Accessibility instead of Place. In an age where many businesses operate around always-on, high speed Internet access, “place” is irrelevant to the customer. When you can dip into almost the entirety of the world’s knowledge from the phone in your pocket, you’re always able to research, buy and advocate. It’s not about Place any longer. Now, it’s about Accessibility. What can a brand give me at this precise moment that I want or need? That’s the “bar” companies now have to clear, and it’s not going to be easy. Customers want your products and business to be accessible almost anywhere and anytime and not just for the product purchase. They want to know that your support will have their backs. To achieve this, they need to see you engaging with other customers to get a sense that you’ll be there should something go wrong.
Value instead of Price. If customers occasionally tell you that your product is too expensive, what they might really be saying is that your product does not deliver enough value for that price. When you hear customers say that your product is too expensive, before lowering the price, become obsessed with how to increase the product’s value. That orientation is vital in directing the drive toward improving a product without competing against others on a downward spiral based on price. No brand, long-term, wins on price. While customers may have concerns about price, that comes after their concerns about value. Clear, compelling communication about the benefits of your product is how you gain pricing power.
Education and Information instead of Promotion. Marketers today need to shift from simple promotional displays and messages and provide more educational content and engagement. Customers today are getting used to doing some product or service research, rationalization and comparison, so help educate and inform them. Why is this important? Simply providing your potential customers with free, valuable and useful information creates a much stronger bond and connection than any banner ad or press mention ever could. The old methods of marketing were focused on interruption, but the marketer of today has the opportunity to be involved with customers’ needs at each point in the evaluation and purchase cycle. In many ways today, businesses can act as “education” surrogates, providing current and potential customers with information and advice that helps them do their job better or make their lives easier. This creates a sense of familiarity and trust long before a purchase is even made.
The creation, intent and delivery of the 4 P’s of marketing have to change in the face of all that has changed in the last 20 years with regard to technology, disruptive channels and the well informed customer. Marketers today need to accept that the customer has more control in the marketing mix than ever before. So, accept and leverage that and give the customer what they want. Just make sure you do it in a way that differentiates your brand or you will be competing on price. All the way to the bottom.
BRAND INSIGHT
It pays to listen as a brand and evolve to the changing needs of your customers. This brand started as a 10-person company making wooden toys in 1939. A quiet almost sleepy little company, it meandered along for years. Its original breakthrough moved it into the world of “plastics” and it focused almost all of its energy on marketing to children. But along their journey, they noticed that a major part of its target audience, who were once their customers as children, were now engaging with their products. So they shifted their marketing attention to adults and begin to create massively sophisticated versions of their new “toys.” That led to another revelation and the brand decided to create physical spaces where all of its customers could venture inside of an almost customer created world. Top that off with an almost ridiculous idea, to create a movie featuring the toys which was unbelievably successful with over $400 million in movie revenue. Lego has listened and adapted well. For almost anyone who has played with Lego’s, gone to LegoLand or watched the Lego movie, when you say the word “lego” it usually brings a smile to someone’s face. Lego is still a very powerful and relevant brand. I can’t even think of a competitor.
KEY TAKEAWAY
As you work with your brand or a client’s brand, listen intensely to the customer and continuously monitor the marketplace. Think of ways to evolve and engage your customers that is not necessarily product focused but more “value” driven. Think of ways your brand can delight your customers. That should spark new product or service ideas that your brand has the permission to bring to the marketplace.
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CHAPTER TWELVE
BUILD A BRAND: THE POWER OF INTEGRATED MARKETING.
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As a digital marketer, hopefully, you are beginning to understand the power of good branding, to create that “internal” feeling within your customer and then use the “external” marketing campaign to drive your communication messages. Regardless of media channels used, your branding and marketing need to seamlessly mesh using the same images, voice, creative design and messages to drive home your brand positioning. So, if you design a brand identity for your client or brand, build a website, create online communication assets (e.g. online ads, videos, tweet, blog posts, etc.) it all works together with the same common “look and feel.” You may not know exactly where your customer “hears or sees” your communication and they may only get a piece here and there. That’s why the synergy of integrated marketing communications is so powerful. But it wasn’t always this way.
