Twitter is Not a Strategy: Rediscovering the Art of Brand Marketing
272
Twitter is Not a Strategy: Rediscovering the Art of Brand Marketing
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781137474704 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 11/11/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
Tom Doctoroff is Greater China CEO for J. Walter Thompson and Asia Pacific’s leading speaker on Chinese marketing, advertising, and corporate culture. He lives in Shanghai, China.
Read an Excerpt
Twitter Is Not a Strategy
Rediscovering the Art of Brand Marketing
By Tom Doctoroff
Palgrave Macmillan
Copyright © 2014 Tom DoctoroffAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-137-47470-4
CHAPTER 1
New World Disorder
Chaos has erupted in the communications industry. The digital revolution has intensified the clash between the top-down and bottom-up brand-building models: the former is fueled by clarity of message, which is articulated by the manufacturer; the latter is unpredictable, on the street, of and for the people. These opposing approaches must be reconciled. Marketers must permit consumers to participate with brands while retaining the ability to manage message and dialog.
Today brands are everywhere. A world without them is impossible to imagine. From the moment we wake up to the time we go to sleep, everything we wear, use, eat, or drink is branded: the Armani suit he puts on in the morning, the Starbucks coffee she drinks on the journey to work in her BMW, our smartphones, computers, even our toilet paper. Nothing is immune.
For companies brands are multibillion-dollar assets with the potential to make or break a business. These companies make huge investments every year to keep their brands alive and commercially viable. But it wasn't always this way.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF BRANDING
Branding as we understand it today is a relatively recent phenomenon. The original meaning of the term brand traces to ancient Egyptians who would burn marks into the flesh of cattle much as cowboys of the Wild West would thousands of years later. But branding in that context was more a mark of ownership than a way of visibly differentiating goods to customers.
For hundreds of years merchants sold products from anonymous jars, and goods were not always visibly differentiated. In the Middle Ages people would rarely see the same seller twice, and consumers often knew little about the quality of the products they were buying. In a broad parallel to the situation in China today, scams were common as manufacturers cut corners to save costs. In 2008 six infants died and nearly 300,000 were hospitalized when the toxic chemical melamine found its way into China's fragmented dairy supply chain. Local collection agents are paid based on the volume of milk delivered, and they were adding water to boost earnings. Melamine was used to compensate for the resulting drop in protein concentration. It was one of the country's biggest food safety scandals, and its impact can still be felt today because Chinese parents buy infant formula overseas. Similarly manufacturers in the Middle Ages would take advantage of consumers by using dyes that would later fade, or by adding less expensive lead to the alloys used to forge metal cups and utensils, resulting in the poisoning of the end users.
Then came the industrial revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the transformation of the agrarian economies of Great Britain, Europe, and the United States. This was an era of unprecedented change. The arrival of the steam engine facilitated mass production; factory lines churned out such goods as canned vegetables and toothpaste at wondrous speed.
Railway networks and new canal systems started to crisscross nations, linking major towns. Products spread, reaching consumers thousands of miles from the products' points of origination. "Our market is the world," Henry J. Heinz said shortly after starting his eponymous food-processing company in the nineteenth century. Heinz possessed some of the more ambitious geographic aspirations of the time, but plenty of fledgling companies were beginning to eye the vast potential of globalization.
As products spread domestically and internationally, manufacturers realized they needed to find ways to differentiate their wares. They knew that turning a consumer into a repeat consumer required developing goods that were of consistent quality and easily identifiable as such. Stamping products with logos became the required guarantee of authenticity—branding was now a necessity.
Trademark legislation gave the branding movement greater impetus, providing companies with legal protection for their nascent assets. The iconic red triangle of the Bass Brewery was the first trademark registered in the United Kingdom, in 1876. The following year in America, Quaker Oats became the first breakfast cereal to be trademarked with the US Patent Office. It was registered simply as a "figure of a man in 'Quaker garb.'" More brands soon emerged. Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Lipton Tea, and Heinz all were born during this time. Many still use the same logos that first helped differentiate their products more than a century ago. In 1886 Levi Strauss introduced the two-horse logo that still adorns the leather patch on its jeans. It depicts two horses pulling a pair of jeans in opposite directions, an immediate visual reminder of the superior durability of Levi products. The patch elevated a pair of jeans to a pair of Levis, each stamped with a guarantee of authenticity and promise of quality.
Products with new exciting monikers emerged as manufacturers realized naming their products could help drive sales. Companies like Procter & Gamble began replacing functional product names with more emotive labels. In 1879 Harley Thomas Procter officially named the company's white soap "Ivory" after a Sunday church reading from the Book of Psalms gave him a flash of inspiration: "All thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia, out of the ivory palaces where they have made thee glad." He thought the word ivory captured the soap's mild and long-lasting qualities. The new name appeared in mass-market print ads that focused on the soap's purity. The effort surely contributed to exceeding an impressive $3 million in annual sales by 1889.
