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Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Leaked Memo From a Brand Manager - Discovered by Jaffer Ali
[What follows is a fictional leaked memo regarding the
state of brand marketing from the perspective of an
imaginary insider brand manager]
Memo To: All Company Brand Managers
Memo From: Anonymous
Fellow brand managers, it is now 2010 and unless we face
up to reality, our respective brands will continue the
precipitous declines they and we have experienced over the
past 25 years.
Perhaps it's time to remind ourselves that we are the
architects of our own shortcomings and only we have the
power to rehabilitate ourselves to rekindle the vestiges
of former glory. But in order to do so, we must first
subject our inclined perceptions to the scrutiny of common
sense.
We must reverse our all-consuming inclination to sacrifice
both brand and business on the altar of the spreadsheet.
The MBAs in our midst have been systematically winning the
day, fiddling the same tune as Rome burns. We must confront
those whose mission is to sell management on every new
targeting technology and/or methodology that comes along.
The targeting meme has become so entrenched that few people
even dare to raise their voice in opposition. Branding
relationships have been reduced to seemingly rational,
transactional metrics that fit the spreadsheet. But target-
ing doesn't scale. It leads to ever more niche marketing...
and ultimately niche thinking. Since we become our attent-
ions, we now think small. It is our niche mentality that
obfuscates a simple truth: brand building is all about
audience reach.
To understand how this misguided, uber targeting meme can
destroy a brand, a simple "what if" is in order: What would
happen if EVERY ad impression resulted in a sale? In other
words, zero "waste"? Every ad impression would only be put
in front of customers ready to buy. A 100% effective target-
ing campaign.
Sounds perfect, doesn't it? But this is actually the road
to any brand's destruction. This would hasten the demise
of the brand, as only customers would be reached... no
prospects. The promise of uber targeting is to market to
existing intent. What is left undone ? virtually abandoned
- is the act of influencing and persuading prospects ? the
essential brand-building blocks that targeting always
misses. We have lost our brand evangelism.
Without evangelizing our brand, we are left with an ever-
shrinking congregation.
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Collectively, we brand managers have billions of dollars
to spend to help build and foster the relationship between
brand and audience. In our vain pursuit of "efficiency",
we have unwittingly, albeit it purposely, fostered the
fragmentation of the media marketplace.
By supporting unsustainable niche channels, niche magazines
and niche websites, we have made mass reach all but
impossible. We have fashioned the Internet, which is
arguably the most scalable mass marketing opportunity ever
devised and rendered it virtually impotent. We have sub-
sidized the decline of our own brands. Our tepid response
to our own foolishness has been to double-down in the
conception and creation of new, niche brand offerings.
We've built a house with 250 million rooms that no one
can live in comfortably.
So what is to be done?
The first order of business is to stop encouraging the
excessive narcissism that this plethora of choices has
created. We have fashioned a fragmented, self-indulgent
consumer and media environment. In today's hyper-paced
world, change is the only constant. We must make hard
decisions to move to sustainability, because business
as usual cannot sustain us.
What is sustainability?
It means culling the herd and determining which brands are
sustainable and which media options can best sustain them.
The big box retailers are ahead of us in this respect,
evidenced by their drastic reductions in stock-keeping
units (SKUs). But they are making decisions based on
perceived weaknesses in the media ecosystem rather than by
exploring the promise and possibilities of scale. We must
refuse to accept the status quo as a fait accompli; refuse
to follow the path of least resistance; refuse to concede
that we are fresh out of new ideas.
From our agencies, we must demand scalable media solutions.
They have encouraged this niche-marketing nonsense long
enough, and we have bought into it hook, line, and sinker.
We need to reach people... really reach them, and we never
will if we spend all of our time chasing our own long tail.
The Internet can be the next great media platform to build
our brands if we change the way we think of it. But we can
never achieve our goals if we continue down the same road
we have traveled.
Jaffer is the CEO of Vidsense (www.Vidsense.com) and can
be reached at j.ali@vidsense.com
Here's a link to this article originally published on Jack
Myers: http://www.jackmyers.com/commentary/media-business-bloggers/925018=
29.html
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