3 1/2 Signs of Lazy Marketing
No less than a dozen brands are vying for the consumer’s attention every waking minute of the day. Some pleading, some enticing and yet others imploring him to give them space and preference.In such a situation, brands and even more importantly those managing these brands need to work extremely hard for their communication to register. Despite being aware of the acute attention deficit some marketers go ahead and release sub-par communication, products and sub-optimal support.
Now one may argue that effective marketing need not necessarily be intelligent but it sure needs to be hard working. It cannot be denied that marketing must eventually end up moving the needle as far as a brand’s awareness, recall, preference, premium, profits, share etc. are concerned.
Often though marketing managers fall into the trap of creating a go to market plan simply because there must exist one. Succumbing to the pressures of fighting the competition, maintaining the share of voice, launching with full aplomb, keeping the channel partners satisfied do tick box but this approach is what breeds “Lazy Marketing”.
So here are 3 ½ signs of Lazy Marketing to watch out for. They might not exactly be as fundamental as the 4P’s but they are a good set of lead indicators if you are in the planning phase.
Bigger, better, faster, moreIf a product is just about being bigger, better, faster, more as compared what competition has to offer then you know that there is little differentiation involved. So if you hear better mileage, smoother ride or larger, brighter display you know!
Pricing ParalysisMost marketers seem to have forgotten about using pricing as lever. If ever they do it’s a defensive move which more often than not says “Hey I am not really sure if my product is better than the other guy, but I am lower priced”. When they do price higher they go on a justification trip. Pricing should signal value and if it doesn’t someone is being lazy.
Feeding the FadLet’s face it there are only so many ways of doing things and innovation is a stranger who comes into town very rarely. But the worst thing all of us as marketers can do is feeding the fad. Can’t come up with a good activation “Let’s do a flash mob”. Want to get some consumer interaction going “Let’s get people to post selfies!” Ideas do not need to be novel nor do they need to be in vogue, they need to relevant.
And now for the ½ sign
Leave it to the celebMarketers must work hard if they want to get this piece right. Yes the decisions get made based on the wisdom at their disposal but never ever should a product or brand allow itself to be carried by a celeb. History is replete with examples that shout out “If the product isn’t great or the story is weak the celeb cannot do it for you.”
Lost In Translation: Do Unrelated Brand Extensions Erode Brand Value In The Long Term?
Its election time in India. Starting April 07, the world’s biggest democracy shall go in for a marathon round of voting that would be spread over a month. The election jamboree has several contestants and in the fray are people from different walks of life. The noteworthy ones though are the contestants who have been in the public consciousness but for totally different reasons. If celebrities be considered individuals who are brands that they are courtesy their achievements/fame in their original profession. Their foray into politics therefore, is akin to a brand extension.Now as marketers we are familiar with extensions and have seen many such examples. It is the author’s humble opinion that brand extensions into un-related categories are detrimental to the brand. Now I do not have empirical evidence to back this but more often than not, the brand attributes that made the brand successful in its space would not resonate with consumers in an un-related space. Yes there have been brave attempts at looking at a core set of values and carrying forward those elements that are relevant to the spaces related or otherwise that the brand is being carried into.
Since there is a constant back and forth amongst marketers regarding brands as people and people as brands (also the starting point of the current discussion), it would only be fair to look at things through Kapferer’s Brand Identity Prism
Just to refresh the model suggests that there are six facets to brand identity. As with individuals there is what gets projected and communicated and there is what gets received and understood.
- Physique: The brand in Its physical/tangible form eg. colour, packaging, product form etc.
- Personality: How the brand projects itself. Fun, young etc.
- Culture: A set of values that feed the brand.
- Relationship: the brand has with its consumers or stakeholders i.e. aspirational, inspiring, motivating, ostentatious etc
- Reflection: An image a brand creates regarding who its typical user would be. Example Blackberry with QWERTY phones for executives.
- Self-image: What the brand does to its consumer’s image of self. For example, ladies hand bags from fashion brands perhaps project “I can afford it” for a bulk of their consumers.
Coming back, the contestants in this election range from the “have-beens” to the “could not have beens”. Movie stars, sports persons and business icons they are all there. If one were to critically assess any one of them with respect to the brand that they have built in terms of elements 2 through 6 listed above with the assumption that physique is something they cannot easily change, most would find diminished relevance of their established identity in the new space.
Yes there have people who have translated their success in one field into success in another but the examples are few and far between.
I will defend my case with two examples one a business brand that made an extension into an unrelated field, another an individual. Both brands that attained dizzying heights forayed into an unrelated spaces and ended up eroding if not decimating brand value in the final analysis.
Exhibit#1 The individual: Amitabh Bachchan arguably India’s biggest movie star and an icon for millions of Indians across generations. The Big B as he is popularly referred to made according to him one of the biggest mistakes in life when he chose to enter politics. A super-star he contested elections from Allahabad, UP, India and dislodged a stalwart. What followed were years of turmoil as he got embroiled in allegations of corruption that tarnished his image. It took Amitabh Bachchan the brand over a decade to rise from the ashes, a deed that not all can perform.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jj7z7rt_9E
Exhibit#2 Kingfisher: Originally a beer brand it was extended to an airlines. The brand attempted to translate “the good times” value to the service industry. From offering a low-fares to the concept of premium economy the brand threw everything including the kitchen sink at the customers. Perhaps one of the better executed transitions only from a process standpoint. The change in logo from a perched Kingfisher to a flying one, the launch and the initial follow through were commendable. However, the ambitions were all consuming. The brand and the business were unable to reduce the revenues vs expenses gap and finally the airline operations that commenced sometime in 2004-05 came to a grinding halt in 2012-13. There is sure to have been damage of the episode on Kingfisher the beer brand, pretty sure some enthusiasts would be out there collecting the before and after data for Kingfisher.
