When Did Brand Become a Dirty Word?

If you ever want to raise the hackles of the typical digital marketer, just talk at length
about branding.

They’ll tell you that, in an age of near-perfect information and abundant consumer choice,
branding is merely a form of magical thinking, a layer of lipstick applied liberally to what may
otherwise still be a pig.

Focus instead, they’ll probably tell you, on creating the best product and the best experience
and deliver real, honest to goodness value to your customers and brand will accrue. It’s
practically the law of nature.

And they wouldn’t be wrong—or entirely right.

Clay Stobaugh, CMO of global publisher Wiley, says that brand marketers are vulnerable.
“Tenures of CMOs are historically short, but we’re now starting to see longevity,” he says,
referring to the widely reported spike in CMO tenure, which has more than doubled to 48
months over the last decade.

This longevity, Stobaugh suggests, is attributable to movement away from the vagaries of
branding to what he describes as a new power source for marketing leaders: real customer
insight and proof.

Insight means serving motivations, goals and needs when it matter most. It means
detecting and responding to consumer intent, in the moment, with a relevant and resonant
offer or experience.

And proof means closing the loop to demonstrate how marketing efforts yield outcomes.

Stobaugh says that this requires a reorientation from vanity metrics to business metrics.
“It requires that you talk about volume, velocity and conversion,” he says.

It requires that you run marketing, gasp, like a business.

Ajit Sivadasan seems to agree. In a recent Forbes.com interview, the head of global
e-commerce, sales, marketing and technology for Lenovo is asked about the classic
disconnect between CEOs and their CMOs. Why the rift?

He says, “The CEO is focused on the business and if the marketer is spending a lot
of time reporting awareness and brand image metrics …,” Sivadasan says, “The metrics
have to ultimately and unequivocally show how one drives the other.”

OK, so marketing has become more science than art—perhaps better attuned to math
geeks than the English majors currently occupying the leadership ranks?

That may be the tidy narrative, but it’s also a bit simplistic. There’s something more
at play.

Brian Miske, the CMO of Big Four accounting firm KPMG recently told me:

“The world is becoming more connected and changing on a daily basis. The one thing
that often stops us in our tracks is emotion; a feeling, a memory, a moment. Brands
are the filter for these emotions, as they are built from the heart. Their foundations are
anchored in aspiration and experiences that at the core are authentic.”

So marketing may be about the head, but it’s also about the heart (see “
Intelligent Brand Framework”).

The marketer who relies excessively on heart—with the retro stylings and soaring
rhetoric of a Don Draper, for example—may be truly vulnerable. But so is the marketer
who overcorrects to the other extreme.

The truth, as is often the case, is in between. Building a brand is about balancing head
and heart.

Miske continues: “Data can provide access but brands need to earn the emotion in the
customer’s heart and minds every day. Brands are critical to differentiate amongst the
haze of competitors.”

SOURCE: Gartner