Unlike above-the-line promotions, below-the-line (BTL) activities are more niche. Your activities are well-targeted compared to TV commercials wherein they are targeting a broader audience through a one-way communication channel. BTL activations let you engage and interact with your consumers face-to-face. You get to witness their behaviors and reactions towards your brand – a great opportunity to understand them and gather first-hand information and insight.
What’s nice with BTL activities is that you get to build personal connections with your consumers. By making brands present in events, locations, and other touchpoints that resonate to them, you are able to strengthen your brand intimacy and relevance within this target consumer group. More often than not, this is the more preferred advertising tactic of brand with budget constraints as it is a more financially-efficient avenue to connect to consumers.
I’ve also had experiences in implementing BTL activities especially when I was working with start-up companies. The activities I’ve launched range from direct selling promotions, beauty pageants, school sampling, and even detailing to doctors. Here are just some samples:
Lysol Liquid Hand Soap School Activation (2013-2015)
Philippines
Lysol’s equity in the Philippines is very strong in home care and disinfection. It is actually perceived as very harsh by consumers because of its market leadership in disinfectants. With the aim to become present in categories where germ-protection is relevant, Lysol Liquid Hand Soap was launched to expand the portfolio of the brand to personal care.
But with the “harsh”perception haloing on our brand, the major task is to “soften” this by making the brand’s image more nurturing and caring. This was addressed through a school activation wherein we educated pre-school and grade school children about the importance of hand washing. By making these kids use the product, we were able to establish that using Lysol Hand Soap is actually very safe as kids use them in school to wash their hands.
To make the activity more fun and engaging to children, we made use of Lyle and Sonny to teach them the proper way of hand washing. Jingles, animated videos, mascots, and even comic books were given out as brand reminders.
The activity was able to hit 50,000++ school children per year in Metro Manila.
Lysol Liquid Hand Soap Medical Marketing (2014-2015)
Philippines
In the US, Lysol is known as the most recommended disinfectant brand by Pediatricians. To ride on to that image, the brand conducted round-table discussions and one-on-one detailing to pediatricians and gynecologists to spread word-of-mouth among these healthcare professionals with the hopes of them also influencing their patients. Brand leave-behinds and other educational materials were placed in their clinics to act as reminders their patient base, which are mostly mothers.
SkinWhite Girls (2012)
Indonesia, Myanmar
Anchoring on the skin whitening craze in Asia, SkinWhite Indonesia and Myanmar launched the SkinWhite Girls campaign to engage with and encourage teens to start their beauty regimen early with SkinWhite.
Various activities like an on-ground event, magazine amplification, billboard and transit ads, were implemented to create hype and buzz about the brand.
Boy Abunda for Splash Direct Sales (2011)
To make its presence known in the Direct Selling industry, Splash Direct Sales partnered with Boy Abunda because of his humble and inspiring story. The team launched his endorsement through a national conference attended by more than 500 direct sales dealers at Resortsworld, Manila.
FATIMA ESPINEDA 