Manufacturers began to package their products in cardboard boxes, tins, and paper bags, which enabled further differentiation. Colorful eye-catching packaging displayed brand logos and provided information about where the product was made and by whom. Just like the trademark, packaging would become an asset. In 1915 Coca-Cola moved to protect itself against a tide of imitators by running a contest to create a distinctive new bottle shape so the genuine article could be recognized instantly, even in the dark or if it was broken. The contour bottle was born, and nearly one hundred years later it remains one of the company's most iconic assets.
Gradually customers started to recognize and trust brands and asked for them by name. The value of branding quickly caught on. A Coca-Cola officer is said to have valued the company's trademark at $5 million by the early 20th century. The multibillion-dollar industry of branding had been born.
TOP-DOWN VERSUS BOTTOM-UP COMMUNICATIONS
While branding began as a means to provide mass-market consumers with confidence that products had been standardized, branding evolved into something else entirely during the next century. Brands were built using a top-down communications model that spread a manufacturer's message to mass audiences. Commercials were broadcast across print, radio, and TV to drive awareness. But businesses also recognized the need to foster one-on-one engagement with consumers—the so-called bottom-up approach. For instance, in the 1950s marketers tried to talk directly to kids through entertaining content on the back of cereal boxes or by running competitions that required children to save a manufacturer's bottle caps.
The tension between different models—one rooted in message uniformity and the other in one-to-one engagement—has always existed. In the twenty-first century, perhaps the difference between conceptual (analog) and linear (digital) skill sets has exacerbated the gap between "new" and "traditional" marketers. The fundamental challenge of our industry lies in reconciling the gulf between these two paradigms.
Top-Down Communications
"A is for Apple, J is for Jacks. Cinnamon toasty Apple Jacks! You need a good breakfast, that's a fact. Start it off with Apple Jacks. Apple Jacks! Apple Jacks! Apple Jacks! Ten vitamins and minerals—that's what it packs. Appletasty, crunchy, too! Kellogg's Apple Jacks!" This is an American TV jingle for Kellogg's Apple Jacks cereal from the 1970s. I was just a kid when it used to blast from the TV set in my living room. But almost 40 years later I can still remember it verbatim.
I was born in 1963—the era of television. I got home from school at 3 p.m., went to bed at 9 p.m., and spent the six hours in between sitting in front of the television. I would spend hours memorizing television commercials, not just because I wanted to but because I couldn't help it.
This was the era of top-down marketing. Tightly controlled messages were created in company boardrooms and pumped out through mass media. Brands developed clear, concise messages that viewers did not have to actively digest; they could passively receive and understand the information. Jingles, commercials, and brand messages quickly permeated the minds of children and adults alike.
Most people call this traditional advertising, but I prefer to refer to it as the timeless approach. It has been the standard model since advertising began to take off at the end of the nineteenth century. It first came to life through print (newspapers and magazines) and then radio. But the advent of the television really allowed this model to flourish.
Advertisers loved TV because people loved TV. This new box of imagination spread rapidly across the United States, revolutionizing everything, not just the advertising industry. According to Nielsen, a leading provider of information and insights into what people buy, fewer than 10 percent of American households had a TV in 1950. Within 15 years that figure had rocketed to more than 90 percent. Advertisers could suddenly reach massive audiences, pushing product messages into every home in America. Furthermore they could convey brand promises in powerful ways. Messages were no longer static words on a page or disembodied voices on the radio. The magic of catchy jingles and aspirational images converged to sell a whole new level of dreams.
Advertisers pumped millions of dollars into television, and the industry exploded. American billings more than doubled during the 1950s, reaching $12 billion by 1960; the same was true all over the world. During this period the goal was always the same: broadcast the message to as many people as the budget allowed. This was mass-marketing in the purest sense—it was about broad exposure leading to awareness, preference, and finally purchase.
During this era brands became established authorities. The Jolly Green Giant told mothers his corn was goodness itself; Pears soap left skin as soft as a baby's; only Bisto—a well-known British gravy brand—could make meat taste right. Advertisers controlled the messages. More often than not, consumers listened and did as they were told. And, boy, did it pay off. Children sang the Apple Jacks jingle, women bought the cream that made their skin soft so their husbands would love them more, and men bought cars that could and would change their social status. Life was simpler.
This model of advertising continues today, despite what you may hear. Reaching mass audiences is still a major goal for marketers across numerous categories, and TV continues to command the lion's share of advertising dollars. PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts global TV advertising revenues will exceed $200 billion by 2017, up from $162 billion in 2012. America will continue to be the dominant market, accounting for 39 percent of total spending, but the fastest growth will take place in emerging markets. For the foreseeable future, expenditures for TV advertising are expected to grow each year by 16 percent in Kenya, 15 percent in Indonesia, and 12 percent in India.
