Brand hibernation.

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.

 

Whatever your solution is, keep reminding your market that you’re out there. Lying dormant and doing nothing is the worse thing you can do. You’ll lose impetus and market share. And come spring, like the squirrel, you’ll have to work yourself to a standstill just to get back to where you already were!

Hilton Rose | Your Brand Agency

@hiltonrose1                                                 

Email     :  hilton@urbrand.co.za

www.yourbrandagency.co.za 

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Marketing trends. Coming soon to a medium near you.

What marketing blockbusters are on the horizon for small businesses? Here’s my little guide to what’s hot – and what’s not!

Social media 12

So your brand has been faithfully creating presences on every hot social media site, from Facebook to Pinterest. But guess what? There will always be a sequel. There will always be tomorrow’s hotter, sexier platform, with more special effects and better make-up. So realise that, just like any video store or cinema, not every movie on offer is good. What I do with our brands at #YBA is choose specific platforms that make the most sense for the brand’s that we manage and their audiences. By doing so, we see greater returns and less wasted effort.

Indiana Jones and the Hunt for Simplicity

Say goodbye to marketing, Gangnam style. Audiences everywhere, and their digitised lives, are exhausted with overloaded senses. Enough, they cry. So give them simplicity - whether it’s a simple idea in an ad, a product that makes their lives simpler or even making their customer journey less complicated. They’ll thank you for it.

Jurassic Campaigns

Sometimes through-the-line campaigns are great. But increasingly, they’re out of date. The very idea that one idea can work seamlessly across every medium from online to mobile to cinema to radio to in-store to TV to direct marketing is a delusion. Ideas need to be tailored to maximise the strengths of any given medium. Radio is theatre of the mind. Online is interactive. Keep your message consistent but don’t just transfer imagery. Harness the power of your medium.

The Colour of Money

Would you be surprised to learn that 73% of executives do not believe that marketing significantly ties to creating revenue? It’s true. But they’re wrong. Mostly because a lot of marketing, like brand building, can’t be measured. But as measurable returns of investment lead generation increase on the internet and below the line, we should see this incorrect perception corrected.

Cell Wars

Nowadays, more people are buying smart phones than PC’s. So marketers need to keep up. I’ve seen some great GPS–based mobile campaigns, I’ve also seen some stunningly simple mobile sites but there’s still room for better mobile strategies to make your brand more competitive. This is the year mobile comes of age – and grows up to take over the world!

 
Hilton Alexander Rose
Your Brand Agency | Director 

Skype: hilton293

linkedin.com/in/hiltonrose

 

www.yourbrandagency.co.za

https://twitter.com/YourBrandAgency

www.facebook.com/yourbrandagency

 

 

Mindful Consumption

All-you-can-eat! Shop till you drop! Everything must go!

Well, actually, no thanks. The age of mindless consumption (“Would sir like to go large with that?) is over. People want a simpler, more self-sufficient life.

Gone is the insatiable hunger for more, when we bought too much, ate too much and owed too much. Replacing it is a sense of responsibility, community and authenticity.

The shift is everywhere, from compacts overtaking gas guzzlers to farmer’s markets pulling in the crowds. Here are a few characteristics which will help you spot it.

·         It’s about rightsizing
Goodbye hyper-accumulation. Hello sustainability. After years of wasteful excess (XXL homes and OTT weddings), consumers are cutting back, wanting to feel good about their purchases and making do with “just enough.”

·         It’s about purpose

People are planning their pleasures instead of bowing to instant gratification. The dizzying world of Buy-Throw away-Repeat is being replaced by folk taking more care in deciding what - and whether - to buy.  

·         It’s about keeping it real

Consumers are moving away from the superficial and embracing causes larger than themselves. Look at the rise of organic food, the popularity of buying local, the drive to eco-consciousness. Being real is about community and its happy sense of belonging.

So, what does all this mean for today’s brands? To engage meaningfully with customers and continue to prosper, modern brands need to embrace this new “less is more” paradigm, place its qualities right at the heart of their offering and “be the change”.

As Volkswagen said it in their famous ad when they launched the Beetle in big-car-loving USA: Think small.

Have a great 2013 everyone!

 

 

Hilton Alexander Rose
Your Brand Agency | Director

linkedin.com/in/hiltonrose

Skype: hilton293

www.yourbrandagency.co.za

www.facebook.com/yourbrandagency