By Robert Wheatley

Fish where the fisherman are fishing

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.”

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?

What do you think?