Brand Experiences to get a brand Chosen

Choose is the second stage of the Path to Advocacy and is about the process that the consumer goes through when choosing which brand(s) they are likely to buy.

This stage is about getting your brand onto the consumers’ short-list.

This used to be all about traditional media - using high impact, coverage, frequency, recency, etc. However, the internet now means i) consumers are very interconnected with each other, and ii) the way they behave and use media has changed. They don’t trust traditional media in the same way, they research differently (usually on-line) and actively seek relevant opinion/advice of others (e.g. friends & family and/or independent experts).

To succeed today brand owners must deeply understand their target consumers’ behaviours, particularly:

a) How and where consumers are getting information about brands

b) The consumers’ motivations for choosing. (These can be driven by functional needs e.g. specification, colour, price, etc and their emotional needs.)

The start point for marketers is making sure their brand is providing the right (usually functional) information, at the right time, in the right place. Effective ways to do this is include sampling or a good internet strategy (e.g. search, brand website, etc).

The other critical requirement is about making the brand relevant to the target consumers’ lives. It is where PR (Virgin, Marks & Spencer, Agent Provocateur), experiential (Electrolux), social media (Dell, Wispa, T-Mobile) and advocacy can play a big part.

Brand Experiences that gets brands noticed

The first stage of the Path to Advocacy is to get your brand noticed. Noticed by both potential consumers (to try to persuade them to consider buying) and existing consumers (to help make them feel positive about their decision to buy).

I define notice as the moment a brand gets on the radar of a consumer; when they see/hear about the brand and consider whether it might be something they need.

In years gone by this was about shouting at consumers. It was all about intrusion, cut-through and impact....the more a brand spent the better chance it had to get noticed.

As we all know, the world has changed. Consumers are in control so a big budget no longer guarantees success.

Brands therefore have to behave differently.

To get noticed they need to deliver brand experiences that talk to consumers in a way that will resonate and persuade them to pay some attention to what you want to say.

It’s about being engaging, appealing and relevant.

Here are some approaches that I think help get noticed:

• Make people smile/laugh [Vegas, Meerkats]
  
• Provide stuff that people muck around with/re-edit [Cadburys]
  
• Capture memories [Porsche, Hovis]
  
• Show stunning visuals [Sony, Honda]
  
• Generate conversations [Wispa]
  

If you can add to this list let me know.

Wispa have responded to lobbying by fans

Thanks to Nick Burcher for bringing this word-of-mouth and social marketing Wispa campaign to my attention....

In response to lobbying by fans Cadbury have successfully bought back Wispa and have launched this new phase of their social marketing campaign.

Cadbury have a good track record of doing on-line stuff like this [see previous post], however, I'm not sure 'For the Love of Wispa' has the same evident appeal of 'Eyebrows.' It will be interesting to see how this activity plays out and whether fans become active advocates that pass it on. 

The ad industry is littered with plenty of 'buzz' marketing failures so I will track with interest the scale and sustainablity of this campaign.

Read Nick's post for the full story and to get his perspective of the key take-outs.