What happens when you’ve invested a significant amount in shifting brand perceptions, but it doesn’t pay off? As someone who has spent years analysing brand performance, it’s something I’ve seen time and time again with brands. And it all comes down to ever changing brand strategies.
Brand building is a balance; as it is about refreshing existing ones. The challenge is that marketing plans often fail to account for the need to maintain a consistent brand positioning, as they are too short-term, resulting in brand decay.
The case for consistency has been made
Thought leaders in marketing and countless research studies have reinforced that creativity doesn’t wear out over time, it wears in.
It also takes time to build strong distinctive brand assets, which are important to ensuring a brand’s creative is easily linked back to them. In fact, it is often the brands that have committed to consistent creative and distinctive brand assets that regularly feature in TRA’s Favourite Ads Study.
Now it’s important to note that consistency doesn’t mean always just running one piece of creative repeatedly (although it’s unlikely to harm you). It’s coherence that matters. Take the award-winning Tina from Turners campaign where the creative Road Trip execution is a very different execution from the previous one but there is strong coherence in the humour and distinctive assets as previous executions.
But consistency shouldn’t end with how a brand shows up in advertising, it should extend to a brand’s entire marketing strategy. Often marketing plans are bult for 1 or 2 year cycles. While this may make sense from a budgeting or campaign planning perspective, it often results in short-term thinking. As a result, how a brand positions themselves, the category entry points they try grow, and the brand perceptions they try build often change from one marketing plan cycle to the next.
There have been numerous occasions where I’ve been presenting brand tracking results and there’s frustration from marketers that a particular perception hasn’t moved. This stagnation is often occurring despite the brand investing in marketing activity aimed to shift that particular perception.
Our first point of consideration often goes to the following:
However, what often is ignored is that brand perceptions decay over time. People will ultimately forget what a brand is associated with if we don’t continually remind them. Sometimes advertising is just as much about keeping brand perceptions steady to avoid this decay.
More on the mind
Brands exist in people’s minds. So, to truly understand why brand perceptions decay and grasp why consistency matters, we need to look at how the brain stores information.
Our memories work like networks, brands linked to ideas. Nike might link to quality, basketball, or the NBA. But those links don’t last forever. Like muscles, they weaken if they’re not used. Unless a brand keeps reinforcing the connection, it fades. Nike and “quality” might feel strong today, but without regular reminders (through ads or the product itself) that link slips away.
This decay can be large because people don’t think about brands that much. Research has shown that roughly half of individual respondents give the same perceptual responses (e.g. ‘tastes nice, ‘good value’) for the same brand when re-surveyed at later date1. This indicates that many brand perceptions are not strongly held and can be influenced by a range of factors, such as mood, context, recent brand experience, and advertising from the focal brand and competitors.
So, what does this mean for marketers?
Brand building is about creating desirable memory structures in the minds of your target market. Shaping memory structures takes continuous reinforcement over a long period of time. Consistent reinforcement is required because brand building isn’t just about building new brand perceptions, it is about refreshing the ones you’ve already created to keep them from decaying.
Marketing plans should therefore be iterative rather than completely new. The best marketing plans are built on the old. They fine tune key objectives, strategies and tactics. Throwing the baby out of the bath water often means a brand won’t stand or be known for anything.
KitKat is a great example of a brand that has maintained consistency in their marketing strategy and brand positioning. They have committed to the tagline “Have a break, have a KitKat” for over 60 years to position the brand around owning the moment of taking a break. Fast forward to today and their Break Better campaign and Formula 1 sponsorship continues to reflect this positioning.
So, pick the 2-3 things you want your brand to be known for and hammer them home. Don’t get bored because your customers won’t get bored as quickly as you do.
TRA are proud sponsors of MA's Brand Summit happening this October 9! Colleen Ryan, Partner at TRA, is also presenting on "signals your brand can't ignore: how everyday New Zealanders imagine the future". Don't miss out on the biggest Brand Marketing event of the year! Learn more here.