Periodically we celebrate excellent work, great campaigns and ideas that represent a measure of vision and innovation. For the most part we chronicle higher-calling projects that can impact brand behavior. But every so often a more tactical bit of communications wizardry comes along that you just have to recognize and salute for its sheer out-of-the-box brilliance.
Certainly there’s strategic linkage between the Tropicana brand of OJ and sunshine – the warmth and glow often attributed to Florida orange groves where this delicious fruit gets its healthy props.
So the brand evidently decides that working with portable sunshine can serve as a platform for effective, engaging and maybe entertaining online video communication – as well as serving to underscore a bright metaphor that’s tied to the juice’s origins.
I would have loved to be in the Tropicana conference room when this idea was presented — just to see the reaction, the questions and the process that led to approval. I say that because of the boldness and uniqueness of the project.
Just imagine for a moment: in a small Arctic Circle town in northern Canada each year they go through a period of near total darkness – a continual and unrelenting nighttime. So Tropicana sends an expedition to the town, hauling in a giant gas filled balloon-like object in the shape of the sun. The orb is erected and lit, spreading artificial sunshine and undoubtedly some cheer to local residents…. Not to miss a product tie-in opportunity, the crew passes out OJ bottles to the enraptured onlookers as they marvel at the spectacle of man-made sunshine.
The entire story is deftly shot on video with a thoughtful music track underneath and made share-able with the rest of the world through YouTube and Facebook. Watch it here:
Bravo to Tropicana for bringing a little light to the lives of these Arctic dwellers — and then allowing the rest of us to observe and enjoy the experience. Disruptive isn’t it? Unexpected. Entertaining. Memorable. Emotional. What do you think?
It’s Wheatley & Timmons’ 10th anniversary — a time to reflect and think ahead.
When I first got started in the PR business, I was impressed with our unique ability to bring a higher standard of proof, credibility and demonstration to new products and brand promises. But additionally I was concerned by an all-too-frequent focus on tactics (read: publicity) and what appeared to me to be an absence of connecting the dots between our work and business strategy. You know the old saying, “if the only thing you do is a hammer then the answer to every problem will be a nail.”
Just seemed to me that a stronger business proposition was to help client’s better understand their barriers to growth and success – before applying the cure. And in doing so to make sure the remedy laddered back to specific business outcomes, not fuzzy claims of “increased awareness.”
My first attempt at changing the view that PR was the province of press releases came in the form of a brand guidance plan developed for a regional food company called Nalley’s Fine Foods, based in Tacoma, Washington. My client didn’t ask for the plan, instead I treated this as “extracurricular” homework that might open the door to a larger playing field for our firm. It did.
In its day Nalley’s was a successful brand playing effectively in categories dominated by national stalwarts like Kraft, Frito-Lay and Vlasic – from salad dressings to snacks, canned meals, pickles and other packaged food categories. The platform I worked on was a refined recipe for go-to-market strategy and new product development behaviors appropriate for a business that sat in between generic store brand and large national players.
To get it done I had to study the categories and more fully acquaint myself with the channels of distribution and the growth drivers within each product category my client was competing in. There was no mention of PR in the brief. It was a great exercise and I learned a lot. The client was impressed that a PR guy would come to the table with this sort of perspective. Their opinion of what we did and were about changed. It was interesting to watch the transformation in their views and opinions. The experience had an impact to this day.
Wheatley & Timmons is a unique joining of similar strands of thinking – that the craft of editorial and social media forms of communication are enhanced and our value to clients improved as we marry our great creative work more closely to brand strategy guidance and the consumer insights required to make that leap.
It would probably be easier just to continue cultivating our best practices along traditional lines and devote all of our energies to being great tacticians. We think that’s table stakes. We fundamentally believe the world needs a better, more strategic PR firm and so we’re not satisfied with the traditional scope. My partner, Rich Timmons, shares this view and it’s our collective mission to redefine what a PR firm is all about. Missionary work to be sure given the perceptual baggage we carry with us — that “get me on Oprah” thing.
