Carl Fremont: Five steps for Balancing Brand and Demand
why even in Today’s fast-paced marketplace, slowing down may be the only way to see what’s working
By Carl Fremont
Today’s fast-paced and quickly changing marketplace has many marketers reluctant to slow down to see what is and isn’t working. But a willingness to test and learn and make adjustments to the symbiotic balance between building a brand and driving revenue is the true solution. Quigley CEO Carl Fremont offers five steps brand marketers can use to analyze their own situation, grow now and in the future, and avoid “throwing good money after bad.”
In these unprecedented times there are many things that keep us all up at night—the personal, the political, and the professional. I would guess that if you ask marketers what keeps them up at night from a business point of view—even pre-COVID-19 crisis—they would respond with myriad but similar questions: “Am I making the right marketing investment decisions? What will provide the greatest return on my marketing investment? How can I be assured that I can build bottom line and top line growth? Will my marketing investments yield the greatest shareholder value? How do I balance the longer-term brand building requirements with the short term needs to drive sales?”
All of these middle-of-the-night musings boil down to the same core assessment: brand versus demand. Whether to invest in longer term brand-building work or immediate efforts to increase demand is a conundrum that marketers have always faced. But the economic realities brought on by the global pandemic have made this calculation even more challenging, especially since we don’t know what the immediate future will bring.
A Balancing Act is Key
The good news is that building your brand and driving performance do not need to be mutually exclusive. In my career, I have always focused on brand AND demand. The trick is in balancing the two.
Take the example of the struggling department store (it doesn’t really matter which one, the entire sector has been in trouble for years). I grew up in New York City going to elegant flagship stores with my mother -- who lived for quality merchandise and a good sale. My brand affinity stayed with me into adulthood and I relied on the department stores of my youth to provide a predictable shopping experience and familiar brand merchandise.
But the sector has struggled in recent years as ecommerce sales have accelerated and retail marketers have felt forced to balance getting new or loyal customers like me into the store or onto the website to make immediate purchases. Too many of them went the direction of offering constant sales and inexpensive merchandise. In store, they sacrificed the pleasant shopping experience I grew up with. And online they missed the opportunity to distinguish their brand from any other. The “shop now” button of ubiquitous social media marketing is tempting to consumers and often drives sales (espec
(especially of deeply discounted products) but it does not build brand affinity.
I get it, shareholders are not patient people. While CMOs understand that spending to enhance consumers’ overall perception of a brand can provide a continued—and ultimately greater—payoff, Wall Street (and therefore CEOs) tends to stay focused on the now. Hence the constant balancing act.
Brand/Demand Assessment in Five Steps
It would be great (and marketers would rest more easily) if there were an easy solution to this equation, but this cannot be a one-size fits all approach. Each brand has its own nuances that need to be addressed; from market saturation, competition, audience awareness and readiness, to product purchase and so on. This means that each brand needs to conduct its own assessment of its unique situation.
There are five steps brand marketers can use to analyze their situation and needs:
Diagnose the market in which you’re operating. Who is your competition? Who is your audience (both in terms of composition and size)? What are your current sales channels and what sales channels are you missing?
Identify your consumer relationship. What relationship does your customer have to your brand at each step in the journey? When/how does your customer engage? How long does it take from engagement to consideration to purchase? Are you going past purchasing and generating consumer loyalty?
Set realistic goals for both brand and performance. What are your immediate sales goals? What are your long-term brand goals? What is your baseline and what are your benchmarks for the future? How will you measure each?
Develop scenario plans. Taking into account your goals and your prior performance, what are some scenarios you might anticipate? How will you react to each?
Go to market and continuously optimize. How will you test your strategies in real time? What data will you look at for brand? What data will you look at for demand?
Today’s market is moving at a lightning-fast pace and the pandemic is only accelerating change. Many marketers are reluctant to slow down to see what is and isn’t working but that can lead to throwing good money after bad and diluting your brand. The one constant in all of this has to be a willingness to test and learn. If you are new to social media ecommerce, for example, choose one or two platforms, optimize your audience, put out an offer, and message accordingly. (Remember that the offer is only part of the equation. Smart brands entice consumers with the offer and use the online transaction as an opportunity to reinforce the brand image.) Then test and let the data tell you what is and isn’t working.
Dialing Up Transformation
Think of transformation in this new world order as a dial, not a switch. It requires a series of adjustments to determine the symbiotic balance and connection between building your brand and driving revenue.
I fear that the department stores of my youth have already run out of time to get this calculation right. But for so many other marketers, there are real answers to the questions that keep them up at night. They’re not easy answers—and the responses are likely to keep changing along with the business dynamics. But ultimately, balancing brand and demand will always be possible and necessary to help grow brands now in the future.
December 1, 2020
