Traps for Marketers in Brand-Led Strategies

It won’t have escaped readers’ attention that the biggest trend within marketing over the last twenty years has been brand-building, especially that which is based around the desire to increase customer commitment.  Now that the value of brand-committed customers has been validated and quantified, the scramble has been on. The strategies employed to build brand-loyal customers have ranged from basic carrot-and-stick rewards programmes, through to sophisticated brand-led marketing exemplified by mega brands such as Apple, Nike, and local stars 42 Below and Orca.

Marketers have undoubtedly enjoyed this evolution in their craft – knowing that a brand can have a clear presence on a company’s balance sheet is the ultimate recognition of what can sometimes be regarded as a somewhat intangible and thus questionable craft.  Brand-led marketing is also an undoubtedly more challenging and interesting strategy to employ than implementing the four P’s.

However, care must also be taken not to overstate one’s case when considering a brand-led marketing strategy. Consider one of the key elements that is required to generate customer commitment to one’s brand: ‘Involvement”.  Unless customers are consciously involved in the category (i.e. interested enough to carefully weigh up the options available to them), it’s nigh impossible to foster much commitment. After all, how can one be committed to something about which little interest is held?

To counter disinterest in their category, some marketers have been known to try and raise customer involvement.  A local example is the radio commercial that attempts to raise customer interest by linking the somewhat dull product (shock absorbers) with a high-interest issue (saving lives in a crash).

However this can be a risky strategy. Consumers may not buy in to this claimed escalation in importance, no matter how compelling the advertising may be. Alternatively, they may indeed start considering the issue with more interest, but this will generally happen at a category level, not a brand one.  Marketers attempting to raise interest in, and commitment to, their brands can inadvertently end up promoting competitors as well. If those competitors are more financially or physically accessible to consumers, they may enjoy greater gains from the advertising than the brands actually being marketed - and it is this latter fact that is often overlooked within the current vogue for brands.  It’s an uncomfortable truth for many brand managers, but if consumers have only low involvement in a category, their choices will be dictated by market presence and distribution more than many marketers may like to admit. In these cases, it’s about accessibility, not brand.

Unfortunately, many marketers will regard winning market share through distribution deals, innovative packaging, short-term sales promotions and other point-of-sale activities as less attractive than developing big brands and the strong brand equity that they enjoy.  Nonetheless, these are marketing strategies that are viable and effective in the appropriate categories, and there is a need for the industry to recognize this. In particular, it should be borne in mind that managing market distribution can also be a brand builder, just as it has been for Fisher &  Paykel, whose exclusivity arrangements shut out other brands who wish to be sold via F&P stockists. Unless these other options are given due consideration by marketers, brand-oriented marketing will continue to be stretched into increasingly inappropriate categories, a slippery slope leading to ever decreasing returns.

Jonathan Dodd