Brand Marketing

See how messaging plays a role in advertising

Brand Marketing
The key implication of that whole edifice of twentieth-century brand theory is another formula:

BRAND MARKETING = MESSAGING That is hardly surprising when it was invented by people who wrote adverts. Advertising in its formative press, poster and radio stages was used to deliver messages. When TV advertising came along, these uses continued (for instance soap powder advertising) but it also became popular to use little dramas (like soap operas in advertising). These were still thought of as delivering a message, but a message about the image or personality.

Look at any ad agency creative brief today and you will usually find a box that asks what the message (proposition, key thought, benefit, promise etc.) should be. JWT finesses this slightly by asking what the desired response should be. But none that I know went as far as we used at St Luke’s, in having no such heading about messages. Our brief used to ask WHY? (the client problem) and HOW? (what sort of idea might solve it – for instance the brief for the IKEA Chuck Out Your Chintz ad suggested “furniture feminism”). Looking back I am not sure it was wise to leave out all consideration of target audience. That was in reaction to an account planning tradition in London that smothered everything in cloying qualitative group “insights”. Daft, but fun at the time!

This messaging in a standard agency brief could focus on any of the brand ingredients, as we have already seen: communicating a distinctive product benefit or set of benefits (USP); communicating (i.e. displaying) a distinctive identity: name, logo, design; communicating distinctive emotional brand values.

Once again, you may be wondering: “What on earth is wrong with that?” Well, for a start it simply does not describe today’s brand activities. Where is the “messaging” in any of the following? A brand experience event. Thought leadership publishing. Customer training courses and seminars. The rich, searchable information on a website. The brand as author of new language/terms. User groups, communities and fan sites. The countdown to a launch or event. Rumours, gossip, word of mouth. Helplines, call centres. Viral emails and promotions. It is possible to measure the results of these activities in terms of brand image, perceived benefits and awareness. But it is pretty stupid to do so, because they do not work like passive TV ads or static design. They are interactive, involving, part of culture “out here”.

The only thing more stupid than measuring this sort of activity as if it were advertising is scripting it, to try to make it as consistent as possible, in the process squeezing the life out of whatever “live” event or interaction there could have been. Sound familiar? That is what I mean about the danger of applying an old theory to new marketing. But it is more than a theoretical issue. It is a conflict between different ways of doing the same thing . . .

1.3 Protestant vs Catholic:
The Battle for Brand Theory Wherever marketing is discussed – in agencies, marketing departments, research companies and boardrooms – there are two schools of thought: Catholic: keep the faith. All this new-fangled nonsense is all very well. But there have always been stunts, promotions and so on. And surely the World Wide Web turned out to be nothing but a big mail-order system? The only thing that matters when it comes to building brands is big TV campaigns. Just look at the great stuff being done by advertisers like Apple, Honda and Bud Light. The rest is all small change.

Protestant: stop the rot. Image branding doesn’t work any more. Many of the old TV-advertised brands are on their knees – Coca-Cola, Kodak, General Motors . . . Ad agencies are all too quick to take the credit for successes that were nothing to do with advertising – like the iPod. And what happened to all those dotcoms who drank the ad agency Kool Aid? The power brands today aren’t image brands and often aren’t established by advertising either: eBay, Red Bull, Harley, Google . . .

You may think I am exaggerating? Let’s review some real comments. First, the Catholic, keep the faith view:

My recent book draws upon cultural theories and historical research to rethink how consumer brands are built. My research demonstrates that brand icons are built by targeting symbolic fault lines in the nation’s culture. Much like those actors, politicians and sports stars who become cultural icons, iconic brands use advertising to author stories that help a nation’s citizens manage their identities in the face of challenging shifts in society.

This is an interesting development. The post-tradition and custom society – with symbolic fault lines and difficulties in managing identity – was a part of the justification I used in The New Marketing Manifesto. Professor Holt is using the same insights to justify an old-fashioned (in my view) advertising approach.

Now the protestant, stop the rot school: Volkswagen arrived in the U.S. in 1949, the same year Doyle Dane Bernbach was founded. Over the next decade, Volkswagen generated many favorable stories in the press, including a glowing review in Consumer Reports. By 1959, Volkswagen was the largest selling imported car in America. That year Volkswagen sold 119 899 cars, which represented 20% of the import car market. The next year “Think small,” DDB’s first ad for Volkswagen, ran and the rest is history. As powerful as the advertising was, Doyle Dane Bernbach didn’t actually start from scratch. Nor should they have. Advertising needs the credibility created by publicity. Volkswagen advertising did what advertising does best. Take a fast brand and make it even more successful.