I couldn’t be prouder of the great people who’ve joined our team and their ability to embrace our calling and to deliver on this promise every day in the services we provide. It’s a challenge, but I think part of what makes you successful is your willingness to embrace a higher calling – to tackle something that goes beyond the communications training you’ve had. Makes you stretch.
Have we got it all figured out? Not by a long shot. Everyday is a learning experience, a chance to grow and refine our premise and our capabilities to deliver. We remain steadfastly determined on this path. Persistence can be a great ally, so we forge ahead and believe it’s by “demonstrating and doing” that all of this comes to life. This agency’s work for Sargento Foods is an example of bringing new perspective and ideas to the table about a brand’s future business opportunities in their category. Much the same as Rich and our team has done to such dramatic effect for Thermos brand and for Crescent in the art framing business.
We’re in the early stages of a new relationship with Crown Imports and the Corona beer franchise. It’s exciting. And not just because we know the beer business, but also we believe we can play a measurable role in helping improve their business outcomes and relevancy to a consumer — who is evolving right now.
The future
We believe that earned media (various forms of editorial media from conventional to digital) will continue to be vital but also see incremental growth for “owned” media – content created, published and distributed by brands themselves. Technology now allows us to leapfrog reporters, editors, producers and other media gatekeepers, to talk directly to consumers in environments that are more interactive and thus seen as honest.
Profoundly we see the mix of media solutions moving to embrace social platforms and other venues where brands and consumers can meet each other on more equal terms. Thus the over-arching need for relevancy between brand propositions and the lifestyle interests of their users.
One lesson remains true, from the days with Nalley’s to our work at Wheatley & Timmons over the next ten years: whatever we do in communications must be tied to a foundation of consumer insight and understanding. It’s what will inform our future and our ability to change and improve the growth path of the brands we represent.
Sea of sameness interrupted here and there with unique ideas
By Robert Wheatley
The National Fancy Food Show in San Francisco started last Sunday with a bang as 17,000 retailers, distributors and brand minders came together at the Moscone Center to see and taste what’s new in specialty foods.
The convention is remarkable in its fantastic array of vendors from around the globe who showcase their products for US retail distribution. Especially cheese, cheese and more cheese that populated both exhibit halls. The air was heavy with the zesty pungent dairy-air of hard and soft varietals mostly from Europe and North America. It’s hard to imagine any of the Showgoers having to retreat for lunch given the wall-to-wall noshing – all of which was occurring at a break-neck pace as everyone attempts to canvas the acres of product categories and companies.
Even with all of the chocolaty goodness, it’s hard not to notice the pervasive sameness and slim distinctions between competing offerings. So we see in dramatic relief the problem plaguing so many businesses in the era of over-choice and saturation. It just all runs together. For any business unveiling its version of Chevre, infused olive oils or extreme Cocoa chocolate, your eyes glaze a bit as many overlap together in a noisy heap of feature/benefit style selling.
There were some standouts — interesting items you could tell were more like Purple Cows as Seth Godin would call them – ideas that exude their own natural charm and glow with built-in interest.
Speaking of cows, Slow Cow borrows a chapter from the Red Bull school of functional beverages and produces its polar opposite: a concoction that slows you down with a layer of relaxation.
The grist underneath this proposition gets interesting as you explore the nature of life’s mounting pressures, alongside a desire for better blood pressure and a reaction to the relentless push, push and more push that accompanies life in our dog-eat-dog business world.
A healthy respite sounds about right. So this new category gets interesting as you see the possibilities around it for punching through on an issue many may be pining for: some liquid relief.
Although all things bacon may be so very “last year,” the savory, smoky, salty punch of breakfast protein was back in an array of products from sandwich spread and seasonings to desserts.
