In a world of fly-by-night, flash-in-the-pan businesses and disposable products the best way to meaningfully differentiate your company is to build a brand that lasts. In Brand Immortality: How Brands Can Live Long and Prosper, authors Hamish Pringle and Peter Field, draw upon 880+ case studies to make a strong argument that “Properly managed, no brand need decay and die — immortality is within the reach of all…”
At Immortology, we concur.
After 30+ years of creating strategies and integrated campaigns for some of the world’s most successful companies, our leadership team has learned a thing or two about building brands that last. We know there are eight steps every company must take to ensure eternal relevance and prosperity. Unlike mortal brands, immortal ones adhere to a tried and true process to become so. What’s more these steps work for any business and can be implemented at any stage in your company’s lifecycle.
Here’s the brutal truth. Most agencies today simply do not possess the strategic, verbal, design and production skills to develop and grow brands that last.
Almost all are focused on short-term, online, sales activation strategies and tactics which are no more than a modern spin on direct marketing. The entire marketing industry has done a 180. We’ve gone from an industry of long-term brand-builders with a few specialists in direct marketing to an industry of direct marketers with a dwindling minority of brand building specialists. This has been great for direct marketers, ad technology providers, data analysts, search engines, e-commerce and social media platforms - not so great brands, consumers and brand building specialists.
Now don’t get us wrong. Direct marketing is a valuable tactic. It should be a part of every marketing plan because it is extremely efficient at harvesting demand.
Problem is, it sucks at creating actual demand.
What’s more online direct marketing is the only approach most agencies know how to do.
In Effectiveness In Context, Les Binet and Peter Field present evidence that all brands need both direct marketing and brand building to maximize growth.
In fact, most companies should invest a minimum of 60% of their ad budgets into long-term, mass market, brand building tactics and no more than 40% into direct, short-term sales activation tactics. However, the average business spends over 80% of its advertising budget on direct marketing tactics – almost the direct opposite of what they should be doing. For companies that sell directly to customers/consumers through their own or third-party e-commerce sites, the 60/40 spend ratio should be even more skewed towards brand-building mass media like TV, radio, outdoor, print, etc.
Bottom line, to maximize marketing returns you need to focus your efforts on building demand. Direct marketing tactics cannot and will not grow demand. They’re only useful at harvesting existing demand.
Here’s why.
Only 5% of potential buyers in any category are ready, willing and able to buy right now. And of those over 80% already have in mind what brand they are going to buy. If your brand is not already in their consideration set, your odds of converting them with direct marketing (Google Ads, Banners, Email, Social Media, Direct Mail, Retargeting,) are almost zero.
To maximize growth, you need to do everything you can to make sure your brand is the top consideration for the 95% of buyers in your market who are not ready to buy now. You need to focus the majority of your marketing budget and time on future buyers.
The Eight Steps To Building an Immortal Brand (One that perpetually Grows Demand and Sales):
1. Create A Legendary Product
Of the 4 marketing P’s, Product is the most important. To be viable, your product or service must solve a real consumer problem and ideally, do it better than anyone else. It also must be known and be convenient (sold in bricks and mortar stores or via e-commerce) to enough buyers. If it doesn’t, read on.
2. Develop A Legendary Brand Platform To Sell It
You might have the best product in your category but if your customers don’t know about it, perceive it to be the best or can’t find it, it won’t be successful.
So how do you raise awareness, generate demand and increase distribution?
First, you need to develop an unassalable position in the market for your brand. It all starts with your brand promise. Companies that have a clear consumer promise are nearly 3x more likely to have a higher market share than those who don’t. This is your company’s unshakeable guarantee that your product/service solves a problem in ways your competitors can’t or won’t. The goal is to make your product’s perceived value higher than it’s actual cost. (This is why Hermes can charge 100x more than Brooks Brothers for a belt made out of the same materials.)
We are experts at helping companies figure out their ideal customer promise. We do so through research and collaboration with your team to answer questions like: What are your most attainable short and long-term business objectives? Who are your ideal customers? What are their real wants and needs? How does your product/service satisfy their needs better than anyone? What is the one thing potential customers should know about you but don’t? Why should they believe it? What are the best ways to reach them? Who are your real competitors? How are you better/different than them? How are they better/different than you?
A better Brand Platform should answer all these questions and more.
To see how we uncover actionable insights through consumer research to develop better brand platforms click here. To find out how we position businesses for optimal success click here.
