BRANDING AND OWN LABEL

Branding and Own label

Branding and Own label

Introduction

Making advertising effective is more difficult today than ever before. To get TV viewers to give a precious second of their attention to a commercial message is beyond daunting — it's nearly impossible. A commercial that fails to entertain, therefore, has very little chance of tearing a viewer away from a myriad of other distractions. Remote controls have made it too easy to surf around commercials. And the new TiVo technology, which enables viewers to record favorite programs with commercials automatically edited out, presents a truly frightening prospect for our advertising industry. The question we must ask of advertising is: How do we craft marketing strategies and creative brand messages that prompt viewers to voluntarily surrender their attention to watching a commercial?

Branding and Own label

We might also put it this way: How do we get customers to care? The importance of that question cannot be understated. It is vastly different and quite superior to the question: “What do we tell the customer?” It brings about a more effective answer because “caring” is an emotional response. A consumer simply hearing some facts (if we can even get them to listen to those facts) is not as engaged. Great advertising must prompt people to care rather than simply understand a list of product attributes.

Yet a great deal of advertising today is merely factual. For the most part, (Garzena, 2004) marketing departments have believed that they need a quantifiable product advantage in order to convince a potential customer to switch brands. They ask themselves why the customer should care, and yet they answer this emotional question with a rational benefit. Hmmm. Most of us have no understanding of the reasons behind our brand selections — as a matter of fact, we don't need reasons. Oh, sure, when somebody asks us why we choose what we choose, we can and do come up with some rational reasons. We do it because we think we need a rational basis for our purchasing behavior.

But really, we don't. Our actions in the marketplace are almost always intuitive and emotional. Consider beer purchases. Does anyone believe that Budweiser is the runaway market leader because beer consumers are big fans of Beechwood and Budweiser is “Beechwood Aged?” In other words, do they buy it because of taste? Do they not choose Miller, COORS or Heineken because they do not' like the taste? They may say they do, but in blind tasting only the savviest two or three percent of beer drinkers can distinguish any difference between beer brands. If they can taste a difference, they are hard-pressed to name the brand.

Beer brand choices are obviously not about taste and rarely about benefit or attributes. If you want a customer to change brands, you must make them care. You must know what they care about, and it is no surprise that the thing people care about most is themselves — their beliefs, attitudes, convictions. Therefore, you should develop a strategy and execution ...