Strong performances at experience, exposure and activation add up to an overall increase of 46% across three years.
Every experienced marketer recognises the problem: they know that brands grow over the long term but all too often their efforts are diverted into delivering the next quarter’s budget. Our 2018 study "Getting Media Right" finds that only 52% of global advertisers are confident their organisation has the right balance between short-term performance marketing and long-term brand building. Despite the apparent dichotomy between short and long term, their definitions are far from clear. It is not as though we can easily segregate short-term activities from long-term. A "short-term" price discount might have a long-term effect if it gets someone to buy for the first time, thus increasing the probability that they will buy again. Equally an ad campaign designed to build positive brand attitudes over the "long term" might remind an existing user to buy the brand on their next shopping trip. What we can say with confidence is that sustained, long-term growth is rare. Our BrandZ™ global brand equity database reveals that of the brands measured across both a one-year and three-year time frame, fewer than 6% of brands grew market share over the first year, but only 6 in 10 of those had sustained that gain over three years, and fewer than 1 in 10 further improved on their initial gain. Our analysis finds that the key to sustainable growth lies in balancing investment across three key marketing activities – experience, exposure and activation - designed to influence behaviour at different points in the buyer lifecycle. To help all marketers improve their chances of achieving sustainable market share growth, this report offers a simple framework for understanding brand growth, and makes five recommendations on how best to build sales now and into the future. Our findings are based on the analysis of 3,907 brands in our BrandZ™ database measured over a three-year period across 21 countries and 58 product categories. Building sales momentumIn science, momentum is a function of mass and velocity. With brands, greater mass (market share) brings huge advantages. But mass on its own does not guarantee future growth. Growth comes from improving velocity, the speed at which the brand builds sales relative to its size and to its competition. All marketing activities need to work now, but not all of them drive sales at the same rate or over the same time frame. For instance, our market mix modelling finds that on average, digital display and search marketing tend to have a very quick sales impact but that their influence does not last. TV and digital video have longer lasting effects but still decay over the course of several weeks. Unless you have the budget to spend continuously, growth will be hard to come by if you rely only on short-term incremental effects. The key to building sales now and into the future is to turn incremental effects into lasting ones.
Many in business think of “brand” in very limited terms: a logo, advertising, PR and social media posts. But no one buys a brand because of its logo. They buy it because of what that logo stands for. A brand is defined by the intuitive feelings, memories and experiences that people associate with it and some of those defining associations may be decades in the making. Everything you do builds your brand, but it is how people interpret what you do and how they remember it, that really matters.
At Kantar we identify three broad areas of marketing activity that are key to driving sales now and for the future:
• Experience
• Exposure
• Activation
Each one is important, and each contributes to brand growth in a different way and over a different time frame.
Getting the balance of investment right is critical to creating sustained growth. It is very tempting to focus only on one activity. However, our research finds that brands which focus too much on only one activity risk leaving money on the table.
More sales momentum is achieved by ensuring all three activities are optimised and working in synergy; focusing only on one area will likely result in underperformance. Further, your brand’s category, size and competitive context may dictate a different balance of investment across these three areas to maximise sales momentum.
Applying market pressure across three points in the buyer cycle builds sales momentum now and for the future. Strong performance at each stage adds up to an overall increase of 46% across three years. |