In my COM107 class, I saw Kathleen from Kellogg’s talk about branding and advertising. She spoke about how consumer loyalty to a brand is shaped by the brand’s advertising.
The effect of advertising on a brand cannot be measured directly. Most times it won’t be clear that sales rose from one ad because there are many factors that can impact sales. However, branding is not about short-term measurements. It is important to advertise for the long-run and to slowly build an image that your consumer loves and wants to be a part of.
Advertising is about storytelling. The advertiser wants to tell a story that resonates with consumers. By buying the product, the consumer is able to take part in the brand’s story. The spokesperson is who shapes brand personality. People perceive Snapple’s animated spokesperson, Wendy, as the Snapple personality. With this in mind, it is important to get a lot of consumer insight. Getting consumer insights through research for advertising can lead to fresh and unique understandings of a person—their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. These insights help the advertiser find stories that resonate with consumers.
Great insights lead to problem solving which leads to effective advertising campaigns. For example, it is important to know if your consumers are mainly moms. If this were the case, you would want to find out their values, their schedules, their fears, and much more. Perhaps after researching, you find that moms value the happiness of their families. Next, you find that these moms are busy because they work and their kids go to school. Lastly, you find that their biggest fear is that they are missing out on family time. This is all valuable information that should be used when creating an advertising campaign to target moms effectively. Since you know that your target moms want their families to be happy despite a busy schedule, you could position your brand in such a way that it plays into this. You could develop an ad campaign around a happy family brought together amidst a busy day because of a product that Mom bought. Therefore, Mom, the target consumer, sees her values, her problems, and her fears, incorporated and solved by this product. So, she buys it.
Not only do consumers need to be researched, but advertising campaigns need to be researched as well. How well is the message received by consumers? Is anyone offended by the ad? Is anyone excluded by the ad? All of this research leads to adjustments that can help advertisers reach their consumers better and to make their campaigns effective.
During this presentation, I learned what consumer insights were and how they could help a brand. Great insights lead to problem solving which leads to an effective campaign. I also found out the impact and importance of advertising to a brand in the big scheme of things.