Question

In the world of marketing, the objective is to create successful marketing campaigns that will convey a message that is intimate, inspiring, creative and passionate. As marketers, we use many tools to get there and along the way, we place consumers into many different boxes based on their demographics. For the most part most marketing campaigns are successful and greater connections are made with the consumer, but there are times when major mistakes are made or historical considerations are dismissed and brand marketers or the companies themselves are deemed to be racially insensitive. In this time of fast news and social media those failures are magnified for the world to see. Think about the most recent marketing failures (Gucci, Prada, Zora, Pepsi, etc.). Are these brands forever tainted? Please complete a Google search of at least two of these companies and answer the following:

1) What marketing tool would you use to salvage their reputation?

2) What controls would you put in place to prevent this from happening again?

3) Will they ever be trusted again?

Answer 1

For many companies, marketing campaigns are the main method for both communicating with their market to reinforce their positioning, and for customer acquisition.

Good campaigns follow a theme and include a series of touches with the market. It’s noisy in the marketplace, and a message delivered once through a single medium rarely makes a difference. While there’s no magic number regarding the best frequency for a message to make an impact, opinions range from three to twenty times, with seven being an old marketing adage.

Many marketing campaigns contain an overarching theme, which can be leveraged over extended periods of time with multiple variations, or different elements, to tell an entire story.

Marketing Campaign Examples

An example would be The Duck campaign launched by the American Family Life Assurance Company in 2000. While the company had been in business since 1955, it had only a 12% brand recognition rate before the campaign launched. The company used the Kaplan Thaler Group to improve its name recognition. Kaplan created a new character, the Aflac Duck, who appeared in ads featuring customers who had trouble remembering the insurance company’s name. In the ads, the duck appeared in the background and quacked the name “Aflac” (while usually ending up in a funny predicament).

You’ve seen them, right? As a result of the long-running campaign, Aflac’s brand recognition jumped from 12% to 90%, and increased sales catapulted Aflac into a leadership position in the supplemental insurance market.

In 2013, the campaign keeps evolving. The duck recently got hurt; now you can use Facebook to send the duck a get well card.

Large consumer marketers like Alfac typically use ad agencies (both traditional media and digital media agencies) to design their campaign creative, handle the media buys, and track results. These are often multi-million dollar endeavors, and have brought us such memorable advertising campaigns as:

“Just Do It” – Nike

“The Most Interesting Man in the World” – Dos Equis

“Where’s the Beef?” – Wendy’s

“We Try Harder” – Avis

“Absolutely, Positively Overnight” – FedEx

Marketing Mediums for Campaigns

While most small- to mid-market companies can’t afford the multi-million dollar ad budgets from the Madison Avenue agencies, they can create effective and memorable campaigns leveraging different media such as:

Online media, including interactive ads and banners on websites

Print media

Social media

Publicity

Direct mail

Email

Radio

Television

Telemarketing

Events and trade shows

Search engines

Outdoor media

True marketing campaigns are more than just advertisements. Complex campaigns leverage multiple mediums, use a sequence of messages over an extended timeframe, support positioning, define a brand experience, and handle the campaign fulfillment and selling.