Is Branding Dead?
Web 2.0 created a truly read/write web experience. This unleashed a whole series of new direct, conversational and metric based marketing capabilities. No need for brand awareness and impact studies as click through rates, lead conversion and direct feedback from customers on the web let you know immediately how your marketing was doing. The one to one marketing dynamic that web based technology provided created an enormous shift to outcome based marketing. By another more basic name lead generation. Nothing new about lead gen, but boy was the web providing powerful new avenues and applications to drive leads.
In the last few years this trend has driven some flavor of performance marketing to the forefront in virtually every marketing plan and shoved aside the “B” word. Branding has not only become less of a focus in some circles it’s became downright unpopular. So the question is in a web centric world is branding as we knew it dead? Has it become irrelevant? Or as one marketing VP said to me not long ago, “we’re not looking for brand awareness we’re looking for customers”. I’ve had several déjà vu all over again moments as marketers tell me about all of the phenomenal leads we generate, across all of our brands and platforms. They often pull out a spread sheet to show me the numbers and titles. The reality is though many marketers are managing to simple lead metrics not to conversion to revenue metrics. Nor are many really weighting any other factors other than an online engagement. In other words there isn’t any way to tell what other marketing factors may have driven the buyer to download information and register, becoming a lead.
Trends are always fascinating. Sometimes they thrill you; sometimes they make you want to crawl under your desk in a fetal position and sob. Well as my friends in venture capital like to say, “Make the trend your friend”. So where is this trend going? If what we are witnessing is a trend line we will see the continued and accelerating erosion of brand marketing in many business to business markets. On the other hand if what we are experiencing is a trend pendulum we may see a swing back to a more balanced approach.
My sense is that the Web has forever changed marketing and we’re not going back. It’s like the music business. The move from analog to digital has irrevocably changed music. The same is true in marketing. Does this mean brand is dead? No. Not any more than saying music is dead. But how to brand has changed radically. Today most marketers are really driving towards branded accountability. Bill Herr of Unica calls this Branded Response. The same fundaments of brand personality, awareness, relationship still matter. I would argue they matter more than ever but that’s another blog post. How you market a brand today is more direct, more conversational and more transparent however. The web has become the center piece for this type of marketing. At the same time media resarch shows that the ultimate brand/awarness-preference-sale continuum is best driven by integrated media. Buyers aren’t mono media in their information habits and never have been. There is a new center of gravity to be sure and it’s the web. That being said branded accountability today is driven by integrated marketing and the new web 2.0 tools and applications provide marketers with natural links for integration that provide powerful results. What are your thoughts? If you are a b2b marketer is it time to be thrilled or time to crawl underneath your desk and sob?
Tony Uphoff
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Reader Comments (2)
While there is no denying the trend to below-the-line marketing, it doesn't mean that it's the best way of marketing. Basic communication theory has demonstrated that your decisions are influenced by five people every day, just as you influence five people every day. Below-the-line ensures that you are given information that could influence the five you touch in the day, but it does nothing to move the five who are influencing you.
Marketers want a magic button that completes the communication task in one step. For the longest time, they expected advertising to do that. When that didn't work for them they moved to publicity techniques created from editorial pages supported by advertising. For the past decade they have been abandoning both for direct marketing through the Internet. But even that is starting to wear thin for those who were on the cutting edge of that move.
The problem no one seems to be addressing is that advertising, public relations, direct marketing and even social marketing are dependent on one thing: competent communication and an understanding of the medium used. Marketing is changing it's medium but using the same approach that they used in print advertising.
That's why I applaud UBM for recognizing, as McLuhan stated, that each medium influences the audience differently and the audience interacts with each medium differently. I'm just hoping the marketers figure this out as well.
The concept of content in context (the medium in this case being the context) is spot on. This is easier said than done. All the cliche's apply. The reality is however the audience is moving faster than the average media company and in many respects than marketers.
T