First, take a look at this commercial, it’s very sweet!
Now, let me ask you: what brand was advertised?
Vodafone?
Stratos?
Nike?
Find it hard to recall? So does the consumer!
When screening this Stratos TVC In our SIT advertising projects, we ask the participants to fill a memorability questionnaire. What we typically find is that most people cannot identify the correct brand. In fact, usually they think it’s a Vodafone ad.
One of the most basic conditions for the effectiveness of a campaign is that your consumers recognize your brand in the ad.
Did I say basic? Not so simple!
Every so often we fall in love with a great commercial, totally carried away by the intelligent story, or the emotional impact it produces, but forget completely what brand was being advertised.
Worse, we sometimes even confuse it with the competitor’s brand.
To ensure that your ad is more effective from a brand recall perspective, you need to find ways to ‘fuse’ the brand with the creative idea or the execution.
The SIT method refers to it as Brand Fusion, and the more well defined a brand’s identity and properties are, the easier Brand Fusion will be to achieve. Just think of Orange or Guinness.
If you want to know a little more about it email me, or if you’re in the neighborhood, you can see SIT in action at the SIT Moscow Marcom Innovation Event on October 6th.
A similar example that first jumps to my mind it Absolute Vodka. I think their brand fusion is very strong in all their ads.
Orange is indeed a good example because cellular companies usually have weak brand fusion.
Among the credit companies in Israel, Isracard are good because they made the consumer identify the product with culture and not only with lifestyle (which is common in the credit cards market).
In the fashion field I think “Irit” is remarkable. You could tell it’s their ad because of a particular pose of the model’s hand (!) which is subtle and courageous.
In my opinion, there are also iconic characters that enable and strengthen brand fusion e.g. the Marlboro cowboy, the Michelin Flatable guy. Am I right or that’s another SIT for advertising’s principle?
Cheers!
Fabian
That’s very true Fabian! It’s called brand characters. Brand characters help the consumer recognize the brand. It can be celebrities, cartoon figures or even animals. There is more than just one way to enhance brand recognition, such as: color, font, logo and even cinematic style. I recall an outdoor ad for the Economist with red background and no visuals or copy and one can still tell it was the Economist.
Got any TVC you would like to share as an example of a good / lousy brand fusion?
(Unfortunately, they’re not so common…)
Here is a terrible example of brand fusion. Who would guess it is a Cadbury ad?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo&rel=1
You have a strong point there regarding the Cadbury’s ad and even more since it won the Cannes’ Grand Prix this year. This evokes an essential discussion of what is an effective piece of communication, which is what we’re going to tackle in our SIT Marcom Innovation event in Moscow next month.
My claim is that there’s no need to disqualify a creative idea if we think it wouldn’t sell, since we can enhance effectivity by a stronger brand fusion on existing ideas.
As for Shmulik’s comment: I want to give an example of a Russian cellular company that managed to create a very distinct visual language for its brand. They’re called: Beeline and they happen to be a great client of ours.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XZ4PuzvBCg&feature=related
[sorry for being 'nudnik'] but it can’t be nike’s ad because it’s Umbro shoes.
The ad is for Stratus- the choclate, but as you can see, many times consumers confuse it with another product, as the brand fusion in this ad is very weak.