Chicago high-end chocolatier Vosges hit a taste high note with their bacon-infused chocolates. A generous sample covers the tongue with caramel, chocolaty sweetness followed by a quick after-note of smoky savory-ness that offered a dramatic counterpoint to what you anticipate from a chocolate bar. Even more exciting was their new and unique line of spice inspired ice creams.
In a word — awesome.
Also interesting was Bay-area based Hint. Clean, straightforward packaging promotes a hint of natural fruit flavor at zero calories and no added sugars.
Honestly, I thought it would be no taste, too. But to my surprise the fruity flavor was there and discernable. A sweetness was also evident, but again without the added sugars found so often in these beverages.
Parents will love this option for their kids because it comes without the down side.
The winners and losers here in the longer run will be an outcome of how they invest in building their brands. Yet, for so many the pre-occupation is pushing the product into the pipeline without much effort given to considering how brands are built. Noticeably absent was any reference to consumer insight on preferences and interest in these offerings or the trends on which they’re based.
Uniqueness and differentiation are vital to getting traction with consumers and markets that are already saturated with similar products making similar claims in similar categories.
Those who can punch their idea far enough to the right or left to create a new category they can own have a shot at a sustainable business that can increasingly accumulate value for its owners in the longer scheme.
Speaking
I had my shot at the event to help bring some of these brand-building ideas to life. Here’s my deck if you want to take a look:
Self-interests can no longer be served through selfishness….
By Robert Wheatley
Image c/o Philip and Karen Smith
With all of the conversation and discussion about the explosion of social media, and the era of two-way engagement and conversation that shift ushers in, you’d think businesses must be falling to their collective knees in a sort of Road-to-Damascus epiphany about discovering a new path to building brands. Have we seen the light?
Has a new marketing and communications religion taken hold? Apparently it’s still a work in progress. We learn that the vast majority of marketing spending still flows down the hide-bound and intractable pipe of interruption media and its embedded agenda to disrupt, persuade and imprint messages.
Oscar Wilde once quipped, “I can resist anything except temptation,” and so the addiction to push media solutions rolls on. Like a massive electric motor bolted to the floor of an industrial age power plant, the tradition-bound backbone of brand marketing built from an interruptive model continues to spin on its own inertia.
Consumers are not walking wallets merely to be sold. If anything there’s a refined “selling detector” that’s emerged as consumer’s turn away from and avoid or ignore blatant pitches in favor or more interesting and helpful forms of brand interaction.
We’ve institutionalized a legacy over time of brand narcissism that should evolve. It’s not all about us anymore. Yes, the fundamental goal of a business organization is to sell more stuff more often and more profitably.
But if the tone, tenor and manner in which we go about achieving business objectives flows from a view that consumers are merely walking wallets, then we’ve failed to grasp the fundamental changes that impact how great brands are built in the age of consumer control. Behaviors that reinforce customer relationships as transactions-to-sweep-in only lack understanding that consumers now control brand interaction. And so we must move from push to engage, from tell to listen, from imprint to co-create.
Brand narcissism is a systemic problem. It emanates from deep-seated behaviors that suggest company’s can compel consumers into favorable purchase behavior at will. Years of pushing messages and other tactics at consumers continues, whether openly acknowledged or not, to flow from a belief that the one-size fits-all consumer will do what we tell them to do.
Not so.
What’s needed…?
1. Enduring brand relationships are now built from a foundation of mutual respect, interest and caring.
2. Brands must earn permission for a relationship with core customers by aligning themselves with their unique lifestyle passions and interests.
3. A form of brand selflessness must authentically take root — such that all points of contact reverberate with the same level of reverence for consumers as friends of the brand, not just targets to target.
The change here is more attitudinal than anything else. Once consideration is given towards how a brand can mine a “higher purpose” built around reciprocity, then we have room to move to refine strategies that will help effectively build a foundation of trust. And let’s be clear, trust is the fabric that binds brands to consumers.
