Marketers should try cultivating deep brand awareness to achieve long-term growth that is measurable.

Article published in businesslive.co.za (redzone) – 15 JULY 2024 – 07:00

by ROBERT GRACE

IMAGE/PICTURE SOURCE: 123RF/wirestock

Without brand awareness, no one will know about your brand. This much is obvious. However, the pursuit of brand awareness, if we are brutally honest, has in many cases become somewhat removed from strategic planning and shifted into a tactic of “spray and pray” or a case of “if it has our logo on it, it will be seen”. This is because marketing is often no longer actioned through a commercial lens.

Businesses should rather be pursuing “deep” brand awareness. Make no mistake, adding that adjective before the word “brand” is not more fluff; it points to an orientation of precision, one that prioritises measurable, long-term, sustainable growth. It’s a term I first came across in a World Advertising Research Center article, and it refers to creating a different type of brand awareness, not just one that is top-of-mind but rather one that is deep and lasting.

We launched GrowthMap — a data-driven approach to position brands precisely — with our strategic partner, Eighty20, to achieve exactly this. However, whichever tool or approach a business uses, it needs to decouple marketing investment from purely short-term gains and refocus on a genuine longer-term strategy that lives alongside and is able to be correlated to, the more immediate tactics and demands of a business — because that’s how you achieve deep brand awareness.

Let’s take a step back. A quick glance across the boards of many businesses in this country makes one thing clear: you’re not guaranteed to find a CMO. Superfluous position, perhaps? Unnecessary? If you take a global lens, CMOs are seen as a key growth lever for the organisation, alluding to an understanding that marketing should absolutely be involved in driving commercial insights, strategies, priorities and growth. There is much to be gained by the industry getting into the habit of asking more of the right commercial questions because this is how we will keep our rightful and influential seat at the table.

The more you interrogate the concept of deep brand awareness, the more you realise just how important it is. Businesses typically spend a lot of money on marketing, with the largest proportion usually being their media investment. The question being asked is: how much of my audience will I reach? This is done with the understanding that if this investment is consistent, there will be an increase in brand awareness. One doesn’t need to look far to find numerous studies linking share of voice to share of market.

However, I think there needs to be a deeper interrogation of the need for another layer to the exercise. Most marketers, and indeed their businesses, are measuring brand awareness through a narrow lens of more reach over more time equalling more awareness.

This is not incorrect. However, what awareness are you building, and with whom?

With the reach and awareness a business has built, it needs to ask: what understanding are we building about our brand? The follow-on question is: what do we genuinely understand about what we represent in the market?

“Whichever tool or approach a business uses, it needs to decouple marketing investment from purely short-term gains”

Think about Apple and Samsung. Everyone knows these two brands; neither suffers any awareness issues. However, one has a much deeper connection with people, not just in its current user base, but with everyone. I am not sure we can argue that everyone knows what Samsung is about. Yes, we all know that technologically their products are excellent. But beyond the tech, the brand lacks the deeper, universal understanding that Apple has cultivated. We all know Apple is going to be different.

Airlines ferry people from one destination to another. Think about Virgin Atlantic versus British Airways. Both have fleets of impressive and reliable aircraft. However, there is a depth of understanding of the Virgin brand and what it stands for that has been built over a long time.

Whether you eat Nando’s once a week or once a year, you’ll know that the brand stands for something unique in the market. You are aware of its views of the world, as well as its design, art and brand flavour.

To achieve this type of deep brand awareness, business leaders need to work on the balance between short-term and long-term activity. Anyone thinking that short-term activity is the recipe for long-term, sustainable growth is going to miss out. Short-term activity, such as acquisition or lead generation, results in short-term results. And typically, that runway is short.

How then should marketers and their C-suites approach shifting towards deep brand awareness?

Be clear about what you want to be famous for

Be very clear about what equity you want to build into your brand. Ask yourself: what do I want to be famous for? What are the things that drive competitive advantage for my brand, and which things are most meaningful for my audience?

If we think about what Woolworths is famous for, we’d likely land on quality, value, design and its South African identity. To be successful you need that level of clarity.

Measure what matters

How are you going to track the longer-term investment? Short-term metrics are typically the easiest, and therefore the most widely adopted in organisations. Measuring longer-term metrics is much harder. If you want to be intentional about the things you want to be famous for, you need to be intentional about the way you track your return on marketing investment holistically. Are your actual efforts delivering the right results? Is your marketing performing at the moments that matter? Find tools or methodologies — or partners with these tools and methodologies — to be able to do this precisely. This will start to inform everything you do, not just in advertising.

Put the ‘target’ back into your target audience

Be very clear about who your audiences are. Saying “I have an audience of LSM 7 to 10” just doesn’t cut it any more. Most businesses simply won’t have the money to build deep brand awareness among such a broad audience. To be blunt, there is a lot of wastage here, and so it is fundamental to start with this question: where, exactly, does growth lie? I think you’ll be surprised about the answers you arrive at.

Robert Grace is the chief strategy officer of M&C Saatchi Group.

THE BIG TAKE-OUT:

If you want to be intentional about the things you want to be famous for, you need to be intentional about how you track your return on marketing investment holistically.

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