Consistent Messages


First and foremost, you want to define your brand or your positioning in very fundamental ways. Whatever drives that brand – the governing brand idea – should be consistent throughout your communications. That consistency should not deviate, otherwise you run the risk of confusing consumers. You need to stand for something. If you’re a cause, the cause should clearly be understood. If you’re an enabler, what you enable should be clearly understood. If you’re a statement of who I am or what I am, that statement should be clearly understood. I think, however, that you can make judgments about how to express that in order to be relevant to the people you want to express it to.

A general rule when launching something new is to keep for some period of time not only the governing brand idea, positioning or fundamental proposition the same, but also to keep the executions relatively consistent. The reason is to maximize establishing the core idea. The more I can repeat it and build frequency, the better off I am. As brands become more established, you want to do more than just execute. You want to think about how the consumer is going to engage with that particular execution through a particular avenue. If you’re doing guerrilla postings, your execution might involve a more fun approach, which might be different than a television approach. For example, if you are talking about a social product such as beer, the execution might take on a slightly different flavor in that kind of environment. But you want the positioning to be consistent.

Take the example of Sony. Sony stands for something. To most people, Sony stands for the absolute ultimate in consumer electronics products. It’s the highest quality performance product. However, if you look across the set of executions Sony might do, which are done by a variety of agencies, the actual executions might be a little different if you’re talking to someone buying Sony Playstation 2 versus someone buying a Sony Vega plasma TV screen. One costs $200, the other costs $17,000, and they’re purchased for different reasons. The general rule is you want the core positioning in a brand idea to be alive and well in everything. Also, you want to drive for a core idea that is relevant and utilizes the media. It is important that the consumer engages it in a way that maximizes that opportunity.




The Art of Advertising. CEOs from BBDO, Mullin Advertising & More on Generating Creative Campaigns & Building Successful Brands
The Art of Advertising: CEOs from Mullen Advertising, Marc USA, Euro RSCG & More on Generating Creative Campaigns & Building Successful Brands (Inside the Minds Series)
ISBN: 1587622319
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 68

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net