It is the absence of meaning, compelling value and trust that turns businesses into commodities…
Social media by the way is a partner in all of this, not a stand-alone panacea. Engagement media gets interesting and valuable when it is integrated as a component part of all forms of outreach.
We’ll examine more of media integration piece tomorrow. What do you think?
Bang, bang, bang!!! – so appreciate it when someone you respect just knocks you in the head with a useful wake up call. A few in the agency business, PR included, are occasionally corralled by “a half mile wide and three inches deep†form of blinder that flattens the perception of what we’re here to accomplish for clients. This helpful alarm was served in a superb article that – like a coldwater bath – works to shake-up the creative soul in a fog clearing moment about what brand minders should be thinking about.
So much of what we do, or are challenged to do on a daily basis, resides in a sort of tactical soup that is preoccupied with sorting out and managing the bits and bites of communications strategy. Well, its what we do here for a living isn’t it? Yes and NO. Surely it is a main feature of the services we provide, but clients really employ us to deliver measurable outcomes related to sales and market share growth. So one (invest in communications) is supposed to be a means to another (growth). Although we may in our daily nose-down behavior on the tactics of outreach unwittingly miss the forest for the trees.
“Marketers are obsessed with words. They believe that they are in the communication and persuasion business. They incorrectly compare the marketing of products and services in a supersaturated marketplace to marketing a political candidate or making a legal case, where ambivalent people are forced to choose between only two alternatives. This worldview has them fixated on doing things right ―right message, right medium, right slogan, right tagline, et al. ― blinding them to the most important marketing question: Are we doing the right things? Message to most marketers (I know, quite ironic):
You are not.
Don’t take my word for it: Simply take a clear-eyed look at some of today’s most successful and talked about brands. What are Nintendo and Harley-Davidson’s slogans? Why doesn’t Apple cover their packaging with persuasive copy? Are Stonyfield Farm’s yogurt customers engaged with its advertising, or with its all natural and organic ingredients? Did Toyota owners buy their vehicles because they wanted to “move forward?†Is that what caused the company to surpass GM in worldwide sales? Puh-lease. I own two Toyotas and I had to reach out to Google to discover that banal slogan. And speaking of Google, where the heck is their tagline anyway?â€
The Means to An End…
Words, taglines, media, etc. are all vehicles – or vessels if you will. Communications is not an end in itself. And persuasion does not occur because of our words alone. So what is it that we should be focused on to achieve growth and market share? We think it’s about working relentlessly to add value to our target consumer’s lives. The more value we can create, the more relevant the brand/consumer relationship gets. And the more willing the consumer is to engage – because in the end they decide to opt in – or out. And therefore listen to what we have to say.
Asacker describes value this way:
Purpose value
Growth value
Social value
Involvement value
Entertainment value
Aesthetic value
Physical value
Time value
Financial value
Performance value
Are we focused on the right things? What do you think?
If ever there was a subject relevant to brands today, elasticity has to be in the top 10 as businesses work overtime to uncover new markets, segments and business opportunities while consumers remain choosy and conservative in their spending habits.
The question marketers must ask themselves – how far can you go from the center of what your brand stands for? Is there a place along the path of stretching where a brand’s core equity is diluted? How do you decide where fresh business opportunities can be cultivated without risking your franchise in the process?
USA Today has an interesting story by Bruce Horovitz that chronicles the wide array of menu moves by top restaurant chain brands to attract new customers. You start to see a sort of food form encroachment begin to develop as brands add new products, adjust mainstays and expand menus to lure in more diners.
Horovitz wonders aloud, “could sushi at Taco Bell be next?
Marketers may agree what distinguishes brands from one another is their category leadership and distinctiveness in the restaurant trade with a particular menu item as Starbucks is to gourmet coffee. McDonald’s believes they can be effective in this space because the brand pioneer Starbucks has sufficiently elevated the espresso experience. The democratization of gourmet coffee arrives at a moment where broad market tastes have expanded far enough to embrace the richer espresso brew.
