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Brand activation and experiential agency in Romania
A brand activation agency gives people a reason to meet a brand in person: a pop-up, a launch event, a stunt in the street or something to do in a store. It also plans what gets filmed that day, so the activation keeps working on social and in the press after the last guest has gone home. The trade calls the same work experiential, BTL or events. Tuio, a creative agency in Bucharest, has made activations for Starbucks, Uber, P&G, Sony, ARTE and Yves Rocher. BOOcharest, our haunted Halloween rides for Uber, was named a Webby Honoree in 2024, and the first run of EAU de PSL, the perfume we launched for Starbucks Romania with a 60+ guest event, was gone in 2 days.
Our activations, with the numbers
Six activations from 2015 to 2025 and what each one did:
- Webby Honoree 2024 for Uber BOOcharest, in Installation or Experience. On 28 and 29 October 2023 an Uber ride in Bucharest could become a haunted tour: 4 haunted destinations and 20 minutes of stories narrated by actress Maia Morgenstern.
- 60+ guests, 30+ of them influencers and celebrities, at the EAU de PSL launch for Starbucks Romania on 15 September 2025. From the next day 10,000 free minis went to Starbucks Rewards members in 60+ stores, and new Rewards members per day rose 300% in the first days.
- 422,884 estimated OOH exposures in three days for the ZzzQuil LED van we parked under Jennifer Lopez’s concert billboards for P&G in July 2025, plus 360,102 tracked views on Instagram.
- 116 confirmed RSVPs in Bucharest and 70 in Chișinău for the ARTE.tv launch premieres in September 2025. The two nights brought 23 Instagram stories from 17 creators and a second wave of 21 media mentions.
- 212 pieces of content from the first three of the four Saturday DJ parties we threw for Sony ULT in Bucharest in 2025, by Sony’s own tracking.
- 20,000+ connections in the first 30 days on the free WiFi we put across Mamaia for Coca-Cola in 2015. The password was a selfie of you kissing a Coca-Cola bottle.
What a brand activation can look like
An activation can be a party, a vehicle, a room or a bike, as long as people do something with the brand while they’re there.
Pop-ups and launch events are the classic form. For the 2024 Pumpkin Spice Latte launch we found a cornfield outside Bucharest, cut a square out of the middle and turned a caravan into a secret Starbucks. A year later EAU de PSL got a real fragrance launch at the Starbucks in Promenada Mall, hosted by Nicole Cherry, with a photo wall, a display case and a 50 ml bottle for every guest.
A vehicle takes the activation to the people. The ZzzQuil van stopped under the “Up All Night” billboards and asked, on its screens, whether Bucharest really planned to stay awake all night. For ARTE.tv’s Black Friday, “The Best Offer” put three 10-second spots on a video van that drove 378 km around Bucharest on 29 and 30 November 2025. With Uber the ride itself was the activation, in BOOcharest and in Uber Pink, our concept of Barbie-branded rides in Romania and Poland on the day the Barbie film premiered.
Three more formats we’ve run:
- A party series: Sony’s Bass Therapy was a free daytime DJ party every Saturday from 21 June to 12 July 2025, each in a different Boiler cafe in Bucharest.
- In store: for Christmas 2018 we parked the Tricobicicleta outside Yves Rocher stores. You pedal, a knitting machine knits, and you walk off with a gift you made.
- An immersive room: the 3D map we built for Oral-B iO Monumental Care became a projected flight through restored Bucharest buildings at MINA, the Museum of Immersive New Art, on both Romanian Design Week weekends in 2024, with a voice-over we scripted.
How we plan an activation
We settle the place, the rules and the footage before anything else. Recently that meant:
- A place that carries the idea. Nobody would look for a Starbucks in a cornfield. The ZzzQuil van only made sense under J.Lo’s billboards, and on concert day it stood at a spot our scouts picked. ARTE got a premiere instead of a press conference.
