REFLECTIONS
Brands Can Speak Very Well But Still Fail To Be Heard And Understood !
By Christian Masika
One day I was asked by a client to give them an indication of whether a campaign they had executed had been successful or not . They had rolled out a new film and supported it with tens of millions in advertising media . They deserved to succeed . I paused to consider plausible answers to the question . However , when I considered the magnitude of the ideal answer , I got a bit startled . And so that is why I pen this piece .
Measuring success of brands after a communication drive can be daunting . To start with , time will pass before one is able to nail some indications . And so carrying out communication for brands is very much like juggling a liver . There are many loose parts to be managed and every unbalanced side pulls with weight .
I remember how we used to set goals for media impact in an advertising campaign .
Of course we would use measureable terms like Gross Rating Points ( GRP ), Reach and Frequency . And then we would wait for the client to revert after doing consumer attitude and usage studies with ad memory recall and , usage scores . But the combined magnitude of these impact measures rested on understanding a number of things , some of which I want to discuss here in a little more detail .
Let me start with what we would call the consumer characteristics and their learning ability . Consumers of a brand are a unique demographic and psychographic . Most advertising target the main carriers of the brand . Those carriers are a cohort that is identifiable and can be isolated . They speak a known language , and are driven to act by certain attitudes and beliefs . If their analysis show that they are an educated lot that is well exposed and mature in their brand choices , and that
Media platforms have unique characteristics . Some platforms push and obtain learning better than others . When consumers see , hear and touch they learn faster and have a greater chance to act on what the brand is asking of them . In other words , some mediums are more real than others . And so a schedule that has more platforms reach optimal learning quicker and with lower vector quantities they are not new consumers to the category and its advertising , that can mean that they are on a better learning curve than would be the case if the brand was trying to speak to new , young and ignorant set of consumers . And so the GRP budget would not need to be so high for an experienced and educated consumer . The wrong side of this argument is where a brand purports to speak to everyone . That would almost always be viewed as a waste of actual hard money .
Media managers and brand people like to spend time on the media mix . Do we have television alone or are we going the whole hog ? Are we in two or three or four platforms ? This factor is important because of the different unique characteristics of media platforms . Some platforms push and obtain learning better than others . When consumers see , hear and touch they learn faster and have a greater chance to act on what the brand is asking of them . In other words , some mediums are more real than others . And so a schedule that has more platforms reach optimal learning quicker and with lower vector quantities .
Brand managers and creative people spend a lot of time translating the brand ’ s concept . Sometimes the brand cannot run away from the complexities of the industry in which it has been conceived . A techie brand may just find it hard to communicate without adding in more syllables . The commercial is long because the creator is trying to describe how the benefit comes . These conceptual difficulties mean that the planner must factor in more spots , more channels , and therefore more money . It is a craft of repetition . I see consumers
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