Tim Ringel is Global CEO of Meet The People.
Proclaiming the end of the big brand campaign is an all-too-common narrative in the advertising press.
Influential industry voices consistently point to the shrinking importance of broadcast TV and conclude big-budget, extravagant ads are a thing of the past. Then add in the demand for more accountability for marketing budgets, and we get a seeming diminishment of all above-the-line advertising in favor of more measurable below-the-line efforts.
However, the truth is, large-scale brand campaigns are more important than ever.
Consider the massive diversity of media options in play today.
While some might argue this competition for the customer’s attention requires a complete focus on smaller, more personalized efforts, I’d argue it intensifies the need for broader branding solutions, as well.
Combatting digital’s lower bar-to-entry and keeping smaller competitors from chipping away at your leadership requires a prominent, ubiquitous and singular brand voice. And the best way I’ve found to achieve this is through investing in a scalable campaign, anchored by memorable brand ads, with connected brand messaging interwoven throughout the rest of the program.
This is not to say that TV ads are always the answer, nor that we don’t need more diversified experiences within a campaign. But differentiation is still the name of the game in marketing, and big brand campaign tactics are uniquely equipped to cut through the added noise of today’s media landscape to create greater impact and improve message recall.
Embrace and surround.
With that established, we now need to look closer at how we execute an effective strategy in such a crowded media space. And that often begins with reimagining the role of each type of ad media.
The days of always starting with the TV ad and then having everything else “kinda-sorta” build off of that are over. TV is still valuable, mind you, but it no longer needs to be point A in a campaign strategy.
It’s essential to electrify consumers, wherever they choose to enter, with a brand experience that is both memorable and desirable. So if the audience is best reached with TikTok, awareness ideation should start there. Then a splashy TV ad could be created for YouTube and broadcast channels to anchor the campaign and aid recall of the TikTok brand encounter.
However, the important thing to recognize is that while the hierarchy of media choices has become more fluid, the value of embracing and surrounding the consumer has not. Traditional awareness-building channels, like TV, serve to ground and summarize the central narrative of the campaign, bookending the other promotional efforts and making everything else more effective.
In other words, below-the-line branding can be used to launch a campaign, but it doesn’t negate the need for above-the-line branding to cement awareness and build long-lasting value.
Clarify success.
Then there’s the other big red herring in the room—accountability.
You likely know that as internal budgetary pressure mounts within the typical company, finance will look for justification of ad spend as a potential lever for cost-cutting. It’s a tactic that invariably leads to a rejection of large investment in branding, in favor of the more measurable below-the-line promotions.
The problem is below-the-line efforts that lack adequate connection to strong, brand campaign support often wind up commoditizing products. So while results can be proven, these results don’t last and could even wind up putting the brand on a course of diminishing returns.
It’s definitely a conundrum. You either have long-term success that’s hard to prove or short-term success that’s impossible to keep.
Luckily, though, there is a third path.
When you construct a brand campaign with clear, measurable outcomes right from the start, it gives you the ability to communicate what success looks like. Which in turn equips you to justify the role of blockbuster brand ads as essential for filling the below-the-line sales pipeline.
It all comes down to bringing your creative, media and analytics teams into a closer working relationship. Empower them to think more strategically about how every initiative within the campaign will be specifically enhanced by its other parts. Equipped with this, your teams will be better able to create, place and measure a more provably effective campaign.
So in the end, I wholeheartedly maintain that the big brand campaign is indeed alive and well. You simply need to be willing to address the evolution of the roles played by each media choice and build a more interconnected series of promotional touchpoints. I think the results are sure to be as monumental as they are measurable.
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