Branding in Steep Decline
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 at 06:04PM In a recent article published in Response Magazine, Don Potter wrote the headline "Branding is Dead."
He starts out by saying:
"Over the years, many advertising practitioners have forgotten that the primary purpose of their profession is to sell stuff."
This sounds a lot like my post "What is the purpose of advertising anyway?" I was reacting to the multi-million dollar advertisements in the last Superbowl when I wrote:
"Things are indeed getting worse than we thought for advertising agencies that waste millions of dollars of their clients' money with advertising that does not get the cash register ringing."
But saying that all branding is dead was not Potter's point. He is simply stating the obvious that eludes many advertisers. "Advertising's true role? Sell!"
In his own editorial in the same issue, the editor-in-chief Thomas Haire says that "once so brilliant brand marketers who had no time for DR now have one chance to save themselves in the new marketing universe: line up to learn the secrets of direct response from its leading experts or face obsolescence."
If you have been in direct marketing for more than 10 years, then you know that the traditional direct marketer has indeed gained a new relevance in the eyes of corporate America. The call for accountable advertising has never wielded a stronger voice than right now.
Just look at the spending trends.
According to Jacqueline Renfrow, total ad spending fell 2.6% in 2008 while DR was up by 9.2% (third article down on the linked page).
But we must not make the same mistake that branders made when they took the position that direct marketers have nothing to teach them.
What are some of the lessons we can learn from positioning, branding and image building advertisers?
Branding 
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Reader Comments (6)
Geez, I don't know. Seems to me that there are 100 blog posts written every day claiming how important branding is and brands are.
But regardless, I would challenge the notion that advertising's purpose is to sell. If you look at marketing through the lens of the customer lifecycle (awareness -> consideration -> preference -> sale -> repeat sale), then advertising has always been a lot more effective towards the left end of that spectrum than the right end.
What's contributing to the decline in mass media advertising, is that there are less costly ways of generating awareness these days.
Hi Ron,
I've always thought you could do the first four steps in one. In fact, the Internet has reinforced that capability,
And yes, there are (and have always been) less costly ways to build awareness. Ask for the sale while building awareness with direct response advertising! And that has more to do with the advertising strategy than the available media (or channels as we prefer to say these days). Why stop at awareness?
Awareness alone may create demand. But it often does so without an outlet or a way to buy when the prospect is ready. Just get to the sale already.
Brands Are Dead. (Really?) Read more at http://briancreath.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/brands-are-not-dead/
I think branding has been overtaken by the notion that advertising (non direct response advertising, that is) needs to be entertaining, sometimes even at the cost of a) not creating instant recall of the product's name or b) touting a major selling point/benefit to the consumer that is easily identifiable. The ads seem to get all caught up in their own little world. Years ago, entertaining shows (the Ed Sullivan show, for example) were the forum for brand sponsors who simply had to demonstrate their product using the show's host as an endorser or provide relief from the show with "a word from our sponsor." The ad message has become so overly evolved due to its new role in the scheme of TV broadcasts, magazine layouts, point-of-purchase displays and so forth that the sales message is getting lost.
This whole discussion makes me think summer's coming. Bring on the skywriting! : ))))
Boy can the word "branding" get used in a bunch of ways that make its meaning meaningless. A brand is that story that captures the essence of you know, the company, the product, the service, etc. How can story telling be dead when it is what humans use to make sense out of reality or fiction. The brain science research is showing us how really important that story is and how the facts are really not of much relevance unless you customers can build a good story. And if you don't build it for them they will build it themselves. So is it die-able? or here forever?
Andi,
Obviously, branding apart from what one might call "branding advertising" is real and critical to the long term viability of any commercial enterprise. So I think you are correct in your comment.
The problem may be that the advertising agency branding world has inadvertently redefined its scope over time by focusing so much on spending purely on advertising. The brand goes deeper and far beyond advertising to include product development, customer service and the whole customer experience.
Companies tend to stretch the role of advertising at the expense of more important branding issues where the advertising story collides with reality.
Advertising should be a result of the brand rather than the core branding activity.
Direct marketers see advertising as the harvester that reaps the selling reward of hard earned branding that has very little to do with advertising.
So branding is not dead. Only the strategy that mass advertising as we knew it is the key component to building the brand is dead.