This is tricky territory. The annals of marketing are filled with attempts by brands to expand their markets that have eventually led to various forms of implosion. Once thought to be the grand experiment in the automobile industry, Saturn – a new kind of car company – makes the error of trying to trade up from its core competency as an inexpensive entry level auto brand and thus dilutes what made it famous in the first place.
Owning the reference standard for your category…
Al and Laura Ries excellent book, “War in the Boardroom†reminds us of the fundamentals of successful positioning and the goal to own key words or a concept in the consumers mind.
When brands in the name of innovation move too far afield of what thy stand for, the consumer gets confused, the core equity is diluted, the brand becomes less meaningful to its devoted fans.
Navigating the call for stretch…
The starting point in this conversation begins with asking this question: what do you stand for? And within that conversation remaining clear that all things to all people is a proven recipe for trouble. The consumer world today appreciates expertise, craftsmanship and uniqueness more than they desire predictability and uniformity.
Short-term gains should never be bought by mortgaging the legacy of a strong brand. So in this conversation less will always be more. Stretches must be handled with care and once on that path great discipline will be required to steer around further moves that go beyond the arena you own in the consumer’s mind. If your path remains emotionally relevant to your core competency then consumers are more likely to accept your ability to deliver well in the new business you’re entering.
The second level of assessment has to do with credibility and believability in terms of what you do best. Will the consumer accept your playing in a new segment naturally? If it feels forced or you’re treading into waters owned by another that gives question to your adjacent category competence, it may be best to forgo the potential balance sheet pluses in favor of longer term franchise building.
The preeminent goal for all successful brands – being highly differentiated. Will your plans support that objective or detract from it over time?
There’s winning and then there’s winning. Our firm struck gold twice for Nature’s Variety pet foods. And silver once for Thermos brand. It’s award season, the time when industry peers assess and evaluate the finest work out there to determine the campaigns worthy of a best-in-class trophy.
For W&T the win isn’t in the trophy. It is in the validation of our strategies, insights and work by those who arguably can tell the difference between medium and outstanding. Interestingly the Gold level recognition is for the same program on behalf of Nature’s Variety pet foods.
Bravo to all of our brilliant team members who made this happen and at the source of all the effort and great ideas that led to this outcome…
Publicity Club of Chicago has awarded a Gold Trumpet in the Marketing category to W&T for Nature’s Variety, and a Silver Trumpet in the same category for Thermos brand’s Hydration For All campaign. At the hotly contested national Sabre Award competition, Nature’s Variety is one of five finalists for the top prize in marketing, the Gold Sabre. Getting to this level is no easy task as the largest global brands on the planet participate. Our work bested a broad field of iconic household names with very deep pockets.
The Rotation Diet campaign for Nature’s Variety was an outcome of a close collaboration between agency and client. Our goal was to identify the right path to building distinction and differentiation into an emerging pet food brand that is fighting for growth and share. In the end the victory is found in the client’s business results. So here’s to 20 percent year on year growth at the bottom line! This outcome is really our finest hour. And importantly an hour now acknowledged by our peers and colleagues.
Likewise the strategic campaign for Thermos similarly helped fuel sales and distribution growth in a difficult economy. The core idea: leverage Thermos as part of the rising tide of consumer interest in moving off of drinking water in plastic bottles and on to more environmentally appropriate solutions. The project put Thermos in the center of public and media discourse on the evolution of hydration and water consumption.
As a former national award judge, I understand the criteria separating winners from the rest. It is not just a judgment on the freshness of an idea or its superlative execution. Rather, it is the result that weighs heaviest. The goal of marketing communication investments for any brand is acquiring and keeping more customers. The extent to which W&T’s work contributes to client business growth is the real measure of excellence. That our peers agree is just icing on the cake.
