Why your brand shouldn’t act like an Arctic ground squirrel.
Spare a thought for the ground squirrel. Every autumn, they
gorge themselves at the Arctic all-you-can-eat buffet. Then bloated and exhausted
from that hyper-activity, they collapse into a season-long sleep. When the first rays of spring rise over the glacial
landscape, and the squirrel wipes the sleep from its eyes, it will have lost
25% of its body weight. That’s right. A full quarter.
Skin and bones, it leaves its slumber to start again: the
annual pattern of feast and famine.
It’s not too dissimilar a pattern to many brands and their
marketing plans. But while a squirrel has to do this to survive, smart brands
can use smart solutions to keep awake (and eating) all winter long.
A brand may experience marketing troughs for several
reasons. It could be that sales follow a seasonal sales pattern, for instance
toys over Christmas or swimming pools before summer. It could also happen that economic uncertainty prompts
marketers to scale down on communication. Whatever the reason, if you leave the marketplace, the principle of ‘out-of-sight, out-of-mind’ applies, and your brand, like the squirrel, will lose the punching weight that you worked so hard creating. You may even find, emerging after a long slumber that the world around you has changed. For Arctic squirrels, it might be global warming. For brands, it may be the emergence of new competitors, the constant rise of social media and new technologies or even its main competitors staying vocal in the downturn.
All of these scenarios are anathema to the slumbering brand. So how do you maintain a presence? How does a brand stay
awake and active all year round? The first and foremost rule is to plan for your peaks and
troughs. If you are a seasonal business, you’ll know when these occur.
Obviously, the lion’s share of your budget will go into before and during your
busy periods. But instead of going into deep sleep straight after, run smaller
follow-up campaigns. They don’t have to include block-buster TV commercials.
They can make use of cost-effective social media. Or direct marketing
campaigns. Or innovative guerrilla marketing. That’s why you employ a marketing
agency. Tell them to get creative.
Hilton Rose | Your Brand Agency
@hiltonrose1
Email : hilton@urbrand.co.za
www.yourbrandagency.co.za
LinkedIn http://za.linkedin.com/in/hiltonrose
