By Kristy Hesom
“We promised you science,” said Gill Randall, CEO of SPARK Media, “We have insights that can be gleaned from the observations that have been made worldwide, as well as in our own country through our ROOTS research.”
These research findings can be used as tools to equip marketers to better understand how to grow their brand, and come out as bigger and better brands, said Randall. Backed up by ROOTS research, the findings were as follows.
Distinctiveness
Randall pointed out that brands are all on a journey to be unique, but says that this is not the way forward. Brands should instead be aiming to own their distinctive traits, and to make sure that “you always look like you.”
In a time-scarce society, your brand image is the shortcut you have to be instantly recognisable, Randall said. Whether it be through your products or through how you advertise, don’t waste your consumers' time by making them guess who you are.
You can make use of heritage, such as All Gold’s old-school bottle, a colour like Game’s bright pink, a symbol like Nike’s famous tick, or through a memorable character, with the likes of Steve from FNB or the talking dog from the Toyota adverts, coming to mind.
Fame
“How do you become famous?” asked Randall. She pointed out that you have to make your brand the most important brand in as many peoples' minds as possible. The only way you can achieve this, she said, is to talk to as many people as possible through mass effective reach.
Mass effective reach means not trying to tightly profile your customer base, but that you have to target your category as a whole, not the niche. Your brand can only grow when it has more users, said Randall, and this can only be achieved by targeting your category.
While we could talk about their reference to Coke’s reach here, Coke’s fame far outweighs anything local brands could hope to achieve.
Continuity
The third and final finding was continuity of message, which should not be confused with frequency.
“It’s about a drip strategy, as opposed to a burst and a drought strategy,” said Randall. Every month, every week and every day, different people could need your product for different reasons, and if your product is not there, people cannot (and will not) buy it.
Check out part 1 of the story
here.