There’s this thing about target audiences that have a passion for something. They are paying attention. Their built-in interests open up the possibility of conversation and engagement on so many fronts. And they can be found in most CPG categories – if you’re paying attention to the possibilities around their points of passion.
Take laundry detergent. Forever and a day sold primarily on the basis of the ability to get whites whiter and colors brighter. The emotional payoff always resides in the satisfied glow of “Atta boys†from family members pleased with their sweet-smelling threads.
Both Reckitt Benckiser and Procter & Gamble are onto something bigger and probably better with their focus around fashionistas. Who better to pay attention to messages about cleaning and caring for apparel than those with a deep fondness for sartorial splendor?
In a recent Wall Street Journal story, P&G’s vice president of North American fabric care, Allesandro Tosolini had this to say: Historically we put too much emphasis on just getting clothes clean. More and more we noticed that for some people beautiful clothes goes beyond stain-free clothes.†In a recent study from Woolite brand, 70 percent of working women admitted to throwing away clothing at least once a year due to misinformed laundry decisions.
So Benkiser’s Woolite and P&G’s Tide Total Care elevate the whole laundry-speak “get cleaner†conversation to proper care and feeding of garments — so the fashions can retain their fashionable look much longer. Bucking traditions and timeworn principles of formulaic communication in their own categories, both brands strike out on their own to disrupt the conventional feature/benefit selling proposition.
One more with feeling: fishing where the fish are
Woolite creates an online manual for “finding fashion and keeping it looking fabulous without breaking the bank.†Within its pages TV style expert Stacy London dispenses ideas and how-tos on finding the just the right dress while also taking better care of it. Independent apparel boutiques around the country have also been recruited to feature the guide in their stores. Meanwhile Tide announces a marketing partnership with The Limited apparel chain while touting its own educational effort via online videos with Project Runway star Tim Gunn called “Dressed to the Sevens.†The videos reveal the seven signs of beautiful clothes, including shape, softness and finish.
The point is how to avoid laundry mishaps that can shorten the lifespan of your fashions while also taking better care of the garments you prize. London states: “detergent that keeps the integrity of the fabric and the shape of the clothes means more wears per cost.â€
These brands are focused on an audience that cares about the subject matter and thus are paying attention. Further the effort to engage at the point-of-fashion in clothing retail stores is not only disrupting category conventions but also relevant to the moment of consumer behavior: when purchasing the clothes consumers must now care for.
If you’re trying to reinforce your value proposition at a time when people are trading down on commodity products, talk to the audience who will find your messaging meaningful and valuable. Why waste time, effort and precious assets on talking broadly to people for whom the message is less relevant (no point of passion) and therefore who are NOT listening.
Bravo to both brands for their efforts to mine insights about the fashion-conscious and their mission to help the style mavens do what they do best – look great. It will be interesting to see who is ultimately most effective in aligning the brand with their newfound fashionable followers.
It is hard sometimes to fully grasp the sheer number of brands that vie daily for consumer attention and interaction. It is mind-boggling. Literally, it boggles the consumer’s mind. So effective filters have been raised by consumers to block unwanted noise while letting in only the messages and ideas that hit squarely on the right relevance and passion buttons.
In this environment, amped up by a difficult economy that guarantees there will be winners and losers in the relevance game, brands that try to be all things to all people may seriously tempt fate in doing so.
Small is the new big…
Growth is often the general and over-arching call to action for marketing. In some cases the quest for growth can manifest itself in strategies to expand the brand footprint to include broader audiences and lateral entry into other related categories. What may not be readily apparent are the significant opportunities that await those who make the necessary sacrifices to narrow the scope of their marketing, product strategy and communications.
Witness the recent announcement by American Express of plans to re-trench its focus on the brand’s original heritage target of upper income consumers. This decision follows a lengthy and ultimately less profitable foray into the broader credit market – attempting to compete with Visa and MasterCard on their turf. As well the decision by Eddie Bauer to return to their roots as a brand devoted to outdoor gear after a similar expansion into women’s casual clothing – another broad category populated with many well-established competitors.
