, apps, and “that will cost you £400k to make” games will come and go, there’ll always be an opportunity to capture people’s attention and change their behaviours in new, exciting ways. It’s advertising. That’s what it’s all about.