Branding isn't what it used to be. Today, marketing can successfully drive short- and long-term goals by generating sales while also building brand. More than simply extending look and feel across your communications, integration means putting the right message into the right medium with a strategy that builds brand while shortening the sales cycle.
Traditionally, brand and promotional activities have been the "church and state" of marketing. In order for each to do its job without denigrating the other, they were kept separate. But that was then. Today, the economy and pace of competition have increased the pressure for every marketing action to create some sales momentum. Add to that the reactionary reduction of marketing budgets and its effect on the average marketer: they either stop marketing or instead, focus marketing dollars on promotional activity that drives down brand equity.
Add to that the reactionary reduction of marketing budgets and its effect on the average marketer: they either stop marketing or instead, focus marketing dollars on promotional activity that drives down brand equity.
The smart marketer today has an unprecedented opportunity to grab market share using an integrated approach that leverages the only medium on the planet that can simultaneously build brand and compress the sales cycle: the Web. As an example, go back in time when the Apple Macintosh was initially introduced, and Apple could not achieve it's major marketing objective, conceptual trial, through conventional media. Remember those fat ad budgets almost "tanked" the Mac until the marketing folks deployed a desktop publishing road show that allowed prospective customers to see the sizzle for themselves.
Today's marketers have a far easier choice to make. With enhanced bandwidth of the Web, smart strategy and great creative, you have a great chance to think from the web outward to bolster brand by showcasing ads, creating community and simulating conceptual trial. You can also be equally served by implementing promotional overlays, such as rebates, test drive promotions, etc., to stimulate purchase and compress the sales cycle.
The web today handles such activities with equal ease...so tactical elements (brand vs. promotion) are not mutually exclusive, nor is the medium (the web).
All you need are a few smart people who know brand integration, the Web, and how to develop your strategy, then implement it with the best creative approach across any media. It just so happens that we have a few people who understand precisely how to do that and who like to get things done for clients as well.
The Process: What Builds Brand and Sales.
1. Shake the Trees We start with a lot of questions. And we make them all good ones. From the top down, inside and out, your people, your industry and your customers usually have something worthwhile to say about you. Finding it is good, honest work.
2. Unabashed honesty. At times the worthwhile opportunities that we find are not at all what you expect. We'll triple-check them and tell you what they are, and how to use them to build brand and sales momentum. That is, after all, why you hire us in the first place.
3. Creative that delivers. If you have a great message but no great ideas that connect with your customers, you're clapping with one hand. Our clients prefer to clap with two hands and most often our creative explorations of messaging, media and design deliver standing ovations. As a result, we usually end up integrating and implementing all of our client's work.
Yep, the guy who built one of the most celebrated integrated marketing firms of the 90's. And now he's pushing ahead once again, leading a team driven to provide clients with the most innovative and valuable approaches to building brands in the digital age.
The old band, back together: The 90's were great weren't they? We helped build a lot of brands with the idea that a top-down integrated approach increased the value of all brand activities. That was then. Integration today is a little trickier as brands replace their mass markets with massed niches and every marketing activity is expected to generate sales momentum.
The hip team has helped build some of the most significant brands in the online and offline worlds. Now, thanks to the web, the digital cable universe, mobile phones, digital billboards, DVRs, digital pre-press, and practically everything else digital, we're helping our clients meet their greatest challenge and their greatest opportunity ever: Identify, integrate and target niche markets with strategy that simultaneously builds brand and sales momentum.
Founded in 1999 after the pair had left CKS (which became USWeb/CKS, then MarchFirst). Funny thing, but when you start a company that then grows to over 1000 people with offices around the globe, you don't get to do the work anymore. So, liking to do the work more than anything else, Bill and Lorraine simplified things a little.
A few years, a few great clients, we've built a core team that has worked together to drive innovation and brand ingenuity at CKS , Apple and Redgate Communications. We don't stand still. We settle for nothing less than great. We are growing, but won't grow so large that we lose the chance to do the work. Because at the beginning (and the end) of the day, the work is the reason we opened our doors in the first place, and it remains the reason we open the doors every morning.