To learn more about Brand Platform development through our proprietary Brand Enlightenment process, click here.
3. Get Legendary Buy-In From Your Employees
Having a better Brand Platform is critical but it won’t be effective unless you get everyone in your company behind it – from the lowest rung of your org chart to the top. Do you have an elevator speech? More importantly, do your employees know it, believe in it and use it? Do you have an Employee Pledge everyone signs? What’s your Manifesto? Is it posted in a prominent place for all to see? Does everyone understand and believe in your company’s Higher Purpose? Does it drive everything you do? Yeah, we know this stuff sounds fluffy. But consider this. 47 out of the 50 top performing brands in the world have a Higher Purpose that drives their businesses and rallies their employees to success. Our proprietary Brand Enlightenment Workshops will help you define and fulfill your company’s true calling to generate long-term profits.
4. Focus Your Efforts With A Legendary Marketing Strategy
Ok, now that you have a better product and buy-in on your brand platform, how are you going to achieve those long and short term goals you’ve defined? You need a marketing strategy that will inspire your agency and employees to create legendary brand experiences through an integrated advertising campaign and every customer touchpoint on and offline. In our experience, most agencies (digital and traditional) are at best only paying lip service to this crucial step. Better strategies consist of:
An Overarching Creative Brief defining specific goals, key messaging, desired actions, prioritized tactics, mandatories, overall budget, etc.
Tactical Briefs for each paid, earned or owned medium defining target, desired actions, target/media specific key messages
IBPCP (Integrated Brand Promise Communications Plan)
Based on the Overarching Briefs Immortology’s creative and strategic teams will develop an initial list of communications tactics we believe will have the greatest chance of achieving your objectives. We will present this list to your internal stakeholder team and collaborate with them to prioritize each tactic based on a cost/benefit analysis. Once agreed, we will put all tactics into a 12-month Gantt chart including due dates, cost, production timelines, media placements, specs, and who’s responsible for each.
IBPFP (Integrated Brand Promise Fulfillment Plan)
Based on the Overarching Briefs, Immortology’s creative and strategic teams will develop an initial list of promise fulfillment tactics we believe will have the greatest chance of achieving your objectives. These may include customer service improvements, sales, distribution, product/service innovations, new customer touchpoints, in-store and online brand experiences, packaging improvements, third-party partnerships, customer surveys, etc. We will present this list to your internal stakeholder team and collaborate with them to prioritize each tactic based on a cost/benefit analysis. Once agreed, we will put all tactics into a 12-month Gantt chart including due dates, cost, specs, media channels and who’s responsible for each.
5. Legendary Creative Ideas & Executions
When was the last time you felt proud of your advertising? Creative campaigns must earn you an unfair share of attention. They not only need to be impossible to ignore and hard to forget, they must also be rewarding and meaningful – so much so your network of customers, friends and influencers will want to share them with their networks. To do this, you need work that potential customers will find more interesting or valuable than anything else within the medium it appears. To ensure all our creative work meets this extremely high standard we test it against our Big Idea Checklist. If it passes the test, each idea in the campaign needs to be meticulously written, designed and executed to perfection. Which means your agency needs to have world-class writers, art directors, designers, coders, photographers and broadcast production resources at your service. To see if your work passes our test, click here.
6. Legendary Delivery
Contrary to the hype, you cannot effectively or efficiently build your brand through social and search alone. No brand with household name ever has. To be effective, you must integrate your creative campaign across all appropriate Paid, Earned and Owned media to be in the right place at the right time with the right message. To be effective, campaigns need to have legs so you’re not constantly reinventing the marketing wheel when it’s time to refresh the work or add new media. For a list of tactical services we provide click here.
7. Legendary Measurement And Perpetual Improvement
Once baselines have been established and the campaign has had time to work, each tactic must be measured and analyzed for effectiveness. Those that don’t cut it are perpetually revised, removed or replaced to take advantage of changes in the market.
8. Legendary Vision
In addition to parlaying current events into marketing gold, great agencies help their clients anticipate industry change and spot opportunities long before they occur. Twice a year, we lead collaborative What If? sessions with each of our clients to brainstorm new ideas and initiatives to keep them two-steps ahead of their competitors. To learn more about our What if? sessions, click here.
Give us 90 minutes and we’ll show you how we can make your brand immortal.