Branded content is just the ad industry’s latest psychosis
In this opinion piece Eaon Pritchard argues that, at times, the industry slips in and out of a strange state of psychosis, with branded content and social media engagement two of the latest examples.
The term ‘salience’ – in marketing speak – refers to the likelihood that a particular brand will ‘come to mind’ easily in buying situations.
In ‘How Brands Grow’, Professor Byron Sharp uses the term to describe the idea of ‘mental availability’.
Hi Eaon,
I always enjoy your articles and I have to say that this is one of your better (or at least funnier) ones!
Just a thought here through, or some questions perhaps.
Not all brands can afford to be as salient as some of their bigger spending rivals so may need to be more targeted in their approach in order to seem “as big as possible”. What do they do?
Also, I agree that a focus on loyalty is flawed as you are essentially preaching to the choir but what are your thoughts on driving advocacy via your loyal customers in order to drive recommendation?
Agree 100%. The whole content marketing thing might work b2b but for consumer marketing its just another way marketing people can apply themselves to simple solutions when the real issue is complicated. Most agency people think Byron Sharp is the devil because he called bullshit on the fun stuff.
@Matt, there are longer answers to both those questions which I can tell you about another time. Suffice to say smaller brands are best advised to think about advertising spending as a weapon rather than a cost – deployed based upon an analysis of the competitive situation.
All other things equal, marketing budgets will be the deciding factor. Fortunately, there is one truly democratic competitive edge up for grabs: creativity – for which the only required capital is courage.
A truly creative campaign by a tiny brand is simply more memorable (generating saliency as well as PR/WOM) than a product-message carpet-bombing by a larger brand.
And this has nothing to do with tighter targeting. As Byron Sharp also has showed, a brand’s users consist of numerous infrequent and disloyal consumers.
Hi Eaon, I agree with 99% of what you’re saying, but you’re kind of throwing the baby with the bathwater a bit here. Branded content can and should work, it can be salient, it can be consistent, it can help brands be visible over longer periods of times, and it can even help reach non buyers of a brand. It’s not because a lot of brands get it wrong that it’s a hopeless area – many get their advertising (very) wrong and yet advertising can still work 😉
Thom Yorke on “content”:
http://thepunkrockshop.tumblr......e-over-the
It’s yet another bit of Adland jargon I’m completely exhausted by.
Eaon. So much brutal truth in so few paragraphs. Tread softly for you tread on their aberrant salience dreams. “Ad salience and brand salience are two halves of the job.” If you don’t mind I’m going to borrow that, it’s nicely put. And why I think comments like Marius’, whilst technically correct are often dangerous. For most creative directors I have met, creativity means greater ad salience. Make it bigger, more ambitious, sexier, more award winning. All too often that comes at the price of brand salience. It doesn’t have to be that way as Shann says, but I share Tom’s sad state of despair at an Adland now so enamoured of its own talent it thinks its can make content that’s truly as entertaining as Netflix, HBO and other actual content makers, whilst still selling product. Possible? Sure. Likely. Well maybe not. (By the way I did see some spurious looking charts once that suggested maybe Facebook followers weren’t heavies, I never believed it, but do you have a source that shows the correlation between social media liking and consumption?) Thanks. Great post.
Enjoyable and interesting post. Thanks.
Interesting and all very theoretical. Can you cite examples of both the good and bad? Not all Branded Content renders useless on salience, not all social media either. If you think both fail, what works?
@anonymous Yes, I can. but that’s how I get paid.
The most disconcerting thing in marketing is disparity between amount of people who have read How Brand Grow and the lack of marketers who genuinely practice it and follow the proven methods.
”People don’t want to engage in meaningfull relationships with brands”
No, but they can be charmed into it.
Ps. When I read articles like this that give no examples I smell gas.
Peter and Anonymous – an example proves almost precisely nothing. In research we call that a sample size of 1. All a case study shows is that something CAN work (or not work), not that it WILL. This is why we turn to data or, more interestingly in this case, to theory.
For mine, this piece is note perfect. Thanks very much Eaon.