Help Consumers Remember Your Brand With a Long-Term Strategy

Editor’s note: This piece is part of our Columnist Network series, which explores the tactical thoughts and actions from Adweek’s community of high-level experts. Today, Intermark Group’s Jake McKenzie considers the tall order given to CMOs to deliver fast results. Below, in his own words, he describes how continuity and consistency pay off for your brand—and contribute to CMO retention. Chief marketing officers now have one of the shortest average tenures of any C-suite position—40 months, with a median of just 25 months. Contrast this with CEOs, who stay in place an average of 6.5 years, and it becomes obvious that the motivation for CMOs is to drive immediate results as opposed to building long-term value. Compound this CMO tenure trend with the explosion of marketing performance data, and we see many marketing departments looking exclusively at near-term results: "How did this most recent campaign perform?" But true marketing enterprise value is not the outcome of a single campaign; rather, it comes from the efforts of a long-term marketing strategy. Apple, Coke and Disney didn’t become valuable due to one successful ad campaign. Instead, they are building sustained success over time and winning the most important game in marketing—the long game. Psychologically, this is due to the way human perception and decision-making work. Most purchase decisions are made based on our intuition and then rationalized after the fact—consumers process advertisements and develop brand preferences using different systems in the brain than the ones used to verbally explain their purchase decision. The brain’s automatic processing, referred to as System 1 by psychologist Daniel Kahneman, nudges us toward purchasing one product over another using brand cues that help us make a quick selection. Thus, to be effective, marketers must understand how the brain automatically and intuitively makes sense of the world, including brands. Brands that continually change their core campaigns and ad messages ... struggle to build long-term success. The catch is that System 1 isn’t easily or quickly changed. Human memory is resilient, and people don’t like revisiting their existing assumptions. It’s simply challenging to change the mind of consumers; it’s a long game, yet it pays long-term, valuable dividends. Consistency One of the most well-established ways to affect consumers is through the power of repetition—however, media weight is only one of the drivers of this success. The other is consistency. Repetition only works if the message and the messengers remain consistent without being monotonous. Brands that continually change their core campaigns and ad messages will find that they struggle to build long-term success. The Chick-fil-A cows are one of the most famous examples of creative consistency and the affinity that comes along with it. Brand codes A strong mental association is a core component of a strong brand, but it is well documented that human memory fades over time, and its effect on decision-making fades with it. To preserve and refresh memories, the most effective marketing uses brand codes—simple devices that trigger memories specific to a brand. Each time a brand is recalled, the effect on a consumer’s System 1 decision-making is strengthened. Progressive Insurance has built an effective brand by leveraging brand codes: Flo, blue and white aprons, the word “discounts” and numerous other codes all help reinforce and expand consumers’ memory. Consumers only need to notice one of the codes in an ad and their memory for the entire brand is reinforced. When they need to shop for auto insurance, Progressive is likely high on their list, thanks to a well-programmed System 1 from repeated exposure to its brand codes. Contexts Successful brands define specific contexts where they should be associated; a study from Ipsos showed that the more contexts a brand is associated with, the higher the market share for that brand. For Rita’s Italian Ice, our team defined circumstances where the dessert brand would be most relevant—fun with the kids, date nights and summer heat relief. By structuring the marketing around these examples, Rita’s was able to increase sales and market share by “owning” those memory contexts. Despite the rapid turnover amongst CMOs, marketing is most successful as a long-term exercise. The pressure for immediate results from CMOs is unlike any other position in the C-suite, and it often leads to decisions that undermine the very stability they want. A commitment to marketing that leverages behavioral science drivers for long-term success may help reverse that trend: It creates greater security and longevity for the brand and executive board alike.

Columnist Network

Make Your Brand Associations Automatic With a Long-Term Strategy

It can cement your brand in consumers' minds—and help CMO tenure

Jake McKenzie

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Jake McKenzie