Making the Case for New Brand Meaning

By Robert Wheatley

As marketers we believe consumers are listening and paying attention to product messages in ads, brochures, packaging, displays, promotions, billboards, blimps, ATM screens and other confrontations with a marketing sales pitch. Much time is spent creating feature/benefit messages and moving them out through various paid channels to scale the twin peaks of awareness and preference.

What if consumers are NOT listening? And increasingly we are confronted with evidence of just that. We do know that consumers are in fact engaged at the Point of Behavior (POB) – when they are about to buy and about to use. For the most part our time-strapped culture has worked supremely well to force many consumers to separate what is meaningful and engaging from what is more-or-less annoying. So outside of the moments of POB, consumers are simply not paying attention and prefer instead to get on with their lives.

Commercial recall scores continue to decline. Annoyance with TV commercials continues to increase. On the other side of the engagement coin, multi-tasking with different forms of content media is on the upswing. By content we mean the non-interruptive side of the media that contains information, ideas, suggestions, help, thoughts, news, entertainment, fun, advice about the things we’re interested in.

According to author Adam Morgan in his updated second edition of “Eating the Big Fish,” part of the explanation for the decline in listening is the floor falling out of trust between seller and buyer. There have been too many breakdowns in the gulf between what is promised vs. actually delivered. Additionally, there have been too many publicized instances of outright lying (and less than admirable behavior) that jade the paradigm of brand and consumer conversation.

Whatever the reason for tuning out, brands must find a new way to get tuned in. We believe the path to mattering, to being meaningful, is an outcome of brands working to create a higher purpose. In essence this means brands must become “an enabler of lifestyle interests and passions” among their best users – and in doing so to open the door to a relationship – not unlike a human friendship.

This requires a high degree of unselfishness and devotion to relationship building rather than treating consumers primarily as objects to sell to. Despite the mounting evidenced that a new approach is needed, many marketers continue to employ strategies and operate in a manner that presumes the consumer is in fact listening.

Are they?

It may sound counterintuitive because we believe that selling is the pathway to sales. If you accept the idea that brands are preferred at an emotional level, then does it stand to reason if you actively do something to encourage, support, enable, facilitate activities your best consumers enjoy, this will lead to the opportunity for an emotional bond to take hold?

What do you think?