Creativity Magazine

Sorry: People Don’t Care About Brands

By Mrstrongest @mrstrongarm

Sorry: People Don’t Care About BrandsIf you’re a marketer, chances are you really care about brands.blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

And you assume other people (prospects) do, too.

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Behavioral scientist Richard Shotton says that’s an example of the false consensus effect: we think our behaviors and views are more common than they really are.

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Most people don’t care about brands.

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Consider the Havas Group’s Meaningful Brands 2019 report based on 1,800 brands and 350,000 respondents in 31 countries.

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Results: consumers said they wouldn’t care if 77% of everyday brands disappeared.

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[FWIW: 58% of respondents thought brands were providing poor and irrelevant content.

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[61% of British consumers said they want brands to provide content that is interesting, entertaining, or offers useful experiences or services that stand apart from the brand’s usual services.

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[Which, to me anyway, implies that info-tainment is a much better content choice than just facts and figures.]

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Joe Parrish, Chief Creative Officer at The Variable, an advertising agency, wrote a post called People Don’t Love Your Brand, They Don’t Even Like It.

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Ouch.
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He said we have too much going on in our lives to care about brands.

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We are over-Instagrammed and Facebooked and student loaned and DVR’d and iPhoned and baby pictured. Mass media no longer affects us.

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Then he mentioned brand purpose, and said it gives brands an edge.

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That jibes with the Havas report which found that half of British consumers prefer to buy from companies with a reputation for being focused on purpose rather than just profits.

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Full disclosure: I hate the term “brand purpose.” It irks me. It sounds so pompous. And it smacks of bandwagons and political correctness.

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Think of all the brands who say they’re in it to fight climate change, or now, suddenly, post-George Floyd, to end “systemic racism.”

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But then Mr. Parrish (whose post was written in 2017) reeled me back in: he mentioned Bud Light and their Dilly, Dilly campaign:

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(Bud Light) finally understands why they exist– to give friends something to drink while they’re having good times…

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the goal of their advertising (is) to give friends something to talk about… to create pop culture that can be talked about
over the beer they make.

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Don’t overthink it. It’s not about taste or ingredients or calories. It’s about enhancing friendship. And how have they done it? “Dilly, dilly…”

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Enhancing friendship, bringing people together. Now there’s a purpose even smaller brands can aspire to (as opposed to solving global warming).

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Jeff Slater makes a similar point about people and brands:

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Brands are purely emblematic: vehicles or tools towards something bigger. Consumers love the experience they have through a brand, but it isn’t the brand itself that matters.

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