When people talk about building brands they tend to think of advertising. That’s natural: advertising is highly visible, it’s all around us and it works, even if we don’t always know how. But does advertising work as well as it used to? The evidence suggests not – and there are many reasons:
- Inflation in media costs has consistently been greater than inflation in the economy as a whole
- Spoilt consumers have greater choice than ever before. Take TV channels: In the UK, we’ve gone from 4 available TV channels to well over 100; in the US the choice is even greater; the same is true of consumer magazines; and there are the new digital advertising media
- Despite this, many brands now have lower budgets in actual, let alone real terms. This is particularly true in the current economic downturn
- Product quality and performance vary little in most sectors, making it harder to differentiate brands on objective grounds. For instance many cars are designed in the same wind tunnel with the same computer programmes, and feature near-identical performance, economy and quality
- These fundamental shifts have led many leading brands to turn to experiential marketing; enabling potential customers to experience the benefits of their product and ultimately convincing them to buy
- This approach in turn generates word of mouth recommendation – one of the oldest, most effective forms of advertising
- Not only does it still work: it can be twice as effective as advertising – for far less
We are world leaders in experiential events and brand advocacy programmes. It’s what we do; we’ve been doing it longer than others. And we can do it for you. Please contact us if you would like to discuss how our approach could work for your brand. contact