Hope you savoured the first part of this series. As promised here is the second. The best is yet to come aka the third part. That will appear next week.
4. Be Highly Visible
It costs the same to run a TV commercial whether it is dull and boring or whether it is relevant and involving. A good ad is the best media discount possible. An original creative idea is worth more than a big budget. In fact it’s arguable that the better the creative content, the less you need to spend on media. Repetition of a poor ad won’t do any good, whereas few exposures of a truly creative and effective ad will bring a high return on investment.
The first rule of all our communications is that it must have impact. However, that impact must be relevant to our brand. People aren’t waiting to read our ad or see our commercial. We are intruders into the living room. Sufficient impact to get the attention of our target consumer has to be the ‘price of entry’ for every piece of communication.
Being highly visible has a lot to do with keeping our message and its execution simple. Too often we make our message hard to understand. This happens particularly when we over-compensate for the lack of a single-minded ‘Strong Ideas’ by bombarding the viewer with a mass of quick cuts of complicated images. While we understand what we’re doing, often the consumer doesn’t.
Other ways to break through are to develop additional communications channels and to be more innovative in the use of media.
In summary, the questions to ask and answer are:
1. I know this is interesting for me (I work on the brand) but would it grab the attention of someone reading the paper, driving their car, walking in the street or watching TV?
2. What can be done to make it even more impactful? (In a way that’s good for the brand)
5. Be Locally Relevant to the Core Target
The communication must be built on, and relate to the framework laid down in the Brand Positioning Statements. However these should be interpreted so that they are absolutely relevant to the local needs. Only by fully understanding the consumer, their habits and daily behaviour, as well as their psychological and emotional feelings, can we hope to find compelling messages that tap into their minds in a convincing and believable way.
While it’s vital to make our communication strategies 100% relevant, it’s equally important to make the communication content and executions 100% relevant. Impact alone achieves little in developing brand salience, propensity to buy, and overall brand equity. What’s needed is impact with relevance. We need to bring the strategy to life in an impactful way. We need to catch the eye by planting a relevant idea in the consumer’s mind that produces the sort of reaction: “this is just right for me and the way I live my life.”
In summary, the questions to ask and answer are:
1. Do we know enough about the consumer?
2. Who specifically are we addressing for? For example, existing users? New users? Lapsed users? Light users? Heavy users?
3. What message will motivate them most of all to buy our brand?
4. What is holding them back?
5. Have we included a clear, relevant consumer benefit?
6. Are the necessary research tracking mechanisms in place to evaluate progress?
6. Be Likeable
Every piece of communication for any of our brands is also a communication for the company as whole as well. Our communication must acknowledge this. All brand communication should, by tone of voice and by involving the consumer, help to enhance the appeal of the company too. If people like the way you talk to them, they are predisposed to like you.
Just as we want to be liked as a company, it is equally important that people like our brands, as well as our advertising and the full range of our brand communications. We should aim to achieve the best scores in tracking research for ‘likeability’ of our brands / our communications vs. our competitors.
While we need to be responsible, it doesn't mean that our communication should be boring. On the contrary, we should aim for communications that are innovative, surprising, exciting, human and emotional.
In summary, the questions to ask and answer are:
1. Does the communication reflect well on our company?
2. Does it position our brands as relevant to today?
3. Does it build Brand Equity?
4. Will it be admired, talked about and liked?
5. Are the tracking research mechanisms in place to evaluate?
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