There are a few self-evident truths in the branding business that every client and agency will be happy to share with client management:
- Branding is a long-term proposition and essential to a company’s health and share price.
- A strong brand allows a company to command a price premium in the marketplace.
- Great advertising builds strong brands when there is a consistency and continuity of message.
- Great advertising is rooted in solid consumer-based market research.
- Great advertising speaks not only to the target audiences’ minds, but to their hearts.
So far so good.
Now think about great ad agencies. By “great” I mean those agencies that have built up strong client relationships, have high profile work, solid financials, and are employment destinations of choice. As a rule, they have passed the test of time and been around for at least 20 years, some more than a century. They have survived the death or retirement of the founder.
Here is one of their secrets:
Unless a client can see him or herself in the mirror when looking at a campaign, the branding effort will never succeed.
Agencies typically put a lot of effort into crafting a customer and prospect-based brand personality. They often ignore the company’s own culture in that process. So here’s the problem. If the brand personality in the advertising does not somehow reflect a company’s own self-image, ultimately the employees will kill the campaign. Sure, it might get produced. It might air for a few years. But if the rank and file don’t like it, they will keep complaining about it, and eventually changing it will be on the top of the list for the next VP of Marketing.
And therefore, no matter how solid the research or brilliant the creative execution, the effort will fail. And it will fail because it will not last long enough to make a difference.
Smart agencies know that.
So here is what they do. They make sure that the campaign is not only rooted in solid research with excellent execution, they make sure that the values and aspirations of the company itself – its best self – come forward in the execution. This makes management and employees alike say, “Yeah – that’s me!” when they see the ads. That then gives the marketing professionals the time they need on the air to do the other things for the brand that the research shows is necessary.
That’s what I call looking in the mirror (seeing the ad campaign) and then truly seeing yourself. When clients do that, they will line up behind the campaign. And no one will want to change it. When the next VP of Marketing shows up, and invariably wants a new campaign and a new agency, management says, “No. We like what we’ve got. If you want to succeed here, don’t go there.”
Let me give you an example or two.
BBDO scored a big win with Gillette when they first showed the “Best a Man Can Get” to management in 7 languages in 1988. They understood that this company - sports sponsor, author of historical slogans like “look sharp, be sharp,” had male grooming at the core of its identity. And they went for it. Management used the campaign to ward off hostile take-overs, dramatically increase shareholder value, and maintain margins for the next fifteen to twenty years. And it looks like the agency relationship will survive even a take-over of Gillette by Procter and Gamble. What more can a campaign get?
That is also why I like the current advertising by Arnold for Fidelity Investments.
Fidelity advertising has had many fits and starts over the years. It is said that Fidelity is a little distrustful of brand-oriented television advertising to begin with. What made the modern Fidelity great was actually direct response- oriented advertising of investment returns in the newspapers – a big investment return number (14% for money market funds in those days), a big phone number, and small (cheap) space. End. It is a no nonsense, direct approach for the self-directed investor.
When entering the TV scene, Fidelity tried many emotional approaches that probably tested well and worked in research: “Now’s the time” or celebrities Don Rickles or Lily Tomlin paired with portfolio manager guru Peter Lynch. But I suspect that was all a bit too glitzy. Maybe Lynch alone would have been OK, but in these executions I can imagine Fidelity rank and file saying to themselves, “That’s funny, but that’s not us. And that’s not Peter …”
Now take the new campaign. Hard-hitting, no nonsense messages about roll-over, active trading, IRAs, retirement income planning, fund performance. The emotional side consists of fast-paced narrative profiles of familiar Fidelity customer types. Here any phone rep looks at the ads and says, “Yup. I talk to those people on the phone all the time. That’s us.” Even the format is reminiscent of the great newspaper ads of yore.
This campaign is not only rooted in research and strategy, it passes the mirror test. Now Arnold and Fidelity will be given the time for the campaign to do its long-term work. And that’s what makes it more than a Sleeping Beauty.
