We are often approached by smaller brands when they are about to launch their first TV campaign, and they don't want to mess it up. That's how research sociologist Vojtěch Prokeš from Behavio described their typical client. He recently spoke on the topic of marketing and the most common mistakes in branding campaigns at another edition of Cafe and Marketing under the banner of content agency Včeliště.
It would seem that everything has already been said. Lessons on how to approach the minds of your potential customers and their emotions, whether it's enough to rely on "common" sense or better to do research, abound in the ether. After all, we've all read or heard it all before. But if that were really the case, research and marketing agencies wouldn't have so many examples at hand of misunderstood branding, mismanagement of marketing budgets and irresponsible attitudes towards their brands' valuable symbols. Vojtěch Prokeš from Behavio pointed out the most common mistakes in his lecture.
Mistake No. 1: The story
"Pernerka has the word flour in its logo and knows very well why," Vojtěch Prokeš said as one of the examples in the introduction of his lecture. He used this Czech commodity brand to show how key it is to work from the beginning to make consumers associate the brand with the category.
"We come across it very often that brands want to tell their unique stories right from the start, but especially if you are a small brand, it's just too complicated. The customer first has to remember that you're not roasting coffee at all, you're grinding flour," Prokeš said.
The flour from the Czech mill Perner, which in 2019 came with a new look for its packaging and entire visual identity from Revolta, has a compelling story about how far back the history of the original mill goes. It now even communicates that the current mill is the most modern in the country, and you can read all about it on its website. But the packaging doesn't attempt this complicated idea. The simple and minimalist design with the logo is the same for all the flours, differing only in colour.
The complexity of the message can also apply to the visuals for CLV. Prokeš showed designs of OOH ads for Baťa and Kofola, to which he applied a predictive model based on the so-called heat map. Data collected from approximately 20,000 eye tracking records is used to accurately analyze where the viewer's attention is most likely to be focused. Both examples so-called "killed" the brand with an imaginative image, but without a clear connection to the brand. The logo was cowering in a corner somewhere. "The real brand recall for Bata was only 46%, while it could potentially reach 80%," Prokeš described. Predictive models in particular are one example of using technology and AI in a way that allows even smaller entities with limited budgets to test campaigns before launch.
Fault #2: Underestimated Proposition
It's only when the "brand-category" connection works that a brand can begin to communicate more of a proposition. For Pernerk, that's quality. Some brands have an easier time with this task, such as the Czech Remoska with its claim "Simply brilliant" and its easy and quick cooking proposition. When it comes to fast-moving consumer goods, for example, where it's much more challenging to differentiate within the category, Vojtěch Prokeš advises tying consumption to the specific situation. KitKat chocolate bar and pause,Royal Crown Cola and slow down in accelerated time, Krušovice Bohém beer profiling itself as "the party beer".
Vojtěch Prokeš showed the curve in brand awareness during the Krušovice launch campaign. The ad with Bolek Polívka in the central role did well in evoking positive emotions and the level of "brand awareness" rose throughout the campaign.
"At some point you always reach a plateau, a limit beyond which the curve does not grow, but that is no reason to dampen communication," Prokeš commented on the data, which showed that the moment the launch campaign ended, the hard-built awareness began to fall again.
The underutilised potential was in the level of display of the brand itself. "Ideally, you engage branding within the spot at the point where the viewer's emotions rise. Moreover, a lot of campaigns only show the brand in the fifth second, but by then it's too late, attention is already dropping sharply. And brands repeat this mistake all the time," added Vojtěch Prokeš, reminding media researcher Karen Nelson-Field. She points out that it takes at least 2.5 seconds to make a connection in our minds between what we see and the brand. However, four out of five campaigns fail to meet this, so it can be said that they are wasting marketing budget on ineffective ad spots.
The emphasis on quickly measurable campaign results also comes into play here. "It's a win when a client has at least a fifth of their branding budget. But it's more common that they have nothing because they spend all the money on performance campaigns," Prokeš described a common practice backed up by his own experience.
Fault #3: Coming up with something new
Simplicity of communication was related to the aforementioned warning not to want to tell customers the brand story right away, no matter how compelling and unique it is. The same goes for the message on which you build your brand communication. "Passionate CEOs in particular tend to want to communicate all the great qualities that consumers are supposed to associate with a brand. It's a recurring and completely unnecessary mistake. It takes one key message and repeating it over and over again," Prokeš advised.
It sounds like a simple lesson, but too many campaigns have failed on its ignorance. It often happens that after three or five years, someone in the company decides that the concept of communication strategy based on that laboriously honed message is outdated and something new is needed. It could be a claim, a logo or any other "brand asset", i.e. a recognisable element that customers associate with the brand. People in a company responsible for branding encounter it as part of their work routine on an almost daily basis, but the same is not true for consumers. Their daily reality is different. What seems exhausting in the mind of the brand manager is the aspiration for a "top of mind" position within a category, built up over a long period of time in the minds of potential customers.
"An absolutely prime example is Tropicana and the change in packaging design. This mistake cost the brand tens of millions of dollars," Vojtěch Prokeš recalled the now legendary marketing "failure" from 2009. A juice brand with an unmistakable logo and an image of an orange with a red and white straw evoking 100% orange juice threw away decades of brand codes and came up with generic and completely confusing packaging, a simplified logo that lost its recognizability, and even placed it vertically on the edge of the package. The effort to modernise has completely missed the mark.
Fault 4: Not being able to decide
"You can tell a good marketer by the fact that they can make a decision based on the data presented," was Prokeš' response to a question from the audience. He illustrated his point with several examples of Czech brands. Datart, for example, is moving away from its "true electrospecialist" image and starting to focus on the benefit of fast delivery in its communications.
"It wouldn't seem to make sense, because it copies Alza in its 'unique selling proposition'. But the data shows that customers don't care so much about being well advised in store. They want fast delivery far more. Datart has this turnaround backed up by research and knows why it made this decision," Prokeš explained. The same goes for Škoda Auto and the simplification of the logo. The winged arrow works as a recognizable element with a touch of tradition and nostalgia on the Czech market, but it has virtually no meaning for establishing itself on foreign markets. What did not make sense to some Czech marketers has its logical justification.
"Recently we have been discussing with Jablotron the possibility of its new positioning. It was considering whether to take the low-cost route of simpler devices that customers would then install themselves, in addition to premium security systems. In the course of market research, it turned out that there is a relatively significant part of consumers in this segment who are able to construct some simpler security themselves from components available, for example, on Alza. So Jablotron has moved away from this option and remains in its main category," Vojtěch Prokeš told MediaGuru.cz.
Source: mediaguru.cz