Create a response brand

Combine brand development and direct marketing to deliver results

by Anthony Reeves

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Marketers have been involved in a debate about the purpose and value of brand advertising.

The brand guys mock direct marketers as crass hucksters who don’t care about customer relationships, only about immediate response. On the flip side, ever since the Internet became a sales channel, direct marketers laugh at brand people for their fear of being measured.

Each stereotype carries a bit of truth. Of course, advertisers are in business to make sales, but one-off sales are much more expensive and less efficient than selling repeatedly to an existing customer. That’s why you should look at building a brand with response in mind. Follow these guidelines to create a response brand that offers the best of both worlds:

1. Begin at the end. Focus your efforts on the audience that already buys your product or service. Understanding your target audience, in addition to having a realistic assessment of your offering, is invaluable for developing a successful brand proposition. That knowledge will also provide insight into how to convey your message in an engaging, relevant and consistent manner. Use these tips to understand your customer:

• Identify your target audience. Factors such as age, gender, income and shopping habits—online and off—are good places to start. Don’t forget to assess your audience’s online behavior as well. If you determine that those characteristics will limit your campaign, be creative and develop a more relevant list of traits.


• Recognize their needs and desires. That information should be as comprehensive and exact as possible.

2. Live it. Go through the buying process. Find out what prospects and customers experience, discover the true selling points of your product or service and learn what negative attitudes prospects might have.

3. Deliver the unexpected. Make a statement no one else can make. Be different. Advertising efforts that stick with adjectives like “good” or “nice” are sure to fail to engage an audience.

4. Ask “Is it you or me?” Identify your brand’s core values and how they relate to the customer. Don’t rely on your mission statement. Although your organization may value certain qualities, those won’t mean much to customers if buyers don’t relate to those qualities.

For example, a business may identify its core values as honesty, integrity, excellent communication and customer satisfaction. Those values usually are never revealed to the public. But if they are evident in every aspect of the organization’s business routine, from customer service, to direct marketing, to Web site design, to the treatment of employees and strategic partners, then those values will have an impact on response. In fact, one definition of brand is to convey a consistent perception to the target audience in every medium of communication.

5. Move it forward. Does your new name, logo or positioning statement ask people to do something? For example, GEICO states “15 minutes could save you $500.” ING uses “save your money.” Action-oriented taglines are the first step in building a response brand.

CA

Anthony Reeves is the creative director for The Hacker Group. He has more than 15 years of international and multi-channel media experience. Reeves has held positions at BBDO, Bates, Ogilvy and Grey and has delivered many global campaigns for Fortune 500 companies.