Brand is not a campaign- [ WellPal Seed #9 ]
It’s been a minute.
I haven’t been able to “regularly” post these “Lemon seeds” the last 2 months partly due to the lockdowns taking a bit of a toll as well as some more time-consuming projects that were on my desk.
That said I think I have 2 interesting topics coming up this month, so let’s dive into the first one.
The case.
I’ve noticed more and more that brands are blurring the lines between “brand” and “campaign”. This happens in pretty much every size
company, but mostly in startups that have not structured their blueprint for the brand and immediately go into “activation”.
In my professional experience and observation within the field, it can be due to many factors but the most common ones are for sure:
– Lack of experience/knowledge about brand building for sustainable growth (no clear direction/guidance)
– Not valuing the strategy behind a brand (the product will sell itself)
– Saving upfront cost/time (most often this mentality never gets adjusted).
Context:
There is an increasing failure rate in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). According to Nielsen Bases, this rate has been around 80-85%.
According to their “Setting the Record Straight on Innovation Failure” report, there are 3 key reasons. We’ll use one of them as the starting point for this Lemon Seed.
why most FMCG brands fail
Without clear understanding or definition of the thing you’re trying to build or parttake in, most marketing activities will be done in vain. – My take on doing the foundational work first.
same same, but different.
Even though our approach to marketing has become more creative (for some brands more than others). There are also newly developed avenues for communicating our message to the customer, marketing is still largely about PUSHING “product” to the consumers trough targeted messaging (fingers crossed, it’s targeted correctly) all wrapped up in a nice “campaigns” that can’t make good on its promises.
Think the trade-off trough at the start
Some brands are losing money and brand value because their consumers expect regular discounts and margin-crushing prices. This is very often the case for brands that prioritize speed-to-market combined with growth at all costs. Something has to give, it’s a game of trade-offs at this point, and “price” is the easiest way to achieve these goals.
Fast forward a bit and these brands find themselves in a cluster f*ck of not being able to grow anymore and generate profits. So they decide to re-brand (very often a go-to strategy) and they will slap an upgraded “we want to be more luxury” identity on their product and fund a flashy campaign to launch this.
Unfortunately, consumers don’t forget that easily (at least not the things that were once in their favor). Your new identity and color palette (assuming you didn’t change your company and name behind it), will most often still be associated with the “low cost” discounting product you were once before.
stay of execution
At this point brand nor the campaign will be able to save you in the long run. These companies tend to go into a never-ending loop of packaging re-branding or identity in its entirety.
Sometimes because they don’t want to listen to 3rd party consult that the foundation needs work (not just the house), and sometimes because these parties don’t want to lose their “cash cow” by actually addressing the problem.
First things first:
We need a properly designed brand strategy to mold the brand’s foundation. It is crucial you do this homework yourself in the early stages or with an expert if your budget allows it.
Either way, it has to be done.
The strategy foundation will then serve as the backbone on which you will build the remainder of your brand. It gives purpose and direction to all your other brand activities.
difference between brand and campaign
I want to believe you have applied some reasonable thinking this far and come to your own mental model around the topic. Keep that in mind and let me elaborate a bit more.
Brand
is the entire ecosystem of how we try to help the customer get their job done.
It is to be approached as a long-term dynamic endeavor, with the purpose of building brand equity over time.
It is the practice of molding the purpose, job to be done, positioning, character, viability, feasibility, culture, and values and aligning them to shape the package called “our brand”.
It is not an isolated package design, logo, or ad campaign. Those are our brand’s instruments.
campaign
is a short-term action with a specific goal at its core. This goal has to be aligned with the brand’s strategy. It’s not simply slapping lipstick on a pig.
This is where you can hit the wall sometimes if your strategy behind the brand is not intact.
Campaigns and marketing in general are easier to track than “branding” in a company, so many companies will often merge them. Branding becomes marketing and marketing becomes branding.
marketing strategies are often flawed and their spending is inefficient. With increasing precision, they’re measuring the impact of ill-defined targeting, weak positioning, mediocre advertising, pedestrian products and services, giveaway promotions, and poorly allocated spending.
My 5 cents
Companies are becoming increasingly obsessed with measuring “marketing performance”. Understandably, there are more tools available to us than ever before. Measuring equals “accountability,” and all eyes are on the CMO or marketing manager to generate ROI on budget spending.
This accountability leaves little room for risk and long-term strategy planning for many in those positions (the more investors the worse it gets).
They start to look for metrics that show that their campaigns and decisions work.
Many consulting agencies have found that the effectiveness of marketing is disappointing and getting worse.
Now, this is not per se due to the content of the marketing activities and the ability to be able to measure them, but because of the RESULT that this data is giving them.
Good game. Wrong ballpark.
Often their marketing strategies are flawed or not aligned with the overall brand and business strategy (as everyone is working in department silos) or their spending is inefficient.
If you torture data long enough, it will tell you what you want to see, not what you NEED to see.
Measuring marketing ROI or increasing ad spending based on the same inadequate strategy won’t improve performance.
Design, or fix the broken strategy and align your marketing campaigns as instruments to that.
How I can help you further.
You can have a look at my process for brand strategy building or register (free) to get access to more detailed content on how to build these tools for your own brand.
If you are already a bit more serious and further along the process of building your business or brand, and would like a 3rd party input on structuring your framework or building your brand, you can consult me or get in touch for a project-specific offer.
READ THIS if you’re looking to understand a bit more about how business and brand need to be part of the same blueprint. They are my 5 curated rules for looking at Brand as a business.
