Mondelez International, one of the world’s largest snack food companies, has just announced that they are moving away from the ad agency of record approach to one in which small teams within any number of ad agencies develop creative approaches for their brands, including Oreos, Trident and Cadbury. The plan is to implement new ideas in small markets, and then roll out the concepts that produce short term sales.
We congratulate Mondelez on the boldness of this move, and can understand the desire to move beyond tasks like data gathering, product positioning work and copy testing. That kind of research can seem time consuming in today’s fast-paced media climate. Additionally, when you market products like gum and candy, there’s a perceived need to appeal to younger consumers by being cool, and what could be cooler than just trying stuff, seeing what appears to work, and running with it?
The risk with this approach – to sound like the curmudgeon in the room – is what should be the most important consideration: What will happen to the brand? A year or two from now, the brands that take this route might be perceived as trendy and leading edge. But what about five or 10 years from now? Will these brands stand for anything at all? Will the consumer be able to make associations with the brand? If the mental connections are just to the most recent wild and crazy idea, is there anything that’s enduring; anything that the brand really stands for? How much brand equity will be lost in this test-and-discard approach?
‘Nimble and responsive’ marketing is all the rage these days. It’s great to have the courage to go with creative that’s different, and that you just have to trust your gut and try; but there needs to be some overarching brand identity, brand principles, brand voice– brand something.
We’ve always been a bit concerned with the idea that the success of an advertising program can be judged solely by short term sales results. Too often this leads to advertisers concentrating on promotion-based tactics at the expense of brand-building campaigns.
In this case, the concern goes even further: If an advertiser specifically turns away from things like positioning, and focuses only on short term sales results, long term success doesn’t seem to be a result. If the proof is in the pudding, this dish could leave a bitter aftertaste in Mondelez’s mouth a decade down the road. By then, it may be too late to think about the brands.
