This was a high-investment activation in a high-traffic location. It was outside the Vancouver Convention Centre, where cruise ship traffic comes through. There was a branded tent or trailer, a roped-off activation area, and enough production that you could tell real money had gone into it. We were told the trailer had been moved across Canada as part of a tour.
But there were too few approved samples for the event. The samples ran out almost immediately. This was supposed to be a multi-hour activation, but for most of the event we had no product, no merchandise, and nothing approved to give people who kept walking up.
A client recap could easily say the activation was staffed, the footprint was executed, and all approved samples were distributed. All of that would be technically true. But the real field experience was different: the brand had paid for a visible setup in a busy location, and the team had nothing left to offer the people it attracted.
The best practice:
Brands need direct field verification for experiential campaigns. Do not rely only on the agency recap. Require depletion timing, field staff notes, and a clear record of what happened after samples ran out, because “all samples were distributed” does not tell the client whether the activation actually worked.