INTEGRATED MARKETING IS BORN
If you Google the words “integrated marketing communications” you will find university research mentions that integrated marketing as a research concept started around 1993. Not true. CKS|Partners was created in 1991. Our agency was born from the principles of five marketers who all believed that marketing in the late 80’s and early 90’s was changing forever. Or more importantly, customers were changing. Previously, advertising in all forms dominated marketing. In 1989, the CEO of a leading advertising agency in New York was asked about the possible “dis-intermediation” of media, and he replied, “Traditional advertising has and will rule the marketing landscape for a very long time.” I was in New York at the time doing marketing work for Mercedes Benz and when I heard those words, they rang hollow. In the late 80’s I was watching little cracks appear in the stranglehold that traditional advertising had in the marketing world. I watched music CD’s arrive and thought, wow if we can put “digital” music on CD’s what else can we do? Can we create CD/DVD multimedia animations? Can we create interactive product demonstrations? Outdoor media was growing, direct mail and sales promotions were growing. Large events started to grow led by key product sponsors. Casinos in Las Vegas were using digital displays to promote shows. Cable TV was exploding and that meant we no longer had just three to four major television channels, we had 500 or more on this new thing called cable. I went to communication and technology trade shows and saw companies like Philips demonstrate interactive DVD players that they would be bringing to the market in a few years. There were major customer shifts occurring as well. We were moving faster from an industrial world to a world of knowledge workers and service employment. Education levels were rising and people were getting smarter. In a marketing sense, people no longer believed everything they saw on television. With all these new forms of emerging media bringing information, the customers had more information and therefore, more choice.
I could “feel” the marketing landscape changing and knew the marketers in New York were clueless about the coming changes, so I went to where I thought the edge of marketing in the USA might be and that was California. Specifically, Silicon Valley. I moved to San Francisco to work with Apple on some of their marketing initiatives but I really moved to find the other two to three people like me that could see marketing was going to change and together we would create a new kind of marketing agency around integrated marketing. Within six months of working at Apple, I found them. A small design boutique founded by three of the brightest marketing people I had ever met. Over the next year, we had multiple conversations about the future of marketing and I joined them at the end of tha
t year. We focused on designing integrated marketing communications for the brands we worked with and offered no advertising media services. Traditional advertising agencies in Silicon Valley and San Francisco literally laughed at us. By the way, if you are going to be a leader, most people won’t get where you are going as you will be moving against the crowd. It takes a certain amount of risk to be a leader. We started with little companies like Adobe, McAfee, and two Steve Jobs companies, NEXT and Pixar. Other brands that needed to move faster noticed our great integrated marketing work came next and we moved up to United Airlines, Levi’s and Amazon. Now we were a brand expert whose expertise was founded in integrated marketing. While we only wanted to create the best integrated marketing communications agency in the world, we went on to create the largest with over 10,000 employees, 65 offices in 30 countries and $1.2 billion in revenue. In hindsight, we should have only created the best agency as we lost control of the company through our IPO (initial public offering) and subsequent mergers. In 2001, the entire company went away through bankruptcy. Honestly, it was arguably the best years of our “marketing” lives as we solidified the notion that brands would have to be centered on an integrated marketing approach. We were the first agency to do work with and for “digital” brands like Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay and for about seven years, we were on the edge of everything that mattered in marketing.
Enough nostalgia. Let’s delve into integrated marketing and have you understand why it’s even more critical today than ever before to have a brand be supported by an integrated marketing strategy.
WHY INTEGRATED MARKETING IS NECESSARY
Today, the world is moving faster and competitors can seemingly come out of nowhere. It’s not enough for companies to create amazing products and services; brands must communicate the value and benefits of the offerings to both current and potential customers in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets. Integrated marketing communications (IMC) provides an approach designed to deliver one consistent message to buyers across a brand’s marketing communication mediums that may span all different types of media—TV, radio, magazines, the Internet, outdoor, mobile phones, and so forth. For example, Campbell’s Soup company typically includes the “Mm, mm good” slogan in the print ads it places in newspapers and magazines, in ads on the Internet, and in commercials on television and radio. A company’s communications should support a consistent message even if it is trying to reach different audiences. You might “say it” in different ways but the same message should still come through.
Changes in communication technology and instant access to information through tools such as the Internet explain one of the reasons why integrated marketing communication has become so important. Delivering consistent information about a brand or a product helps establish the brand in the minds of consumers and potential customers. Many consumers and business professionals seek information and connect with other people and businesses from their computers and phones. The work and social environments are changing, with more people having virtual offices and texting on their cell phones or communicating through social media such as Facebook. Text messaging, Internet, smartphones, blogs—the way we communicate continues to change the way companies are doing business and reaching their customers. As a result, organizations have realized they need to change their marketing strategies as well to reach specific audiences.
