BBB tips: How to win stakeholder buy-in, the best ways to measure brand, how you can combat the challenges of global vs local marketing

We had another brilliant BBB this week with some amazing attendees. The below are a few tips from the really great conversations that were discussed over smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and OJ.

How to get stakeholders to buy-in to brand

When they can’t track impact or results of brand, stakeholders typically find it harder to justify parting with budget. And this is often the biggest challenge brand marketers face in the debate of performance vs brand. 

A really great recommendation on how to win buy-in from one of our marketers was to interrogate the ‘unknown’ sources in Google Analytics. If your stakeholders agree that it’s not unreasonable to assume leads driven from this source are from brand activity, you can start to build up a picture of the quantity and quality of leads/conversions created from these campaigns vs your performance ads.  

She admitted that although this trial is a couple of months old, however, it should help to justify spend for future brand-focused campaigns.

Be smart with how you measure sentiment

If surveys are part of how you’re collecting that data, one of the tips shared was to really interrogate the questions you were asking people. Often surveys are unreliable because what people say isn’t necessarily how they feel.

For example - most surveys people are asked “how do you feel about our product?” whereas a better way to get the truth out could be asking “how would you feel if our product didn’t exist?”  This measures sentiment as a justification for the effectiveness of brand building on business growth.

Simple things like this can trigger much richer insights that help brand marketers justify campaigns or projects that would otherwise be ignored.

Know the platforms that you’re on

An interesting insight was that many marketers at our roundtable supported moving away from having accounts on every social media platforms. There is plenty of pressure put on brand and social media managers to be “everywhere”, but if your most engaged audiences aren’t on Facebook, it’s a drag on resource to focus energies on it. 

In that same vein, if you’re going to focus on the platforms where your audiences are on, make sure you know how to use them best to your advantage. One brand told of how they had great community success on their Instagram channel by hiring an ex-influencer to become their social media manager, growing their community from 2K to 10K in a quarter. 

Another brand marketer pointed out that while choosing the right channel is the first step, the second is to pay attention to what is being created on each platform. They explained that for them, Youtube shouldn’t just be a space for brands to create their own content, but to co-create with relevant Youtubers with relevant audiences.

Bigger brands shouldn’t lose touch with hyper-local stories 

One topic we discussed was the challenge of global brands creating effective localised campaigns. Often there’s tension between global teams (who have the broader vision for where the brand needs to be) and the local teams (who have an ear to the ground and ultimately know more about what their local markets tastes are). So how can you fix this and ultimately create more effective work?

There’s no easy fix here but the key is global teams can’t dictate the nuances of particular pieces of content, hence the importance of local sign-off. We recently lived the benefits of this sign-off for localised content within our global campaign with Grant’s Whisky and by pulling together as a team, we created an inclusive, socially diverse campaign that went against the status quo of advertising in the whiskey world.

As one of our attendees put it, why should you trust middle-aged white guys to dictate the content narrative for a place they’ve never been to?

Learnt something new? Want to share your own thoughts on building brands that matter? Then why don’t you book a seat to our next Brand, Bitch & Brekkie roundtable, at Riding House Cafe, Fitzrovia.

Email sunnii@mattr.media or give her a ring on 07772343952 for any q’s!

Marketing Alcohol – Stand up and Stand out (or give up!)

Picture this, you’re in the booze aisle at your local supermarket looking for a tipple… what do you see? A wall of generic bottles, confusing taste notes, copycat branding and often a race to the bottom on price. Yet with the rise of the ‘conscious consumer’ (people craving something more than the labels they buy) alcohol brands need to stand up and stand out if they are going to survive.

Just take a look at the beer market. Despite declining sales, one group is bucking the trend and growing rapidly - craft beer. Once a niche player, craft beer now makes up a whopping 24% of the total beer market in the US (Source: USA Today). Why? Because they offer consumers what they crave: depth, story and a purpose beyond the brand.

Need some inspiration? Look no further than BrewDog who skyrocketed to fame (and fortune) by ripping up the rule book when it comes to the alcohol sector. Brewdog’s branding, marketing, PR, staff culture and even core business model all reek of a brand that stands for more than their product.

(a snapshot of the weird and wonderful universe of BrewDog)

So how can you future proof your booze brand?

Step 1: Stand Up

Insights from the 2018 William Grant & Sons Market Report heralded the rise of a new consumer type ‘The Activ-ist’. These consumers are actively considering, caring and conscious about their purchases, how they consume them and their effect on the wider world. 

With alcohol in the past typically sold with snazzy campaigns and celebrity endorsements, now focus is shifting to the experience around the drink. To connect to consumers on a deeper level think beyond the liquid, what’s the environment, the atmosphere, the occasion, and the people you share it with.

You can see evidence of this shift with the rise of brand activations, experiential events, distillery tours and bar take-overs, all great ways to tap into the ‘Experience Economy’ but brands must think beyond one-off PR stunts to survive.

For example, take Grey Goose’s recent repositioning, starting from the ground up they have shifting their entire comms strategy away from the bottle to the experience around it, thus connecting with audiences on a much deeper level. Chief Marketing Officer at Grey Goose, Lee Applbaum said this: "'Good enough' has become a norm in the category, which has been dumbed down through price compression and clever, but often misleading marketing. Consumers are having a hard time connecting emotionally with Grey Goose. So, our energy with the brand is focussed on reconnecting with the consumers.”

(59 seconds of experiences, 1 second of product)

Step Two: Stand Out

With such heavy competition in the alcohol sector, how do you create cut through? Simple, switch the script, do the unexpected and stand out against the noise of your category.

When we began working with Grant’s Whisky our task was simple; punch above our weight and take on the Goliaths of the Whisky world by unlocking a new youth market.

Mattr’s first step was to conduct a series of market research sessions with this youth audience. We discovered whisky was often referred to as ‘the drink my father would choose’ and ‘not for me’. Another common theme we discovered in the sector was that of ‘personal progress’, a narrative pushed heavily by big players such as Johnnie Walker. As a result, our target audience negatively perceived Whisky as less sociable, a drink just for home or even alone.

We took our learnings from our market research and flipped the script … No more ‘drink of my father’ more ‘drink with my mates’ no more ‘personal progress’ - more ‘collective success’. The outcome? A TTL campaign that celebrated groups of friends starting an epic party. The result? A campaign which felt unexpected for its category yet tapped into what youth consumers craved, an experience beyond the product.

And one last thing… having a killer narrative is great but shouldn’t stop there; Alcohol brands have got to embrace a strong and consistent visual identity too. Your brand could have the greatest positioning in the world but if a consumer can’t remember your brand at the point of purchase you’ve failed - misattribution in advertising is killer. To avoid this in our Grant’s campaigns, we used consistent visual brand queues throughout (threes, triangles, colour pallets etc.) even a hand symbol synonymous with the bottle shape itself. The result was a campaign that felt unmistakably ‘Grant’s’ narratively AND visually.

(who wants to join the party?)

Mattr’s top 5 take-aways:

1.      Build brand depth, stand for something more than your product.

2.      Embrace the experience beyond the taste.

3.      Listen to your audience, what are their preconceptions of your category.

4.      Do the unexpected for your category.

5.      Be memorable keep it consistent and project a strong visual identity.

If you enjoyed reading this don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter (see below) for more articles and exclusive invites to events where we talk about how to make marketing that ‘Mattr’s’. If you work in the alcohol sector and this struck a chord with you drop us a line and lets meet for a coffee… or something a little harder ;)

Lets chat: Mrhine@mattr.media - Head of Creative (also likes a drink)