Brands, recessions and heart and soul
Posted by Jason Dunstone on August 25th, 2009 at 1:28pm
It’s Marketing Week in South Australia! While the message leading the charge and focus is “marketing in a tough economic environment is all about outwitting our competitors,” shouldn’t it be to …
Stop treating consumers like idiots?
A great deal of strategy and creative execution gets it spot-on. Yet, too much marketing misses the target and has more of a fizz than creating any true impact or influence on consumers. In boom times sloppy marketing is more tolerable as consumer demand provides a buffer. However, when consumer confidence and spending slows, shoddy marketers beware!
Relevance to consumers should be the primary focus of marketing. One of the big dangers is saying things about your brand to consumers that have little relevance. Without relevance the brand is essentially invisible. There are too many alternatives and competing consumer priorities to care about irrelevant brands.
Even the most beautiful and artistic advertising can fail to be relevant. Boldness is essential to stand out from competitors. Take no prisoners and be willing to take calculated risk to stand out from the mass of advertising clutter. If you are too soft, careful or conservative, your messages will not be seen or heard. However, boldness doesn’t work without substance. If your advertising isn’t saying something of relevance to targeted consumers you are invisible.
A further challenge faced by marketers is an increasingly savvy consumer. They know when they are being manipulated or treated as a fool. Saying nice things with any lack of genuineness will encourage consumer suspicion. There is an increasing expectation from consumers that marketers not only say relevant messages but also do so with sincerity.
So what can marketers do to avoid treating their consumers like idiots? At the core of good marketing strategy is an empathy and understanding through solid market research. This should be prior to creative strategy and development wherever possible. The objective should be to get deep inside the mind and, more importantly, the hearts’ of consumers.
Through my work with Square Holes we believe that marketers have broad marketing strategy extremes – a focus on the ‘rational’ or the ‘emotional’ – or a combination of each. In my opinion, most marketing has a rational skew towards functional attributes such as price, convenience and service. While this appears quite logical, what we have observed is such a strategy fails to create any true brand loyalty or passion.
A rational focus generally fails to entice consumers to fall in love with a brand, to demand it over all others and be willing to pay a premium. Most decisions in a consumer’s mind are not rational. Good examples are some of the bad habits we all have. Major social issues such smoking, unhealthy eating or unsafe driving are not rational based decisions. Therefore, why do marketers too often assume in their strategy that consumers are so rational in their behaviour?
Our recommendation is typically a focus on targeting emotional factors. The challenge is determining the right emotions to target, otherwise your brand will be irrelevant. For example, a funeral company shouldn’t communicate fun, while this would be quite suitable for a beer.
My view is that brands should seek to have ‘heart and soul’ in the minds of consumers. Heart is about a genuineness or trustworthiness. As noted above, consumers are marketing savvy and will see holes in false promises. Soul is about saying the right emotions – essentially singing the right tune. Brands that have heart and soul are those that transcend all others. They create consumer loyalty that propels word of mouth and lobbying. This is essential, particularly in times of economic challenge such as now.
This can be more complicated in a large bureaucratic enterprise. Consumers are very sceptical of being misled and hearing unsustainable promises. McDonalds is a classic example of a brand that invests hugely in an attempt to entrench an emotional link with consumers in the face of a back swell of scepticism.
Many large local family and independent businesses are doing it well. Coopers Brewery is a perfect example of a brand with a strong and trusted emotional bond with consumers. Other successful examples are local iconic brands Hamilton, San Remo, SANFL and Haiges. They boast consumers standing to the support of their loved brands.
Beyond South Australia, brands with heart and soul include Virgin, Coke, Red Bull and Google. They are brands that through market research and commitment to a precise strategy have fostered resilience in times of trouble. While not immune to economic crisis, they are in a far stronger position to weather the storm. When times get hard, having a clear and relevant brand with heart and soul is essential for management, staff and consumers.
Posted in Advertising, Branding