- The rules up front. ZzzQuil Natura is a food supplement, so every screen line followed the brand’s TV line, “E natural să…” (It’s natural to…). We had proposed sticker hostesses too, but stickers take at least two weeks and we had days, so they went.
- Content planned with the event. The cornfield guests had photo and video crews for the whole day, and a drone filmed the dancers from above. For the ARTE premieres we made the invites, a 17-file on-screen package, the photo wall and four aftermovie cuts.
- Creators on the guest list. We invited creators to every Sony party, at no extra cost to Sony.
- A way to count, set before the day. The ZzzQuil van had a counting system for the people, cars and buses passing within about 20 m, and ARTE’s posters and van carried QR codes. P&G had our ZzzQuil report six days after the van first parked.
The activation lasts a day, the content much longer
The guests see an activation once and the footage reaches everyone else, so we plan the reel, the creators and the press with the event. What the cornfield guests shot on 5 September 2024 became the campaign, posted by Starbucks Romania on Instagram on 12, 15, 17 and 19 September. The ZzzQuil van was filmed at 09:43 on 25 July 2025, and by 18:49 the footage was a reel on @bucuresti, a big Bucharest Instagram page, where it got 205,173 views.
For Sony we ran the PR in-house, and launch-week monitoring found 24 web articles and 7 social posts. BOOcharest made the news on Observator, Antena 1 and Kanal D, and EAU de PSL was covered by 10+ outlets in Romania, the US, Italy and Poland. Creators and social are planned from the first draft too: see influencer marketing and social media.
Frequently asked questions
What does a brand activation agency do?
It comes up with a reason for people to meet a brand in person, then makes it happen: the idea, the place, the build, the guests, the content shot on the day and the report afterwards. For Starbucks Romania we hid a Pumpkin Spice Latte pop-up in a cornfield outside Bucharest in 2024, and what the guests shot there became the season's PSL posts.
What is the difference between BTL, experiential marketing and a brand activation?
BTL (below the line) covers marketing outside mass media: promotions, sampling, in-store work and events. Experiential marketing is the part of it where people take part in something. A brand activation is the campaign moment that gets them to do it. The Yves Rocher knitting bike in front of the stores was BTL in its simplest form. The Uber BOOcharest rides were experiential: you got in the car and the city turned haunted.
How long does it take to prepare an activation?
It depends on what has to be built. The ZzzQuil van went from our first note to the street in 9 days. EAU de PSL needed a perfume made from scratch: 6 to 8 weeks from green light to finished bottle, before the launch event on 15 September 2025.
Can you run activations outside Bucharest, or in Moldova?
Yes. For ARTE.tv we ran a premiere in Chișinău, at ARTCOR on 12 September 2025: 70 confirmed RSVPs and three TV stations. Coca-Cola's free WiFi covered Mamaia on the Black Sea coast, EAU de PSL ran in Bulgaria too, and Uber Pink, our concept, ran in Romania and Poland.
Do you handle approvals and permits?
Yes. Where a public or private space needs authorisation, we get it, working directly with the authorities or through specialised partners. Approvals for the content are part of the plan too: on ZzzQuil every screen line had to fit the rules for food supplements, and P&G approved the frames before the van went out.
How do you measure an activation?
Against the goal in the brief, with counting built into the activation. The ZzzQuil van estimated 422,884 OOH exposures in three days, against a baseline counted on the three days before. ARTE.tv's posters and van got 1,915 QR scans from 15 November to 15 December 2025, and EAU de PSL ran through Starbucks Rewards so the hype would show up as sign-ups we could count.
How much does a brand activation cost?
At Tuio, anything from social retainers under €1,000 a month up to six-figure integrated campaigns. The scope moves the number far more than the agency does. For an activation, scope means the venue and build, how many days and cities, talent and creators, crews on the day, and any media behind the content.
Let’s make something unboring together!
Tell us about your launch, or the place you’d like to take over, through our contact form. We answer within one working day.