In reading the advertising trade press, it’s striking how many advertisers are launching new campaigns at any given time. Not surprisingly, these often follow a change in ad agencies, which often follows a change in senior marketing management on the client side. The new campaigns are typically welcomed as the next big thing, surely destined for greatness and to solve whatever sales problems the brand might be experiencing!
But is all this switching of campaigns really a good idea?
Not too long ago, we looked into the question from a data-based perspective. We wondered about the odds that a new campaign launched in replacement of an established campaign would outperform the original. A search of the Communicus database provided the answer: on average, in the first year of a new campaign only 20% outperform the established campaign that they replaced!
So, Mr or Ms new CMO – be forewarned: while the fanfare accompanying your new campaign may be compelling at the moment, the odds are stacked against you.
How can this be? If you think about the great campaigns, the ones that you really remember, they have endured over years and years, with their meaning and contributions to the brand strengthening over time. They were kept fresh, but they captured the essence of the brand in a way that became the brand. Dove’s Real Beauty, the Geico Gecko work, the Marlboro Man (sorry, not politically correct, but great advertising). These campaigns have come to define the brand in a way that sequential creative approaches – even if they were built off of a consistent positioning strategy – could not have done.
Consumers want your brand to be like a friend, they want to know what to expect from you, their brand/friend (even if part of the expectation is freshness and surprise). They don’t want you to be something new, something unpredictable and unreliable, every time they turn around.
It’s no surprise, to me anyway, that so many brands are not differentiated in the mind of the consumer. It’s not about the product – many categories do, in fact, have a number of brands that all deliver similar levels of functionality. Rather, these brands are not differentiated because they all switch ad campaigns every year or two. None ever get to the point where they’ve really solidified any real meaning and connection from a consumer standpoint.
Sure, it’s got to have the makings of a great campaign at the date of the launch; running a non-differentiated and non-differentiating campaign for years and years won’t do the trick. But advertisers who don’t truly believe in the long-term potential of their campaign on Day 1, and who don’t envision the campaign still being in-market years from now ought to keep trying until they get one that does.
It also takes marketing leadership that believes in and can sell senior management on the long-term nature of the effort. In discussing Revlon’s new “Love Is On” campaign, CEO Lorenzo Delpani calls the campaign “a radical bet”, and says, “This is not one of those campaigns that has a short-term impact or spike. It is meant to fuel the equity of Revlon. When you make an equity play, you have to stick with it for the long term.”
Raja Rajamannar, the 4th CMO who has led MasterCard’s marketing team since the 1997 launch of the Priceless campaign said “the key for a long running campaign is a simple, universal truth, adaptability and a healthy dose of intuition.”
If more CEO’s and CMO’s shared this type of vision, there might be less news for the advertising trade press to report, but maybe, just maybe there would be more advertising that builds brand equities and long term ROI for the companies that own them.
