Who am I? A P&L crafter? A growth hacker? A techie? A digital expert? A social media professional? A product specialist? A crisis manager? A supply chain consultant? A fall guy…
The worried CMO’s mind was on an active overdrive! Another quarter of losses. The CFO had slashed marketing’s budget as an immediate measure. Obviously. Right? Marketing is a cost function; the CEO had tried his hardest to pacify the distraught marketer.
Just when the CMO thought things couldn’t get worse, they did! The CEO on the behest of the 'saviour' CFO urged the marketer to divert the 'remainder' funds into the most 'effective' form of marketing – digital of course, led by its Demi-God - performance marketing, that ubiquitous funnel with its 'measurability' lens. At least, we will know how marketing is performing, said the CEO valiantly in his continued zeal to 'guide' the marketer via the CFO on the function of marketing.
The CMO prayed fervently to the gods of marketing for deliverance. The solution was so obvious and so simple – back to basics, brand building, storytelling, consumer-first narratives, why then wasn’t anyone listening to the CMO – the 'real' marketing functional expert? It was like being stuck in the Museum of Paradox instead of the Museum of Solutions!
And then something shifted! Big time! Dramatically! Colossally!
Nike crashed and burned. Hit its lowest-ever stock price in 52 weeks! Why? Because of its newfound obsession to mimic DTC, the fixation led to straying away from the basics, moving away from their strength since the mid-80s as a 'marketing brand' built on evocative storytelling. Sure, the logo featured extensively in all digital media, the swoosh was apparent, in your face even across all clickbait performance ads, as part of the discount content as well in an attempt to 'woo' the consumer as the 'digital mavericks' and the 'new age growth pundits' would have them believe is the new era of marketing. And Nike did just that, more and more of just that, till it cheapened the brand, made it as irrelevant as parity as any other brand being peddled oops – retailed online. In the meanwhile, the competition, cool start-up brands like ON and Hoka as well as cult classic brands like Adidas kept the peddle firmly triggered on both brand building supplemented by performance marketing, leading to steady gain of share from the world’s most beloved and beautiful shoe brand – Nike, ironically across all of its key markets.
If a giant like Nike could so easily be shaken off track and tumble off in a 'swoosh', where does it leave all the other not as well 'brand built' brands, then?
Nike decided to get its act together using the Paris Olympics to usher in the winds of 're-change' with a promise to spend on big, bold, beautiful brand stories – moments crafted from the consumer’s experience, innovation led by the consumer’s life, technology created for the consumer’s ease, a 're-pivot' into a 'gut' first 'magic' fuelled world of marketing where the brand’s story inspired by the 'consumer' was the overarching business strength that tied the supply chain with the P&L to the retail outlet without losing any focus on DTC while staying highly relevant by leveraging all Martech tools.
The operative word being 'tools', just a medium like any other – print, outdoor, TV, radio.
That’s digital - an extremely relevant, super powerful and highly evolved medium encompassing tools such as organic and paid with its avatars of SEO, blogs, long form, short form, website, SEM, Funnel, Emailer, Google, Meta.
DTC is wonderful but once again it’s just a 'channel' and it’s tenets do not apply to offline retail, also does not 'replace' traditional in the guise of 'technology'. It’s not an either-or situation. Brand Building is a constant that absolutely should not and cannot be replaced. It is the alpha and the omega.
Which brings us to another fantastic use case of a new-age urban legend that pivoted from a performance-first approach to literally taking away all monies from performance marketing and re-harvesting it into brand building and this brave, crazy, audacious move was made bang in the middle of a global crisis, a pandemic that almost threatened to eradicate humankind – Covid19. All the world’s brands and it’s cousins were bandying to learn 'digital marketing' spruced with a healthy dose of 'AI' to help effectively sell their wares as well as successfully save costs by replacing marketers, designers, writers, agencies and simply focusing on getting their DTC act together – the future, the king, the saviour.
But not our brand in focus - Air BnB. While the world zigged towards performance, they zagged towards brand stories. This risqué call reaped rich dividends – literally by making the brand profitable. The campaign 'Made Possible by Hosts' crafted narratives built on its core business – the hosts, their homes and the guests.
The road less travelled, is often the toughest one, seems impossible and bleak but is always the 'right' choice.
Option 1 – The easy one: The choice to be short-term focused, digital led, discount heavy, FOMO driven and therefore getting the 5 per cent cohort immediately, while after the initial run, seeing a surge in CPC as the 'in-market' audience is now exhausted with neither reach nor relevancy created in all this hoopla!
Option 2 – The tough one: Brand Building led with the consumer at the core, constantly evolving stories that provide the consumer with the 'how' and the 'why' to make your brand their brand of choice. This targets the 95 per cent, reaches the observers, the naysayers, the ignoramus, future advocates. It requires patience, persistence and insane levels of creative resilience with maddening consistency to tap into the consumer’s life, marrying it with the brand’s relevancy and using each medium, tool and channel as an arsenal in the Marketer’s artillery to launch the right mix to the right cohort at the right time with the right messaging coupled with the right pricing in the right places – the P’s of Marketing as defined by the OG. Marketing Guru - Philip Kotler. It's as basic, as simple but that what makes it a hard act to follow in today’s day and age when the pressure on marketing to deliver immediate results is so foolishly misplaced and flakishly persistent by well-intentioned non-marketers in the organisation. The hard choice leads to brand building that crafts brand differentiation in the mind of the consumer, it leads to the creation of admirers, aspirers, buyers, repeat purchasers and eventually advocates. It leads to being 'spoken of', it leads back to marketing when it began in the early 1800’s with the town criers that crafted loyalists for life, a precious rarity in the 21st century! That’s the unicorn CLTV – customer lifetime value that every marketer aspires to leave behind as a brand legacy in his/her midas touch.
Darwin’s theory of evolution evangelised the concept of the survival of the fittest. If we were to apply Darwinism to the marketing species, it would entail re-placing the consumer at the core, crafting brand narratives relevant to the life of this consumer, allowing for marketing to be the Mother Lode of the business with patience and panache in equal measure even as she orchestrates between all her children from brand building, performance marketing to her newest constantly evolving babylings – AI, ML and their language to program few but highly impactful big, bold and beautiful brand campaigns that will create brand love, brand loyalty and brand lifetime value.
The CMO had found redemption in the arms of this breathtaking revelation – he just needed to now bravely pass on this divine message to his CEO and CFO – allow marketing to simply breathe. Marketing is not the fall guy; marketing is the messiah. So, create that space where it can weave its magic in its fittest, finest surviving, shining avatar yet!
As Sanjana said in the 90’s classic Pepsi ad featuring Aamir Khan 'Yehi hai Right Choice, baby! Aha!'
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