KILLING SACRED COWSHow renegade marketing thinkers question everything you thought
you knew about our discipline
Johann Wachs Planning Director CEE
Agenda
1. Differentiation2. Engagement3. Participation
DIFFERENTIATION
Brands don’t have exclusive image attributes,
but share them with other brands
Brand knowledge is not held uniformly by all buyers
50% of all brand knowledge is concentrated in only 20% of buyers
The other 50% of brand knowledge is spread thinly across 80% of buyers
People’s views of brands are not stable over time – they change
Most people don’t think brands are unique or different
People don’t regard evaluating brands as very important
‚Low involvement processing’
Brand don’t attract different kinds of users
Brands don’t have exclusive customers
Communications may work very different
from what we have assumed.
Why do we fetishize the one-sentence brand benefit?
Why do we agonize over the precise phrasing of the brand essence?
Why do we fiddle with brand personality adjectives?
(HP Balls)
(Meerkat)
(Evian Babies)
People don’t have to think of a brand as different to buy it.
They just have to think of it at all.
Advertising that contains
no message, proposition or benefits
is not necessarily deficient
Salience & fame
Make brands interesting
Creative Publicity
The real goal of communications is the creation of vivid memories
that are present at the moment of purchase
Be interested in what people are interested in
We need to recognize that most people in the real world are just not that interested.
This is the real barrier to our
success.
„We spend too much time on what we want to say, rather than what people
want to hear.“
ET
ENGAGEMENT
Engagement is an intermediate measure –
not the endgame
It’s not whether we interrupt or not. It’s whether we add value.
Because engagement is not just a behavioral response,
but also a cognitive one.
Cadbury Gorilla
TV works
Not everyone wants to participate
Does engagement have intrinsic value?
Do people buy a brand because they’re fans –
or are they fans because they buy the brand more?
Do people care deeply
about brands?
‚Low involvement processing’
Engagement is not a metric
PARTICIPATION
Participation Inequality
Most people don’t buy your brand very often
Most people aren’t exclusively loyal to your brand
Most people don’t know your brand very well
50% of all brand knowledge is concentrated in only 20% of buyers
The other 50% of brand knowledge is spread thinly across 80% of buyers
Growth comes from new users – not loyal users
Marketing goal should be penetration, not loyalty
(a missionary)
Paradox
The people LEAST likely to engage deeply ...
... are the MOST important for growth
The Participation
This means 2 things: 2. Fans are actors, not the audience
1. The battle is for attention – not loyalty
Paradox
The people LEAST likely to engage deeply ...
... are the MOST important for growth
The Participation
Reach still matters - Participation is merely niche marketing, unless it is overheard and witnessed
by the mainstream.
So build talk value into the participation-idea
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Canon