How does your agency ensure its work aligns to a client’s broader business and brand strategy? 

Activation Union exists to bridge the gap between brand ambition, retail reality, and shopper behaviour. We start every brief by interrogating the client’s commercial objectives and brand strategy - not just the activation task. Our approach, called “From Intent to Impact”, translates upstream brand intent into downstream activation impact.

Our model is built on matching agendas - between brand, retailer, and shopper - to ensure every activation drives shared value. We interpret brand strategy through commercial and customer lenses, identifying the behaviours, occasions and conversion moments that move the dial. This thinking shaped our “Owning the Moment” framework. We translate the brand ambition into a retail and shopper strategy that educates shopper, elevates the category, and creates joint value and conversion with retail partners.

Strategic principle:
1: Start with business intent.

2: Match agendas 'Three-way win' (brand x retailer x shopper).

3: Translate into activation impact that sells and is scalable.

Example – Johnnie Walker “Blue Room”. We aligned Diageo’s luxury positioning to a retail context by creating a world-first retail experience that delivered on premiumisation, education & awareness and sales conversion. From conceptual design and visualisation through to data capture and ongoing conversations with the customer, every element of the campaign laddered up to the brand’s “Keep Walking” purpose and luxury principles while driving measurable sales, driving footfall and recruitment into the Johnnie Walker Blue + above range.

What is your approach to tailoring strategies across different channels (on-premise, shopper, experiential) and across a multi-brand portfolio?

We reject the old model of siloed channels. We design activations as connected TTL ecosystems, not channels in isolation. Today, On-Premise, shopper and experiential are all connected by data and behaviour. Our approach is to build “ecosystem platforms for multi-brands”  ideas that flex to each channel’s role but share one data spine and creative idea. We don’t create campaigns. We build systems of activation that can scale across brands, customers, and different channels.

Our “Union Model” unites our expertise in Retail and Experiential capabilities with strategic partners with industry leading expertise in technology, data and loyalty under a single strategic spine - so the idea flexes by context but stays consistent in purpose.

On-Premise: Build advocacy and occasion ownership through immersive experiences, staff engagement and sensory storytelling.

Shopper: Translate brand narrative into category navigation, retail theatre and data-driven conversion tools.

Experiential: Create culturally-led experiences that earn attention and feed CRM and loyalty pipelines.

How do you integrate consumer insights and category trends into your activation strategies?

We believe in the principle of “insights that sell.” Data alone isn’t insight until it’s made actionable in-store, on-premise, or at shelf. Our approach combines shopper decision-tree analysis, category mapping and behavioural data to identify friction and opportunity along the purchase journey – then design interventions that convert at the moment of choice or purchase. We translate category trends into creative tools retailers can actually use to sell more.

We combine behavioural data, category insight, and on-ground shopper observations to ensure creative earns its commercial keep. We partner with data-driven agencies to enrich shopper data with machine-learning tools, enabling us to plan activations where the brand’s growth audience physically shops or socialises. 

Describe your experience supporting NPD launches or major brand campaigns (‘big bets’). How did you ensure activity was strategically aligned, scalable, and drove measurable outcomes

Our approach to NPD is establishing a brand experience platform that can scale across markets, formats, and retailers.  Every 'Big Bet' starts with a foundational idea that can flex from hero to local execution. We design launch systems that define the occasion, link it to shopper need states, and provide retail toolkits that translate easily across on ground field teams, retailer banners, and partners. 

How do you balance delivering short-term activation results with supporting long-term brand building and portfolio growth?

Activation Union is built on the belief that “experience is the new loyalty.” Every activation is both a brand moment and a data moment – designed to drive immediate trial or purchase but also capture insight for ongoing engagement. The best activations build brands up, because they earn the right for the activity to be repeated. 

We track participants, preferences, and purchase triggers to inform the next campaign, enabling a compound effect over time. You could say we build activations that perform in the moment but plan for the long game. Our frameworks are designed for short-term return and long-term value.

We do this through:

•    Occasion-led planning: linking short-term occasions to long-term brand positioning.

•    Data capture and feedback loops: every activation fuels CRM and retail intelligence.

•    Retailer collaboration: building evergreen joint ongoing platforms rather than one-off campaigns.