Traditional media (magazines, newspapers, television) is on the decline and now compete with media such as the Internet, texting, and mobile phones; user-generated content such as blogs, reviews and YouTube; and out-of-home advertising such as billboards and movable car-based promotion platforms like Wrapify. As the media landscape continues to change, marketers may change the type of marketing communications they use in order to reach their target markets via a specific media channel. Regardless of the type of media used, marketers should use an integrated marketing communications approach to deliver one consistent message to buyers. It’s really the only way to build and support a brand today. Here are a few reasons why you need to embrace an integrated marketing communications approach for your brand:
The sheer volume of existing communication channels combined with the rapid introduction of new channels and technologies.
The vast differences in customer behavior, expectations and types of business interactions within each channel.
The extremely fast pace at which content is shared and the very short lifespan (sometimes mere minutes) of that content.
The somewhat uncomfortable fact that customers now share control of the conversation.
The ever-increasing growth of mobile and the resulting need to integrate online and place-based experiences.
The strong customer demand for access and convenience.
Your brand needs to work harder than ever before. If you don’t leverage the synergy of integrated marketing communications, you risk confusing your customer and not creating a powerful brand in their minds. More than ever customers are in control. Let them find you via their channel of choice. Just be there with a consistent look, feel and message to support your brand. Let me remind you of the difference between branding and integrated marketing.
BRANDING AND INTEGRATED MARKETING
A brand is made up of far more than a name and a logo. A ‘brand’ is the holistic perception and recognition, whether positive or negative, of an entity that makes it stand out from its competition. Building a brand is no small task, yet it plays a substantial role in developing a company’s reputation and value. But to build a successful brand, marketer’s first need to know exactly what branding is. The terms ‘branding’ and ‘marketing’ are frequently confused with each other, even by professionals. While branding can be described as the expression of value of an entity, marketing refers to the process of promoting an entity’s products and services (or the entity itself). Strong marketing will result in the development of brand value. However, simply promoting products and services through marketing channels without applying a branding system can create a confused overall brand message, resulting in reduced efficiency, and reduced effect. This is where integrated marketing communications comes in.
IMC is crucial today due to the fragmentation of the media market. Previously, consumers received advertising from brands through mass media outlets such as TV, print or radio. The communication model was called “push” and the messages were “one to many”, with the company retaining control of the messaging. In the current digital landscape, audiences are spread out thinly across multiple media channels. This has changed the dynamic to one where communication is interactive, and consumers are more active multi-taskers and are increasingly interconnected and “ubiquitous.” As a result, consumers are engaging with brands at new touch points and have a co-creating role in brand identity. Brands that do IMC poorly present a divided and fractured voice to the consumer.
Let’s better define the components of integrated marketing. Integrated marketing communications (IMC) “is the organization, planning, and monitoring of marketing components and data to control and influence brand information, associations, and experiences” (Hosford-Dunn, 2006). In other words, IMC is essentially the bridge between marketing and branding.
With advances in digital platforms, there is a growing number of ways in which a company can communicate with a consumer. If you look at the integrated marketing communications chart, you can see all the different forms of marketing and I have left quite a few others off this chart. IMC brings together all the communication content that is possible to be transmitted via all available communication channels – including advertising, promotions, online, events and sponsorships – to deliver a unified message to potential and existing customers. Your company’s brand therefore emerges from the sum of all points of contact that the consumer has with your company. From a consumer’s perspective, “hearing and seeing” the same message from the company through every media channel, from social media to television and print, increases the brand’s in
tegrity and helps to establish it in the consumer’s mind. The consumer then becomes more likely to feel an attachment, or a level of trust, for the brand. That in turn creates the customer “feeling” that there is no substitute for your brand. Integrated communications should develop and maintain a healthy two-way relationship with the consumer. This is particularly important for maintaining brand value, since today’s consumers expect to be able to interact with brands before, during and after a purchase or service. In other words, “IMC builds the relationships that builds brands”. IMC is customer-centric– meaning that it focuses on meeting the requirements of the target market by taking into account customer feedback.
Let’s put all this in perspective for a digital marketer today. Imagine you land a company that has a consumer food product. They are about $25 million in sales and have several products sold through specialty stores and online. Obviously there is product packaging, brand and marketing work that has been done before you arrived. They hired you or your agency to do better work online either to build brand awareness or drive online sales. Before you do anything, you better understand everything they are currently doing and understand the brand. Ask these questions:
What’s the story of your brand or company?
What does your brand stand for in your customers’ minds?
Brands and Bullshit Page 16