Less is more…
The lure of broad audiences and drama-filled calculations of significant category dollars just waiting for a valiant marketer to gobble up their share is indeed tempting. But just maybe in this economy the rampant visions of upside victory are being tamed. Marketing at its best follows a disciplined effort to prune and thus sacrifice areas of business where relevance and core competency are naturally diluted. Success comes to highly differentiated brands that work overtime to mine their relevance and value with consumers who see them as devoted specialists rather than vanilla generalists. Rallying to your core mission and expertise is a better path to follow in an economy that is primed to reward only the fittest — while weaker players wither and may even disappear.
As we say this, we understand the enormous difficulty and sense of risk that pruning involves. Re-focusing your strategy requires discipline. It may have an impact on product mix, channels of distribution, overall volume forecasts. As the number of strategic eggs in the basket diminishes, there’s a companion sense of “more at stake†to make sure the narrower footprint yields results.
In fact, however, the broad generalist scheme may have more inherent risks than the focused specialist. Consumers recognize and prefer skill, knowledge, craftsmanship, value, expertise, and capability. Indeed the marketing game today is on category creation and the brand’s ability to develop a leadership position in its space. Power positioning as we refer to this practice favors greater investment in your key strengths — and a willingness to seek innovation on that path rather than horizontal expansion.
Think about what you do, what you stand for, what consumer’s love you for. How can you add value and depth to your customer relationship and in the process define whitespace opportunities that don’t stray too far from your core expertise. By working hard to be meaningful to a narrower tribe of believers, you increase the brand’s value and effectiveness of its voice. This is especially important when consumers are treating anything less than meaningful as a commodity. Less is indeed more.
You care a great deal about the outcomes of your investments in brand communications. What you want is behavior change. What you can get is the message missile missing its target’s receptiveness. How so? There is a form of genetic code at work that directs how humans connect with and act-upon information from brands. It has to do with the relevance of places where they are exposed to relevant information.
Jonathan Salem Baskin has produced an interesting book entitled “Branding Only Works on Cattle†in which he works tirelessly to dispel myths about how consumers consume communications and the wishful-ness so many marketers have embedded in their “if we build it they will come†approach to brand outreach.
Says Baskin: “If brand communications doesn’t contain information relevant to my behavior at the moment I experience it, it’s unlikely that I’m going to file it away somewhere in my sub-conscious or use it in any meaningful way later on.â€
He goes on to say that presence (your brand message out there in general media venues) is not the same as recognition (your brand message received where its context has greater meaning and value).
His point: if brand communications occurs at a time and place where what the consumer is doing and/or the setting she is in bears relationship to the message and outcome the brand is trying to create, there’s a much better chance of real connection — than if she’s exposed to a message outside of that context.
The Case of the Kitchen Footprint…
Food brands in many ways live in the kitchen, if viewed in the framework of where the consumer interacts with them to prepare meals. If you fish where the fisherman are fishing in this sense, your brand communications optimally should occur when food is being prepped and prepared by the preparer.
Ahhh… consider the beauty of context and relevance at a point when it is most important to the target. “Share of counter top†strategy suggests that food brands should make an effort to create a valuable, meaningful presence in the place and time where meals are being made. Recipe booklets or cookbooks, “recipe help†widgets that sit on home computer desktops and cooking videos become important paths to engagement when viewed in this way. The goal: a kitchen presence in which brand communication occurs when food is organically, naturally, behaviorally top of mind.
The brand behavior objective is centered on getting the consumer to do something, to act, which of course requires listening first. What better situation can you think of for relevant culinary acts than at the chopping block? What ways can you think of to construct a useful footprint in the kitchen? What can you do to open the dialogue and conversation at the moment the subject matter is most meaningful? How might this impact your media plans and strategies? Does this change the potential impact and value of investments in culinary brand experiences and events outside of the home?
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