10. Brand management is the application of marketing techniques to a specific product, product line, or brand. It seeks to increase the product's perceived value to the customer and thereby increase brand franchise and brand equity BRAND MANAGEMENT
Just wanted to share a few thoughts today on where things are moving. This isn’t the long-term outlook so much as the direction stuff is shifting today thanks to the growing realization of the power the Web holds to tell stories, engage people, and give them things that are more relevant and useful as far as brands are concerned.
So… the future of advertising…
that picture was from São Paulo, Brazil, where they’ve banned outdoor advertising. The entire city looks like that. Ghosts of ads past. And this is a result of what is driving the change in advertising and marketing - people are tired of the information pollution cluttering their surroundings and interrupting their lives…
Now, let’s chat about the future outlook for marketing…
All about pushing things out at people. A one way process. Shove, shout, sell.
Instead of using marketing to shove things out and yell, it’s about creating things that draw people in. Things that make them want to come learn/see/engage more.
Smart brands are looking for ways to change that. If people are tuning out the noise, then it’s time to look for new ways that will help us connect better…
How can we create fans for our clients’ brands? How can we make our clients the rock stars that drew the crowd in the image a few slides back?
By helping them deliver more value around their products and services through their marketing.
Save them time. Save them energy. Give them something useful. Help them learn something. Give them a story to tell others… do little things that make their days a little better. A little easier to get through.
… Well, one of the ways agencies can help companies is in the area of product innovation. Applying creative insight to the product development process is an area agencies can add value to their clients…
So…
Think back… How many of you found out about Google from an ad? Now how many found out because someone told you about it?
… the iPhone… even though they do advertise it, look at what the ads do… they show you how you can USE it to make life better…
… Starbucks. They built a global coffee empire without global, or even national, advertising. Sure, they did local and grass roots to some extent, but largely it was people carrying around the cups and telling their friends… the product marketed itself.
So, what if your product isn’t innately cool?
Enhance the product through content
Let’s look at the music industry, where “nobody buys music anymore”
Trent Reznor made $1.6 million in one week when people could get 9 songs for free. What’d he do? He made content that people believed was worth paying for.
If you haven’t heard of RCRD LBL, they are a Web site that lets people download new and exclusive songs for free through partnerships they have with their own artists and other labels. Brands pay to be presenting sponsors of widgets/content and so the labels and artists can still get paid while fans get free music…
So, what does content need to be or do? There are a few things, but since we have limited time I’ve picked two broader topics. The first is engagement. Content needs to be engaging if you’re going to create brand fans.
Here’s a rumor / urban legend from CP+B that I thought was interesting… Bogusky doesn’t want to see the script for the content - he wants to see how it will be talked about - how and why will people care - what is going to make people want to interact or get involved…
Tribal DDB’s engaging content for the Norelco Bodygroom helped it become the top seller in its category on Amazon
… and here’s one that Critical Mass created for Vegas. It’s a social network that let’s you create your Vegas persona, because we all become someone else in Vegas, right… and then you can connect with your friends to share pics, plan your trips, make reservations, buy tickets to shows… for the Vegas lovers who go there more than a few times a year, this becomes a very useful tool…
O.K., now moving on from engagement… the second area of content I wanted to cover is one that’s getting a lot of buzz right now. Utility.
R/GA helped Nike do this in creating Nike+ Offering an example of his own doing, R/GA's Law pointed to the Nike Plus campaign, which he spearheaded last year. To build a closer relationship with the runners, Nike Plus gives them the ability to record workouts on their Apple iPod Nano using a chip in their Nike running shoes. Users can then instantly upload and view their workouts on an illustrated graph online.
It’s not advertising. It’s an application, like Barbarian was talking about…
CP+B has helped Domino’s create an easy way to order a custom pizza…
Now, how can we help our clients create this kind of marketing?
Sony’s co-founder believed people didn’t know what they wanted because they didn’t know what was possible for the most part…
Steve Jobs holds a similar belief…
So how do you create things for people if they don’t know what they want or need until they see it? By deeply understanding them and getting to the things they aren’t saying, but are revealing. Getting to rich insights.
Watch how people behave. How they shop. How they use things. How they go through a web site. How they play a game. Ask them questions. Listen. Ask more questions. Listen twice as much… Notice and note the areas that could be improved …
People are broadly and publicly sharing more about their lives than ever before. We can learn a lot about what people want and need simply by looking at what they’re sharing…
Another interesting thing brands can do is collaborate more closely with their agencies and customers/consumers - especially in the area of product innovation that we talked about before…
The Web is enabling collaboration to take place easier and quicker… companies can share information with consumers and get their input directly … agencies can pull insights out of that information exchange as well as get quick feedback on ideas as they develop… the agency and company can then take the learnings and insights to create things people need or want, even if they didn’t realize these things when they were talking to them… this goes along with a growing idea in the planner blog world for Brands in Beta … where brands are constantly tweaking and improving by getting real-time, on-going feedback from consumers… But to the earlier quotes from Sony and Apple… the web is enabling people to now know more about what they didn’t know. As this continues, brands can get even better insights and feedback, which is going on right now…
Starbucks is putting this into action as well. They’ve been under scrutiny lately and now they’re looking to get ideas from passionate Starbucks drinkers.
… I’ve probably gone just over my 15-minutes… (sorry Ben) … but I’ll close it up and ask that if you only remember one thing from all of this…
Think about this on whatever you’re creating now and next… how can we make this make peoples’ lives better…
![[object Object],[object Object]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/whatnext-091213061841-phpapp01/85/What-Next-1-320.jpg)
