Pablo Vázquez Cagiao (current Head of Planning at Mrs. Rushmore), in the book he is the author of (“Strategic planning. The relevance of the consumer in commercial communication analyzed by planners” Cristina Sánchez-Blanco, Editorial Universitas), talks about the role of the planner in achieving advertising effectiveness. One of the interesting strategies that he proposes is to detect the vectors that can speed up the brand:
“Let us then differentiate the vectors that can give speed to the brand:
- Understand and define the field of competition in which the brand operates. What universe is the one that populates, what is it that differentiates it in what it does.
2. Understand who your target is, for whom it exists. Sometimes it can be to delimit a sociodemographic profile with greater precision. Much more when it comes to understanding better than anyone else a need, a desire or a frustration that unites a collective that may be greater attitudinal. Always identify who is really influencing the purchase decision. Cola Cao experienced a notable increase in sales when it changed its strategy from targeting mothers to targeting tweens, with “As you wish, Cola Cao.”
3. Establish your world view, your creed, your cause. Dove’s “Beauty Without Artifice”, which is the brand essence of the brand, becomes “For Real Beauty”, a very powerful approach that provides the brand with a manifesto with which to reach its consumers.
4. Correctly interpret what big trends you can align with to give you more speed. Marty Neumeier, in his work, Zag recommends when developing a positioning, consider whether there is some social phenomenon with which you can tune in so that the brand thus gains speed to add influence ”
This last idea generated some doubts among my students. To clarify, I incorporated the following example:
- The Camper brand with its campaign «Walk, don’t run” in which the brand, in order to give their brand more travel, in order to maximize the possible effectiveness of their campaign or in order for the brand to obtain more speed (as Pablo and Marty say) aligned themselves with the movimiento Slow, a social phenomenon born in Italy in relation to food (slow food as opposed to fast food) but which quickly reached other countries and territories beyond food (health, work, education, sex, leisure,…)
I was also lucky to have the support of the authors, who also gave us some very clarifying examples.
Marty Neumeier tweeted the following (@MARTYneumeier): “Hitch your brand to a movement, a rising trend, or an insoluble problem”
That is, “Upload your brand to a movement, a growing trend or an unsolvable human problem.”
As examples he mentioned the following:
- The shoe brand Tom’s Shoes is aligned with the growing trend of “Social Responsibility”.
The Fiat 500 jumps on the trend of downsizing.
Or Apple that aligns itself with the pursuit of good industrial design.
For his part, Pablo Vázquez added:
- “Well, examples like Movistar in principle when it is done with the generic of the category “Compartida la vida es más”, based on what T Mobile said “Life is for Sharing”
- Or Dove with the search for natural beauty without artifice in “Belleza real”
- In food, Campofrío has been identifying with the mood of the average citizen for two years and has left his category to talk about reality.
Or like Coca Cola with the “Benditos bares” campaign
I hope I have contributed my grain of sand to make this interesting idea clearer.
