Brands can’t be created instantly. They have to be developed over time. You put a consistent thought into the audience’s mind, and repeat it until that thought becomes synonymous with your brand.
That is unless you have the budget to create one immediately. Throw in a little Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Ferrell, and on and on, just keep writing the checks. If the concept is right, you can do it.
When you are the BBC, you can afford to instantly create the BBC Music brand. Sure it feeds off the BBC brand, I will concede that, but when you watch the spot, you can see what they are trying to achieve, and how it is a brand unto itself, separate from the BBC brand.
Then watch the short video on its creation and its brand message is confirmed.
This Honda ad promotes the fact that their mini-van has a vacuum cleaner. I will admit that my immediate reaction when I first saw it was “who would want to make a big deal out of a vacuum cleaner in a car? Of all the meaningful differentiating features an automobile can have, why would they feature this silly little convenience? Because they have put themselves in a position where they can.
The Honda brand is strong. It is a reliable, practical automobile, perfect for families. This new feature is consistent with that fact. It helps support that claim and it separates Hondas from Toyota, Chevy, and other similarly practical brands in doing so.
But it only works because that overall Honda brand is so strong. This add contributes, only in a small way to the overall brand. But the important thing is that it contributes at all. The audience already knows about the Honda reliability. To repeat how reliable it is wouldn’t hurt, but it wouldn’t move things forward either. It would solidify its position by reminding the audience of its family value. There is nothing wrong with doing that. But the previous ads that did solidify its reliable reputation and allow this ad to push in a different, but not counter, direction.
How many marketing techniques can you fit into a single campaign? The ALS ice bucket challenge might set a new record. And they execute them all so well.
The challenge employs:
Celebrity endorsements – You can’t help but see celebrities of all walks of life taking the challenge then calling upon more celebrities to join them. The unpaid endorsements top every other campaign I’ve ever seen….even more than USA for Africa if you can stand to hear “We Are the World” one more time
Viral Marketing – The idea that part of the campaign is to call out three people assures a viral thread across the social media universe once it took hold
Word of Mouth – You will see your friends endorse the campaign one by one, until you are finally called upon. Try to resist the peer pressure that creates
Multi-level (Pyramid) marketing – By creating brand champions out of friends, family and celebrities, it sucks you in to become one too. It is a steamroller of pyramid marketing.
Social media – It employs Facebook and twitter better than any campaign ever has. It uses those tools to make money more effectively than anything in recent memory
Public Relations – Even the social media illiterate will surely have heard of the campaign and seen clips of it through news, and sports shows, or through friends and relatives who have seen the videos or participated themselves.
Branding – We know it by the “Ice Bucket Challenge” We know it is for ALS research. They have made that message part of us now. We don’t even have to think about it.
News, excitement and a strong call-to-action – News:0 “Everyone wants to work to cure ALS” Excitement: The visual of a bucket of ice over a person’s head. Call-to-action: The next three named really can’t ignore it.
Brand advancement – The consistency and simplicity of every message, each delivered in its own unique way to make sure you view it is astounding.
What do you get when you run such a successful campaign? Last year, through the month of July and August, the ALS Association received about $2.5 million in donations. This year, with the start of the campaign, they are over $79.7 million in donations.
Like just about every other successful campaign you can think of, the success of this campaign is not in its uniqueness. Every one of these techniques, right down to the bucket of ice over the head, has been done to death in about every combination possible. So why has nothing worked this well? What is different here, is that all the techniques were employed according to a strong plan, that made sense and employed great fundamentals.
When you create a campaign, just worry about the fundamentals, and make sure what you decide creatively makes sense according to that plan. Then believe in and commit to it.
This is an old marketing gimmick, but I like it as a football fan and a marketer.
First, the best thing Payton Mannning does while not on the field is to act like Payton Manning, even more than being Payton Manning. He enjoys acting more than any athlete I can remember. OK, maybe Ditka likes being Ditka more but for different reasons.
But the marketer in me loves how these spots help differentiate Gatorade from the Monster and Red Bulls of the world. Those energy drinks are heavy on the caffeine. That is where their energy comes from. They are right for dealing with pulling long nights, and handling managing daily drudgery.
Gatorade is specifically formulated to replenish your body after physical strain. Kind of a minor and boring distinction, but an important one for the brand. And this campaign solves it gloriously.
View the videos on Adfreak. They play several of them there, and Adfreak deserves the credit.
It just happened again. I met with a prospect to discuss a campaign. Their focus was on immediate sales generated, and how we could create enough interest with the creative we would eventually propose. My questions turned to brand, and they wanted to ignore the subject. Like so many clients, they had gotten it into their heads, that your ad could either sell or exist for branding. Not both. Where did this silly notion originate?
All ads are branding ads, whether you like it or not, so you are better off defining your brand for your audience, rather than leaving them to come to their own conclusion based on a disjointed series of communications.
It doesn’t matter if you consciously develop your brand or not. You’ll end up with a brand anyway. Same with your personality. It doesn’t matter if you work on your personality or not, you will have a personality anyway. People will perceive of you what they perceive based on anticipation, experience, appearance, reputation, etc. You will be better off trying to give a good impression, and developing a good reputation than ignoring the power of perception and making no effort to put a consistent and meaningful reputation together for yourself.
It is the same with your brand. People will develop a perception of your brand based on what they encounter, even if they encounter very little that makes sense. If they see ads that sometimes look racy and irreverent, and at other times are family friendly and conservative, they will be confused as to what you sincerely represent. But if your message is consistent, even if they never buy your product, at least they will understand who you are best for. If it happens to be them, they will give you a serious look when they are shopping for your product.
But every ad is a branding ad. It is an important element of every single communication you have with your audience. From cancellation notices, to recalls, to billboards. They all add up to a perception in the mind of your audience. What is most important, is that it takes time to ingrain your brand into the minds of your audience. It can’t happen overnight.
Everything you need to know about marketing can be learned from beer. I’ll do a late night article some day on what else you can learn from it, but for now lets settle for marketing. Look at beer ads. What has worked, what has not? What has been cancelled, what campaigns do you still see running?
One thing you can see is that the old adage of sex sells is a little simplistic. Lifestyle sells. After all, how sexy is the big, burly Miller Lite beer truck driver? That campaign has brought quick success to a brand that had been dead for years. Oddly enough, it came from the same ad agency that gave us the ill-fated Man Rules.” A cute enough concept, but one that had nothing to do with the beer, and therefore didn’t help sell any. So it got canned…no pun intended.
You’ll notice that Heineken changed their ads recently. They used to boast about it being from Holland. But no one cares about that. Then they started running “All About the Beer” where cool people picked each other up in swanky bars with Heineken instead of martinis. Now people drink it. It showes a desireable lifestyle, which is a benefit to the drinker. It’s Dutch origination was meaningless to the people the brand courted.
By far the best has to come from Corona. Associating your beer with a desirable lifestyle is a technique that the beer companies are constantly having to re-learn. But Corona not only identified itself with the relaxed, Caribbean vacation, it dominates it. It owns the whole lifestyle, not a just particular type of party.
If you think you are weary of those Corona ads, don’t be. You should appreciate the genius instead. Repeating that message in various ways only helps to reinforce that brand. I am sure they are running short of ways to portray it, but the point is selling beer, not entertaining. So I hope they never stop. It is good to see all the ways that campaign succeeds.
Makes me kind of thirsty for a beach and a palm tree.
