Brand-Building Based on Verified Drivers of Market Share - Client Briefing
Today there is ample marketing theory and practice on how to grow market share through brand investment1. And yet, marketing professionals generally remain at the formative stage when it comes to identifying drivers likely to bring about brandbuilding outcomes2. To this point, it is worthwhile reviewing the UK advertising periodical Admap, June 2006. In this special ‘brand growth edition’ there are 11 divergent articles on brand-building approaches.
The more bizarre ideas call for marketers to take a ‘leap of imagination’ and to generate big ideas because ‘big ideas are the lynchpin in creating compelling communications.’ However, nowhere was there a discussion around contemporary marketing science being applied to assist in identifying brand drivers. A brand-building driver is an emotional or rational performance or reputation attribute that can be statistically verified as driving purchase intentions or behaviour. Drivers must be first hypothesised through qualitative research and then quantitative analysis conducted to generate a hierarchy of brand drivers. Taking account of the competitive landscape, one of these prospective brand-building drivers is then chosen and it is at this point that the creative process can begin.
The creative output should be based on a verified driver of market share. Creativity needs to stem from elements that both drive purchase behaviour and present a competitive opportunity. The lack of strategic rigour in branding starts when the foundations laid, are based on hunches, leaps of imagination and big ideas, as opposed to carefully selected brand drivers. Prevailing market practice suggests that positioning is not identified through method and rigour, but rather intuition. All too often the ‘creative’ is a product of ideas presented when advertising agencies are pitching for new business. The marketing research industry must shoulder a fair share of the responsibility for generating ‘fanciful’ brand ideas. There are all too many focus group moderators who might be best described as ‘opinionated entertainers’ rather than brand-building practitioners. Perhaps abrogating their responsibilities, they would argue that their role is to just uncover insight and to respond to the client’s brief.
There is a simple test to screen prospective brand-building positions. Is the brand essence a verified driver of market share? If its not, how can it result in effective brand-building?
Advertising luminary Al Ries, seems to have captured where the intersection of marketing science and advertising is. Taking the view that marketing analytics has the potential to increase the creativity performance in advertising, he cautioned that “Marketing is never going to reach the point where you have a program you fill in, push a button and here it comes. Marketing metrics taken to their highest level will only influence making the best, most informed choice. It’s like mathematical theory; you reach a point and you don’t use numbers anymore. You are working in concepts. At that time the numbers are trivial – it’s the concept that ultimately matters3.” However, the challenge is that when it comes to brand-building strategy, the advertising industry generally, is yet to embrace even the most rudimentary forms of marketing science.
1 Rust, Lemon and Zeithaml, ‘Return on Marketing: Using Customer Equity to Focus Marketing Strategy’, Journal of Marketing, January 2004.
2 For the purpose of this Client Briefing, ‘brand-building’ is defined as an activity that results in an increase in market share.
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