This is a great rhetorical retaliation: were the theories that ad agencies peddle ever true? Look back at all the iconic brands from yesteryear and you will usually find a New Marketing reason for the success (e.g. word of mouth) and an agency taking the credit, even though its showy advertising often appeared after the event.

A similar point is made by a careful consideration of another classic case for image advertising. Nike’s real launch idea – a cultural platform that propelled it from a million-dollar specialist athletic shoe company to a billion-dollar consumer business – was jogging. Not only did the company benefit from this craze, jogging was invented by Oregon sports coach Bill Bowerman, one of the Nike founders:

In the early 1960s, Bowerman took his team to run against a team from New Zealand. While there, he noticed townspeople running, just for the joy and convenience and fitness it offered. He brought that experience back to Eugene and started the country’s first running club. Then he wrote a book about how to run for fun and fitness. He called it Jogging, and the running boom was born.

Fun though all this sparring may be, I doubt that the argument will be settled by arguments. It is a paradigm shift. Some will cling on to past notions. Others will trumpet the new theory, in which not only the conclusions but also what is studied change. One may win out in the long run. It is far from decided. Both sides think they are right.

The argument is about vested interests. Some ad agencies, direct marketing and design agencies feel motivated to cling to a messaging model because it justifies their kind of idea, and their lion’s share of the budget. Other agencies – PR, sponsorship, promotion, internet, media, CRM, advertiser-funded content, talent agencies, event, brand experience and so on – can tend to favour New Marketing because it better describes and argues for their sort of marketing.

But I have met plenty of people in ad agencies devoted to new models, and just as many people in integrated agencies who don’t feel comfortable until the brief (and preferably any external communication) has a sloganstyle selling proposition.

Their clients seem equally undecided. It is not as simple as “cool” clients favouring new approaches, or “traditional” clients sticking to tried-andtested formulae. Levi Strauss seems to believe that TV ads are the only thing that drives its business. That is unlikely to be the only reason its sales have declined for eight consecutive years, wiping out $3 billion in annual revenues. Yet you do have to wonder about what Einstein said – that doing the same thing over and over, in the hope of a different result, is insanity. Kenny Wilson, brand president for Levi’s Europe, said of the company’s new TV advertising:

“It demonstrates independence and freedom of thought. Young people appreciate the fact that it’s not the same as anything else on television.” Levi’s is hoping the £21 million campaign will help reverse a seven-year decline, which has seen its sales plummet by 42 per cent.18 And while cool brands can be conservative, there are advocates of radical approaches in unlikely (by reputation at least) quarters, notably P&G, whose CEO A.G. Lafley said:

We’re testing a lot of alternatives to television advertising. So I don’t want my businesses to lock down too precise a number because I want them to have their minds open [that] there may be better ways to communicate convincingly to consumers than just turn on the tube.

It is hard to resist noting that (in contrast to Levi’s) P&G was entering its fifth year of strong growth in revenues and profit, even before the Gillette merger. Coincidence?

Summary of Chapter 1: Challenges to the Old
Model of Branding There has been a shift from brand image marketing to brand inovation: more interactive, involving, authentic and dynamic. These two paradigms are not just alternative methods, they are competing views of how brands work. This development seemed to happen for a number of reasons: It was an advance, the development of new creative approaches. There is a surfeit of old-style messaging and advertising resistance. It was a response to the opportunities to use new media channels. These new channels have also inspired new ideas of what is possible in the old channels. It reflects a shift in who is doing brand marketing, towards media, services, retail. It responded to more dynamic, fast-evolving business strategies. It responded to change and uncertainty in people’s lifestyle choices, needing new ideas to live by. The old theory of branding was summarised by Peter Doyle as:

S = P × D × AV

Strong brand = product benefits × distinct identity × added values A brand marketing programme would thus be aimed at: Communicating a distinctive product benefit or set of benefits (USP). Communicating a distinctive identity: name, logo, look and feel, personality. Communicating distinctive emotional brand values.

Historically all of the terms of this equation were introduced by advertising people. And there is a suspicion that they say more about a certain sort of advertising than about brands. There is a schism and a running battle between traditionalists and New Marketing reformers; “Catholics and Protestants”. As in religious schisms, there are arguments over the interpretation of history: which came first – the great brand or the great ads? The split is not as neat as being between traditional fmcg advertisers and new-style cool advertisers. Levi Strauss is an example of a cool company committed to the old way of doing things. Procter & Gamble is an ardent enthusiast for the new wave. And many companies I meet, both clients and agencies, do both and contain advocates of both approaches, often with considerable internal tension and debate about brand strategy.

Click Here To Purchase This Book


Local Articles
Advertising
Home