Don’t hope people get the message: Make sure of it!
The Big Idea: Branding should make an impression:
- 👋
- 🛎️
- 😲
Know what this brand is?
You probably don’t because I wouldn’t have without Peter Weinberg’s comments on the ad.
What You Need to Know: Branding works through awareness and repetition.
You can’t measure the ROI of your brand building until it shows up as increased sales or declining sales because you did it or took the branding budget away.
An Ad Like This: Needs to do one of two things:
- Build top-of-mind awareness
- Have a call to action for a specific market segment
Instead, it does neither.
Why It Doesn’t Work: A few reasons:
- Who is the brand?
- What are the codes?
- What do you want me to do?
- What do you want me to know or think?
Brand 101: No matter if the ad is short or long, you want it to be clear it is you.
You do that by using your Brand Codes. Those 4 or so images, colors, shapes, etc. that define you in your market’s mind.
The key to Brand Codes: you can’t do it enough. It should feel like you’ve over done it. You can’t.
As I learned in the Mini-MBA in Brand Management: “Codify! Codify! Codify!”
When you think you’ve gone too far: “Codify some more.”
This ad doesn’t do that.
Who Is It? Cadillac. Look at the QR code.