And After the Activation? Why 80% of Brands Don’t Really Know What Happened in Their Bars
- Claire Brunaud
- Oct 10
- 2 min read
Every summer, it’s the same story.
A brand launches a new beer, a spirit, or a premium soft drink. The trade marketing team designs a great activation: POS materials, incentives, happy hours, social media… and a month later, everyone asks the same question:
👉 “So, did it work?”
And that’s where things get blurry.
The Post-Activation Black Hole
In the foodservice industry, most brands stop at the execution phase. Once bars are equipped and staff are briefed, it’s on to the next campaign.
But very few actually measure what really happened in the field.
As a result:
80% of activations are never analyzed beyond digital impressions or the number of venues reached,
marketing teams rely on subjective feedback (“it went well!”),
and ROI remains a mystery.
Why? Because bar sales data is fragmented, inaccessible, or simply nonexistent for most brands.
Receipts stay buried in POS systems and never resurface in a usable format.
Without Data, There’s No Learning
A bar activation without measurement is like a tasting without feedback.
You know something happened… but not whether it made a real impact on consumption.
Take this example:
A gin brand activates 300 bars in Paris over the summer.
Objective: boost gin & tonic sales.
Without tracking, it’s impossible to know:
whether sales actually increased,
which bars outperformed (and why),
whether cocktail format or price played a role,
or even if customers substituted another spirit for this one.
In other words, you spend without learning.
Post-Activation: Where the Real ROI Happens
This is precisely where data changes everything.
With real-time sales tracking via connected POS systems, brands can finally see, compare, and understand.
Thanks to Fyre and its Activation Monitor module, teams can:
track sales in activated bars (vs a control group),
measure daily performance,
identify the most effective levers (POS materials, pricing, format, product mix),
and quickly adjust their campaigns.
This approach turns activation into a continuous learning loop: test, measure, adapt, improve.
Concrete Insights, Not Guesswork
The example of Coca-Cola during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games speaks for itself.
Thanks to Fyre, the brand was able to:
track sales across 7,000 points of sale,
monitor execution live in the field,
compare different activation strategies,
and focus efforts on the top-performing hotspots.
In short: no more waiting for distributor or sales team reports — the truth lies in the data.
What If Every Activation Became a Learning Opportunity?
In a fragmented on-trade market, knowing what really happened after an activation is a strategic advantage.
Brands that master post-activation analysis move the fastest, because they turn every campaign into actionable knowledge.
Measure. Understand. Replicate.
Activation is good.
But knowing what it truly delivered is what creates value.
And with tools like Fyre Activation Monitor, brands can finally close the loop between execution and performance — and turn every campaign into a measurable growth driver.
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