1. Great brands are easy enough to build
Few professions seem to hold as little regard for knowledge as advertising. At Revolt, we choose to build our approach not around hunches, but on the shoulders of the IPA databank and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.
Their evidence is clear. The difference between big and small brands isn’t their loyalty, their fans or their silverware. It’s how many people buy them. To grow a brand you don’t need to be loved by the few; you need to be memorable to the many.
And that’s the problem. Because 89% of advertising is forgotten. Not blocked, not ignored, not badly targeted. Just badly conceived.
2. The formula for success is clear
When the brand comes readily to mind, market share is rarely far behind. But our brands live in a world of cognitive misers and collective indifference. One where advertising is incidental to life.
We have two weapons in this fight against apathy: fame and feeling.
Aim for fame and fortune tends to follow. Because when you get your brand shared, you make sure it’s seen. Famous campaigns enjoy four times the annualised Excess Share of Voice efficiency.
But it’s feeling that is most predictive measure of business effectiveness. Communications that trigger an emotional response create the associations that encourage system one decision making to favour your brand. Emotional campaigns deliver higher sales, greater market share and reduced price sensitivity.
3. When you pick the right fight, your brand can ignite that rage in others
Unforgettable brands rely on fame and feeling. And it seems that whilst people will forget what you said, they will always remember what you fought for.
Because when you stand for something, your audience feels it too. In tracking, no advertising has delivered more emotion than that which is fighting for social good.
And when you brand the change you want to see in the world, you turn mass marketing into mass mattering. Of the most famous recent advertising, that which sought to tackle an injustice enjoyed 31% more shares and views than anything else.
Activist brands are the ones turning up on our news-streams and phone-screens. So take a stand. Lead a revolution. Because when you speak out on the social, environmental and political issues of the day you take a shortcut to the beating heart of pop culture.
4. Learn from the great revolutions of the past
For our brands to become activists, our campaigns have to become revolutions.
Pick a fight. Revolutions start with a no and end with a yes. Find a battle small enough to win but big enough to matter.
Establish an action. There’s no point rallying an army without a battle plan. Will they raise pressure, or raise funds? Do you want to shift behaviours or shift minds? Make your audience part of the solution.
Lead a rally-cry. The call to arms that acts as your statement of intent. Words that will become your chant, your sign-off, your #hashtag.
Create a symbol. An image that those on the inside are proud of, and those on the outside covet. Make your iconography an invitation to participate.
Launch a mindbomb. Give the world an image that can’t be ignored. Spoon-feed the facts, force-feed the emotion. When everyone is silent, you’ll be amazed how loud one voice can be.
Develop propaganda. Worship at the temple of publicity with tactics that maintain a constant hum in popular culture. Never underestimate the value of small multiplied by often.
Finally, forge allies. Insure yourself against rejection and criticism with partners that can back you up.
5. Turn around what you think a brand can be
The danger of becoming fixated with all the new pipes is that we forget about the communications we put down them. And in the race towards production and distribution efficiencies we stop asking ourselves what kind of ideas the world needs.
People now think brands are more likely change agents than charities or governments. Our audience cares more about what we stand for than what we sell.
This doesn’t mean corporate social responsibility or the odd spot of charitable giving. It means looking beyond what you have done internally towards what you could do in the wider world.
That world is on fire. So turn your campaigns into campaigning. Make your advertising activism. Because when your brand leads a revolution, you’ll find it doesn’t just meet the needs of the world. It meets the needs of your shareholders too.
