Many profess dooms day for brands with the advent of Digital Media. I do not believe so. The power of Branding is undisputable, and these great brands are there to stay irrespective of the advent of digital era. Brand managers love their brands and will continue to pour in millions to make their brands more powerful both in traditional medias and increasingly more in digital marketing.
There is enough said about branding and its power, when you think adhesive you say Fevicol, instead of refrigerator we call it a Fridge (a brand) … Brands are now more of a proven perception and some of make belief through massive advertising. Each brand promises something, i.e. Surf Excel means clear washing. So would you trust Surf Excel or Jaya Washing Powder to do your laundry?
What is a value of a brand? How do you calculate?
To quote from Greg Sartell’s blog, “What business wouldn’t want simple metrics with which to evaluate return on marketing investment? The fact is that businesses don’t run on metrics, they run on profits and while measuring brand value isn’t straightforward, the value is real nonetheless. Interbrand regularly evaluates financial value for brands and finds that many are worth tens of billions of dollars.”
“So can we evaluate a brand like a direct response ad? This paper from the Marketing Science Institute estimates that “a one-unit change in the Brand Asset Index is associated with a 4% change in the market value of a firm.” In study after study, brands are shown to be one of the most valuable assets a company can have.”
So, how are Google and Facebook valued at tens of billions of dollars? Are their revenues in billions? No. Brand is intangible yet the main basis to evaluate. Measurability of brand and perception has been a perennial problem faced by brand managers. The answer to this can be what contributes more to the success of a product or service in the market place. However, measurability remains a main question. Under this disguise perhaps Television still rules the roost in India, followed by the print media.
Amazingly, digital media even though is highly measurable is yet to find its place in the sun in the marketing budget mix in India.
I believe ad agencies too do not want to change the status quo unless pushed by the client – the brand managers. The age old TRPs, circulation/readers norms suits the ad agencies fine. I am sorry to say but many ad agency execs do not understand the digital media, the media of ‘today’.
With increased computer penetration, smart phones=internet broadband digital marketing (including mobile marketing) is the future which has arrived.
This is not to say that creativity does not hold good but there were times when TV Serials like Hum Log and some amazing serials ruled, there TRPs were in double figures. Last word of television measurability was TAM, however reliable (unreliable) it was, but the times are changing. With the arrival of new media, brand owners now have choices; media is splitting, so is the media spends and media measurability norms. Brand owners want more accountability of media, better measurability to maximize the bang for their bucks spent better or sure fire ways of methodologies to track media.
Creative is now a part of the whole; media measurability, analytics, addressability … is the new mantra. Various numbers are starting to fly around and the scenario is becoming complicated for some of the ad agency couch potatoes. Whether you agree or not it is fast becoming times of analysis and not just emotions.
It is the age of calculating Return on Investment in ad spends and brand communication programmes. The purist (creative guys/ad agencies) call this a trap, others (brand managers) call it logic or accountability.
Brands in the digital age would have suffered the same issues as the traditional medias but the likes of Google have simplified some of these problems. This is not to say that digital media is the answer to all the marketing communication problems.
But the future is quite clear, with the advent of digital age/media, ‘brands’ will benefit. There will be increase in the well known brands gang due to low cost of selling, 1-2-1 communication with the audience, low cost of acquisition and the resultant high margins. Above all there will be some level playing field in the market, democratization of marketing and brands, medium and small brands will get a better ‘play’ …
But there is a huge challenge for the digital media - it will have to learn how to build brands, not just produce direct response. And for doing this today’s digital marketers will probably have to learn a lot from the ad giants, time for Piyush Pandey, Balki, Alyque Padamse and their likes to raise their hand.
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