Perhaps the most powerful remaining testament to the appeal of top-down advertising is the Super Bowl. According to Kantar Media, a firm specializing in media and marketing intelligence, this annual event generated $1.85 billion in network advertising sales between 2003 and 2012. The average rate for a 30-second advertisement also increased by more than 60 percent to reach a colossal $3.5 million in 2012. For advertisers the Super Bowl continues to be an important platform for spreading messages throughout the world. The morning after the 2013 Super Bowl, Volkswagen's "Get In, Get Happy" commercial, which debuted at the event, had clocked more than eight million views on YouTube. GoDaddy's "Perfect Match," an ad that showed fashion model Bar Refaeli kissing a geek, had racked up nearly six million views.
To generate widespread awareness of a brand's message, digital platforms such as Google and YouTube, as well as online social networks, are also being used to capitalize on the popularity of the Super Bowl. This reminds us that traditional and new media do not exist in parallel universes. Advertisers are investing in seeding commercials on the Internet in advance of the game. Many advertisers budget $4 to $6 million to promote their ads through YouTube and Twitter during the weeks before the event. To trigger deeper engagement, smart marketers also ensure that Google searches for their Super Bowl ads lead to a relevant page. This method neatly unifies top-down and bottom-up messages.
While TV advertising has changed significantly in the last 50 years—rousing emotive soundtracks have replaced jingles, and sophisticated minifilms have replaced cute animations—it remains the medium of choice for reaching mass audiences. TV is as relevant today as it ever was, and it will continue to be so for the next 50 years at least. Affordably forging clear brand propositions across broad swathes of people will always require mass media.
Handled incorrectly, the top-down model can be aggressive, thrusting, and unidirectional. It's no accident that marketing professionals often describe it in military language: capturing market share, penetrating the customer base, defeating competitors. It can be declarative, propagandistic, uninvolving. But in its best moments it can also encapsulate a belief, a set of values, even a religion. Nike's "Just do it" slogan expresses a spirit cherished by those who come into contact with the organization. These three words, created by Wieden + Kennedy more than 25 years ago, have weathered decades of change and the explosion of digital technology to take root across the world. Adherents love and universally recognize the slogan. No one doubts that "Just do it" has powered Nike to become the multibillion-dollar corporation it is today. This is what a brand can achieve when top-down messages are conceptually clear and fueled by a deep understanding of consumers' motivations. This is what makes the model timeless. (Across all media, both traditional and digital, Nike's brand idea has been executed with great skill, as I describe in subsequent chapters.)
The Rise of Digital Technology
While TV remains a prominent medium, marketers must not consider it in isolation. The truth is that kids and adults today are not just sitting around waiting to memorize television commercials. People may not have changed much, but the world has. Technology has allowed people more control than ever of what they see, hear, and do.
When the world first shifted gears 20 years ago, digital meant websites, search engines, and chat rooms. But the matrix has grown and become infinitely more complex—and it's still constantly changing. It surrounds everyone now, transforming how people live their lives. As the media mogul Rupert Murdoch said a few years ago: "[The Internet] is a creative, destructive technology that is still in its infancy, yet breaking and remaking everything in its path. We are all on a journey, not just the privileged few, and technology will take us to a destination that is defined by the limits of our creativity, our confidence and our courage." The journey from the conventions of the analog world, however, will be a bumpy ride. Murdoch's ill-fated acquisition of also-ran MySpace and his underwhelming efforts to monetize online news are stark reminders of the unsettling nature of digital technology.
Our smartphones are always with us, empowering and enabling us. These devices are intimate companions: They are the first things we see in the morning and the last things we see at night. They have become so prevalent in Japan that walking with a smartphone now has an official term: aruki sumaho. Advertising campaigns warning against aruki sumaho were plastered in subway stations after people became so engrossed by their smartphones they began falling onto train tracks. Who knows what more these devices will offer in five years' time? In Africa mobile banking is already coming of age. According to a report from the Pew Research Center, 56 percent of Kenya's nearly 44 million people make or receive mobile-phone payments.
Through technology societies are becoming more connected, social, and liberated. Just 15 years ago social media did not exist. Now the combined number of Twitter and Facebook users is greater than the entire population of China—and that figure does not even consider Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and the plethora of other social networks. According to global conversation agency We Are Social, netizens in Asia collectively spend two million years on the Internet every month. E-commerce provides new opportunities for price transparency. Consumers can get the best deal available; they are no longer stuck paying the inflated prices in their nearest store. The Internet allows previously isolated corners of the world to purchase otherwise out-of-reach products. Living in a lower-tier city in China, where flashy bricks-and-mortar stores might be in short supply, is no longer a barrier to conspicuous consumption. The Internet has opened the door for people to make the leap into consumer society.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Twitter Is Not a Strategy by Tom Doctoroff. Copyright © 2014 Tom Doctoroff. Excerpted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Back to the Future
Chapter 1: New World Order
Chapter 2: The Value of Strong Brands
Chapter 3: The Consumer Insight
Chapter 4: The Brand Idea
Chapter 5: Engagement Ideas
Chapter 6: Engagement Planning
Chapter 7: Creativity 2.0