Traditionally marketing has been based on a broadcast model; anyone who walked past a poster 150 years ago would be exposed to the brand message. This evolved into the “ATL” marketing agencies that grew out of the basic marketing models born in the 1950s & 1960s, using TV as the main medium; advertising based around a show, or an event, to a fairly generic target audience (“ABC1s”, “housewives”, or “aspirational business men”).

It’s true that the introduction of planning in 1968 was intended to allow a true understanding of consumers and how they interact with brands and each other, thereby stopping marketers from getting carried away without any insight into their audience, brand or competitive market. But the nature of advertising has changed across all media, and as consumers change it’s online that is driving that marketing shift.

In the early stages, online marketing was thought to be an extension of direct marketing: interruptive, highly targeted, price-led. Data profiling and digital media meant that more marketers could interrupt more people than was possible through the old broadcast models. Online was not thought of as being part of the broadcast opportunity, and even today, it’s still generally thought of as being just another media platform to place a TV ad, even if it is an extended version.

Increasingly, online is where brands can exist in full, from broadcast messages to direct response, through to engagement pieces. They can use all traditional forms of marketing – closely joined up, aligned, and able to hold the customer’s hand in one extended journey. PR, DR, ATL, BTL, Sponsorship, Branding – all the disciplines need to be understood by marketers today, but particularly those closely involved in digital marketing.

Consumers don’t think in silos, so why should marketers?

We’ve mentioned how planners could increasingly be thought of being media planners, or even, at a push, as creatives (the number of briefs that include “starters for ten” must surely be increasing!) We’ve also mentioned how the challenge for brands is to consider why consumers would “giveashit” about their product/campaign, and to reward those that do engage.

Online, successful brands should strive to create “Entertaining, Engaging, Effective Experiences”. These are our 4 E’s of online marketing.

Brands need to provoke conversations, not attempt to dominate them.

It’s certainly a challenge that is easier met by what might be described as Cultural Brands; those brands who are picked up by the prevailing popular culture and supported by active evangelists; brands that effect and change popular culture. Brands like Nike, Sony, Adidas, Innocent, Apple, Virgin; these are Cultural Brands, just like musicians and actors, or like TV shows and films can be. They influence the very way people talk and what they talk about.

Cultural Brands could be defined as brands that have a conviction, a passion and which live those convictions & passions through everything they do. Cultural Brands stand for something, and as a result have products that people want to have in their lives. The hyperlinks above try to demonstrate recent or obviously compelling examples. Non-Cultural Brands, perhaps better termed Retail Brands, have to rely more on advertising and marketing to try to get the levels of the Cultural Brands but they rarely do. You can’t buy authenticity as you’ll be caught out by an ever-more discerning public.

It could be argued that it’s not possible to choose to become a cultural brand, as they rely on mavens and early adopters to enter the brand into the public vernacular, and indeed, these groups are often the most marketing-cynical groups - if these groups even exist!

(We do believe they exist, by the way, and that you can – to an extent – talk to them: It’s risky to try to be definitive about either side of this particular coin – that influencer-based campaigns always work, or that they never work. Not only does the product or brand have to be good enough, but so do the brand ambassadors you’re recruiting to do what is essentially a word of mouth campaign. The idea that marketers can simply “find” mavens to appeal to is silly. They don’t exactly run about in packs. Nor indeed does everything an early adopter touch turn to gold. Trends must certainly be ripe for adoption or promotion, and the right people need to be approached in the right way, but that’s the skill in being a strategic planner – we call it looking for an insight. And that’s an art, not a science.)

So, what if you’re not a Cultural Brand? Can you become one by design? Do you have to wait for the right moment, or can brands engineer themselves into the cultural consciousness?

Most of the brands mentioned above, with the possible exception of Innocent aside, had existed for some years before they became Cultural Brands but it was their behaviour, from product design through to marketing, that defined them. But there’s clearly not room for an unlimited number of Cultural Brands in the public consciousness, and boy, are there a lot of brands out there! Even Innocent had watched P&J’s launch into the same market before them and then taking advantage of the consumer climate being just so.

As marketing becomes increasingly media neutral, planners are being asked about the “Big Idea” (as if it’s some tangible thing.) We’ve been trying to define what this Big Idea might be… and perhaps it’s the same thing that turns a brand from being one of many in the competitive market to a Cultural Brand.

Start by having a point of view. Stand clearly for something. (We talked about this in our trends for 2008). If not, “advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking“.

Having a point of view begins to focus everything, and from this a Big Idea may be defined – the opportunity, both for product and for communication. Advertising is most successful when it opens up your point of view to the public – look at Honda, for example (click the link, then type “Honda”, to see what Wieden & Kennedy did).

So, in order become a Cultural Brand you need to have a point of view, one that could lead to your Big Idea.

You must decide whether your brands are in the business of making money, or of changing people’s lives, giving them an experience, making them think differently. What’s your challenge? What’s your priority? Cultural Brands start with the latter, and watch the cash follow. Retail Brands start with the former and try to reverse-engineer or ape conviction once they’ve reached a certain size and realise their brand needs to grow further. Retail Brands approach their conversation with consumers from the standpoint of Product 1/Product 2/Product 3. Cultural Brands start the conversation by discussing Interests /Goals /Motivations, before even starting to talk about what they’re selling and how much it costs.

If you’re to become a Cultural Brand you need to either bring your conviction to the surface (if it does indeed exist), like Honda, or to fundamentally change the way your business talks to its customers.

Dove is a great example of a brand that you wouldn’t think of as a Cultural Brand but has understood how to engineer themselves into that space through entertaining, engaging, effective experiences. They began to stand for something, something that resonated amongst people. Their Campaign for Real Beauty demonstrated a point of view different from the rest of the market.

Though the campaign was perhaps two or three years old, that point of view still exists, and it generated something online that followed the 4 E’s of online marketing. Evolution was an entertaining, engaging, effective experience because it provoked conversation. It challenged competitors, it spoke to people, it asked questions. Dove’s strategy was to move away from functional claims and to present itself as a brand with a point of view. It advocated that the beauty industry was contributing to the destruction of self-esteem in girls and young women by propagating unrealistic standards.

With its Self-Esteem Fund and The Campaign for Real Beauty, Dove placed itself at odds with its competitors. That was the “Big Idea”. That is why Dove have successfully manoeuvred themselves to become a “Cultural Brand” and why their Evolution film (not advert, I hasten to add) released online and following our four E’s of online marketing, has been one of the great success stories of online marketing so far.

With thanks to Paul Stanway at Slice, and to Ed Pellew at Altogether Digital for contributions to this thought-piece.

Header image: Hey Paul on Flickr

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