The evolution of marketing stems from the brand
In any event, the conversation we were having began with a simple question and gradually evolved into what I’m trying to explain here in this blog post. Ernie asked what allowed online video functionality to become the biggest thing out there today? Our discussions involved talking about the viral aspect, the entertainment factor, the issue of content, and how marketers could use this mechanism as a strong tool without compromising the integrity of social media and remain transparent. This led me to explore how a company can take their message and combine it with traditional marketing (print, television and radio) and online marketing (website, email, search, and social).
If you take a company’s brand message and adhere to its “rules” across all media, is it easy to do? Taking a company like Nike or perhaps even Washington, DC could be easy or it could not – I say it depends on what the message is trying to be sent and whether it can be done in a consistent manner. If you take the Washington tourism campaign as an example (their slogan is “Create your own power trip“), then it might be interesting to see and should these things be thought about when creating the brand FIRST and then executing it across different media?
When you’re creating a new brand, should you not think about what media you’d like to explore and whether or not that idea will still send the same message? If branding can be affected by the way a particular product name is translated into other languages and made to sound different, then why can’t marketers take equal care to reflect that on the media? If I know that the Create your own power trip slogan and Washington, DC brand will be great in traditional media like print, television, and radio, then should I expect it to also flow easily into the online arena?
I want to transfer the brand to demonstrate the message onto a website. Will it work? High probability that it will simply because a lot of your marketing will center around the website anyways and that’s expandable/scalable and doesn’t have a high barrier to manipulate. But what about e-mail marketing? Will your message get across that way? If I throw in SEM tactics, will the message still carry across? Of course…because it all leads back to the website and you can easily control the message. Besides, with SEM and e-mail marketing being antiquated as it is, marketers are probably used to adapting their message to these traditional online features.
But what if you start to enhance your online campaigns by delving into the social web - an area where your audience is so inundated with different ideas that you’ll need to act quicker to keep their attention? Can you still relate your message and brand into a Facebook group? What about a YouTube video? Could you recreate the success of the Will it blend? video that garnered much success from a blender slicing and dicing random objects?
Throwing a little bit more complexity into the equation is taking ALL your messaging and evolving it one step further to the mobile arena. Now, you don’t have a webpage people will view or an e-mail you can send out. You’re constrained with simply crafting your message to someone that you can only assume has at least text-messaging capabilities on their cell phones and can read a message of no more than 140 characters. Best case scenario is that your audience has a smartphone, Blackberry, PDA, etc. so that they can surf the web after receiving your text message to get more information.
So what do you think? Should you evaluate the scalability of your brand message prior to executing different media or am I wrong and you can modify the message on a per media basis?
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Ken Yeung is an web marketer experienced in helping companies build great projects leveraging Internet technologies to better engage their customers. From website builds to email marketing campaigns, online advertising & even social media, Ken understands how to make the web work for YOU. Read more about him on TheLetterTwo.com, Network Solutions' "Solutions Are Power" blog or even on Bub.blicio.us.
I don't think the market distinguishes between media types when it comes to brand recognition – I would reckon that to put out different messages across different media would only serve to dilute the brand.
@andrewmccluskey – I completely agree. Having different messages for different media would confuse people, but that goes back to my original thought…do you need to think about the way the brand message comes across based on media when you're first thinking about creating the message or do you say “figure out the message first and we'll work around whatever media we're using”?
I think perhaps the most plausible answer (in hindsight) would be to examine the brand's usage across all media first. But then again, 9 times outta 10, it'll be “on the fly” and companies will probably make the brand and adjust it to fit in the scope of whatever media they're using.
This is all about how thorough the brand values development process is – if you can distill the brand down to its core constructs: movement (Nike) – a specific color (UPS) – the globe (AT&T) American Singer (Kelli) – then it becomes a matter of establishing how best to represent that construct across specific media.
I believe that marketers who attempt to shape the brand to the media will ultimately lose credibility – it is the brand, and its core values that should drive the message not the media – otherwise – what makes your brand from anyone else?
There are plenty media specific Creatives who can take a construct / concept and apply it to their chosen field – that's their job. If we as brand managers can't give them clear enough direction – or a solid enough brand to start with – then we're not doing our job.
@andrewmccluskey – I completely agree. Having different messages for different media would confuse people, but that goes back to my original thought…do you need to think about the way the brand message comes across based on media when you're first thinking about creating the message or do you say “figure out the message first and we'll work around whatever media we're using”?
I think perhaps the most plausible answer (in hindsight) would be to examine the brand's usage across all media first. But then again, 9 times outta 10, it'll be “on the fly” and companies will probably make the brand and adjust it to fit in the scope of whatever media they're using.
This is all about how thorough the brand values development process is – if you can distill the brand down to its core constructs: movement (Nike) – a specific color (UPS) – the globe (AT&T) American Singer (Kelli) – then it becomes a matter of establishing how best to represent that construct across specific media.
I believe that marketers who attempt to shape the brand to the media will ultimately lose credibility – it is the brand, and its core values that should drive the message not the media – otherwise – what makes your brand from anyone else?
There are plenty media specific Creatives who can take a construct / concept and apply it to their chosen field – that's their job. If we as brand managers can't give them clear enough direction – or a solid enough brand to start with – then we're not doing our job.
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