Branding in a Digital Age
Branding in a Digital Age shares an interesting collision. Six years ago I read a great post by McKinsey partner David Edelman — Branding In A Digital Age: You’re Spending Your Money In All The Wrong Places. David’s brilliant post and his discussion about the new customer decision journey on the McKinsey website made an impression. Davids post may be my most quoted articles and ideas. Branding In A Digital Age should exert tremendous influence on anyone selling anything online.
Bynder’s Branding Trends Report
Yesterday I read an interesting supplement to David and Mckinsey’s ideas. Bynder’s Branding Trends white paper discovered at Brand Quarterly makes a great supplemental. Bynder, a branding and marketing automation platform, interviewed hundred of Brand Managers. They saw the kind of worry and paranoia one would expect in the middle of a marketing revolution.
We loved this paragraph from Bynder’s Branding Trends 2016:
In a data-driven era, it’s been recognized that ROE (return on engagement) is a more powerful indicator of whether content is successful or not. Recent studies have proven that higher engagement on content led to lifts in brand awareness, brand opinion, brand associations, brand trust and, and likelihood to purchase.
While return on engagement is much harder to measure and quantify, social shares, comments, and blog subscriptions can give you a good indication if your audience is engaging with your content.
(Download the whitepaper here)
Return on Engagement
We agree with both ideas. Return on Engagement (ROE) is the key to branding in a digital age. Knowing the sentiment or how content makes customers feel is difficult. We marketers assume too much. We see likes and shares as fully representational. But then there’s the 1:9:90 Rule is problem.
We know 1% of visitors are likely to engage at the highest level sharing User Generated Content and advocating our cause. 9% of visitors like to share especially when content comes from the 1%ers. 90% of visitors read. Can we extend the likes, loves, and passions from our most engaged 10% to all?
The 1:9:90 Rule may describe a massive self-reinforcing engagement filter bubble. Are we talking to ourselves about ourselves? “We are going to fly the plane (our website) right into the side of a mountain and feel good about it all the way in,” I used to say. My Director of E-commerce statement was about the inability to KNOW anything in a digital age.
Those frustrations come out in the Bynder Branding Trends report too as this quote shares.
We will continue to see the rise of content marketing as yet more marketing, and branding budgets will be devoted to the production of quality original content. In the ad-blocking age, the creation of engaging content will be increasingly important as brands battle to gain consumer attention in a crowded marketplace.
A HubSpot report noted that 73% of people prefer to get information about an organization through a series of articles rather than in a traditional
advertisement.
WHAT FORM OF CONTENT IS MORE EFFECTIVE Regarding ROI?
With this in mind, it’s no wonder why 73.5% of our respondents claimed that they are under more pressure to deliver more content in 2016. Consumers increasingly prefer engaging and informative content over more traditional forms of interruptive online advertising.
With 70% of respondents investing in native advertising and 60% in user
generated content in 2016, brand managers clearly see the need to
engage their audience more than ever before.
Brand Management Pressure
Brand Managers are under pressure. They know traditional market making activities are going, going or already gone. Brand Managers grope for the blue oceans once so easily found with TV or print ads even as they know customer’s hearts, minds and loyalty will never be so easily won again. And, as David and McKinsey point out, they continue to spend their money in all the “wrong places”.
Do we think a white paper is capable of creating the kind of Return On Engagement needed to keep the CFO calm? When the CEO turns to you asking how you are going to find, build and tap a blue ocean of new consumer demand, support and love are you going to come back with Case Studies, Videos, and Blog Posts? Hope your resume is up-to-date.
There is a reason CMS’s have two-year average tenures. Companies burn through brains looking for the magical thinking needed to thrive in the middle of our marketing revolution. Uber, WaNeLo, and AirBnB mashed up existing ideas with dramatic simplicity and new twists sure to generate the brand loyalty and advocacy needed in a digital age.
Look at Fortune’s 10 Most Disruptive Companies and ask yourself what this list has in common with the business as usual list of channel marketing outlined in the pie chart above.
- Uber: The Year’s most highly valued startup
- Airbnb: The world’s biggest accommodation company
- Facebook: The new face of mobile too
- Red Bull: Taking content marketing to an extreme
- Snapchat: 2 billion pictures and videos disappear daily
- Alibaba: Helping consumers save, spend and be entertained
- Netflix: 70 million subscribers and content muscle
- Under Armour: Keeping Misty Copeland on her toes
- Instagram: The mobile social networking
- Apple: Creating magic in wearables too
No look at the list in another way:
- Uber — mashup of GPS + Taxi
- Airbnb: mashup of bed and breakfast + reputation + smartphone
- Facebook: mashup of college facebooks
- Red Bull: online community discovers, promotes and shares new “brands” at a furious pace thanks to User Generated Content (UGC)
- Snapchat: visual Twitter that goes away fast
- Alibaba: international Walmart + Amazon
- Netflix: from mail-order to creation of original content — a journey we are all on
- Under Armour: creating community via athletic apparel
- Instagram: visual Twitter
- Apple: Changing phones, music and more
#1–5 — show another HUGE trend — the need for empowering your community with cool tools your tribe will use in surprising ways. You create a great ASK and listen to what happens to discover “blue oceans”.
Those five companies know how to make their content play like a game too. Community + game = win customer hearts, minds and loyalty. This “content gamification” forms the core of branding in a digital age.
Branding in a Digital Age
David Edelman
HBR December 2010
New Customer Decision Journey
McKinsey
Bynder Branding Report
Branding Trends 2016 Report — Download Link
