I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read about a brand spending a huge amount of time and money on a rebrand or repositioning, to watch them instantly undo it with some lazy whole base marketing.
Imagine, you’ve spent 6 (or 7!) figures on beautifully positioning your brand in the market place. You’re all about the quality! The freshness! The ambience!
Then you ask 1000 people what they know about your brand. They cast their minds back to the last time they heard from you, and recall – KIDS EAT FREE?!
Your brand balloon is well and truly burst.
HOW TO DO IT BETTER
So how can you do comms better, and make sure they drive commercial impact, while keeping your brand dignity intact?
Before sending anything to your base, ask yourself this. “Is this something i’m really happy for my brand to be KNOWN for? If it’s yes, send til your hearts content!
If not, it’s a marketing message and must go only to those it is relevant to, to stop it destroying all your hard brand work.
FOR EXAMPLE
Is ‘Kids Eat Free’ a whole base message – only if your brand revolves solely around the promise of value and family.
If it doesn’t (most of you), KEF should only go to those on the base who have either purchased kids food before, or given an indication that kids are a relevant thing to them (such as ticking a box, or asking for a high chair on a booking form).
And you have to be disciplined about this because ‘ah but we want to send to the whole base because what if they know someone with kids!!’ is frankly, a terrible commercial rationale.
The few sales you might get on that basis will be instantly cancelled out by the people who are turned off by the thought of kids running around while they enjoy the quality, freshness and ambience they came to you for in the first place.
Brand is a vital piece of the puzzle, make sure you’re showing yours in the right light, to the right people.
Drop me a line if you want to chat about this.
