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“Brand building” is not some useless marketing exercise — it is critical to business success. Its value has been proven through history. Strong brands are more profitable, better able to combat competitive threats and more resilient in an economic downturn. Brands are rightly treated as important corporate assets, often itemized on the balance sheet. Savvy marketers allocate much of their budget to building their brand.
The CMO's guide to creating ads people love
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How to build your brand with digital advertising
According to Binet and Field, businesses can maximize long-term profits by focusing 60% of advertising spend on brand building and 40% on activation (on average).
LOGO
Tips to build your brand
LET'S CHAT
Create content people are excited to share
Draw people in so they watch the whole ad
TIP 7
Tell your story within 6 seconds
TIP 6
Use visual metaphors to communicate quickly
TIP 5
Tailor content to the channel experience
TIP 4
Choose channels suited to your storytelling
TIP 3
Leverage your distinctive assets
TIP 2
The challenges in today’s media environment
With the financial returns from brand building widely accepted, why is the majority of modern advertising not very good at building strong brands? Between the 1970s and early 2000s, the art of using mainstream advertising for brand building developed rapidly, with companies like Diageo and Unilever leading the way.
Brands and their agency partners — typically steered by the creative agency — learned how to tell compelling, memorable stories using the three biggest media of the time: TV, print and out of home.
Why brand-building in digital hasn’t been easy
The media context has completely changed since then. Over half of global ad spend is on digital channels. Social media in-feed posts/video and paid search are the go-to channels for many modern marketers. But how much of this investment is building lasting brand impressions?
EXPLORE CHALLENGES
TIP 1
TIP 9
Exploit digital interactivity
TIP 8
Look back and learn what is working for you
TIP 10
Final thoughts
START WITH SOME CONTEXT
Jump straight into the 10 tips
SKIP AHEAD
SEE TIPS
In this guide, we’ll present 10 ways to harness the brand-building potential of digital media and offer some context about why it’s been difficult to do in the past.
The media context has completely changed since then. Over half of global ad spend is on digital channels. Social media posts/video and paid search are the go-to channels for many modern marketers. But how much of this investment is building lasting brand impressions?
Start with a ‘Big Brand Idea’
Learn how Zappi can help you with ad development
At this stage, you’ll likely find yourself dealing with varied opinions across your marketing team, agency partners and other internal stakeholders. It’s important to listen to these opinions, but it’s also important to validate this idea with your audience so you can respond to these opinions with facts. We’ll get more into this process in the next section.
If you can’t answer “yes” to these questions, it’s probably not the right idea for your campaign right now.
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has proven beyond doubt that for a brand to grow in the long term, it needs to expand its user base by reaching a broad range of category buyers. In the past, this was possible with a single channel or two. But in today’s media environment, this requires multiple media channels as no single medium can reach everyone. You’ll need TikTok and YouTube to connect with younger segments and linear TV to reach older audiences, and other channels to reach everyone in between. In other words, multi-channel strategies are required to achieve broad reach and strong ROI.
1. Audience fragmentation
This means that brands need to create and optimize a lot of content to work across a range of different channels. And this presents a complex challenge for marketers. They need to understand how to get the most from every channel they’re using, and how best to steer the creative development process.
Media channels vary in terms of how they are experienced. Social media is usually engaged with on a mobile device. With TikTok, the sound is on. On Facebook, sound is usually muted. Linear TV is typically viewed on a big screen indoors. YouTube is often watched on mobile – but certain content tends to be streamed to a large screen. It’s a minefield and the mines keep moving as things are always changing.
2. Varied experience across contexts
One of the most important variables is how long people typically watch or listen to an ad.
Exposures in most channels are very short. Only TV and non-skippable YouTube achieve exposures of more than a few seconds. This has major implications for creative content. Ads must work quickly. Agency creatives need to be experts in psychology, skilled in the art of grabbing attention and communicating ideas instantaneously — or at least before the scroll or the skip. These are different skills than those required for more traditional ad formats that allow for longer storytelling.
The knowledge required to get the most from digital media already exists within the advertising world. The industry knows from experience with outdoor, newspapers and magazine advertising how to cope with short exposures and viewer control, for example. But this know-how has not been passed on to practitioners brought up in the digital age.
The focus for digital advertising has, so far, been on immediate response, ‘activation’ advertising. As a result, there is a whole generation of advertisers who haven’t developed the craft of brand building — because they have never had to use digital channels to build brands before. This is a big challenge for brand owners who want to deliver an integrated marketing campaign. Advertisers need partners who can tell their brand’s story regardless of the media chosen.
3. The need for storytelling expertise
A typical marketing campaign is a complex operation that involves specialist teams of people who create and deploy content across various channels. The logistics take time and energy. As a result, there is often limited capacity to keep on top of and guide the creative side of things.
4. The speed, volume and processes required for content creation
In the early days of digital media, the primary role of digital advertising was to drive traffic to the brand’s website — ultimately leading to online sales. For some brands, this remains the goal, so clickthrough rates are an appropriate performance indicator.
Today, digital media account for the lion’s share of the advertising budget for most brands, even those that are predominantly bought offline. So digital advertising has to take on the responsibility for brand building too.
5. Measurement philosophy
Yet clickthrough rates are largely irrelevant for measuring brand building activities. They have no relationship with brand metrics and long-term sales.
The reality is that very few people engage with digital ads. The average clickthrough rate is 0.35% on the Google Display Network (about one in 300) and 1.9% on Google Search (one in 50). Any campaign that needs to generate website traffic to produce a good ROI is doomed to failure.
Digital ads must be remembered so they can influence purchase decisions in the days, weeks or even months and years after the exposure. If engagement metrics don’t tell you anything about brand building, how do you know if your advertising is worth the investment? Measuring ROI on brand building digital advertising is an industry-widebrand wide problem.
A clear brief can help give you a degree of consistency in theme and aesthetics. But the challenge is that content is developed quickly and deployed digitally almost immediately. There is little time for the marketer to review and reflect on what has been created before it goes live. Even if more time was available, it would be hard to justify the expense of traditional creative pre-tests. Production and media costs for each individual digital creative tend to be low compared to research costs. Only fast, cost-effective research approaches which build learnings make sense given how today’s campaigns are developed.
10 ways to harness the brand-building potential of digital media
DISCOVER POTENTIAL
The challenges outlined above mean that brand building is more difficult for advertisers than it has been in the past.
But it takes originality and creativity to take advantage of these opportunities.
Yet digital media formats offer great potential. Some digital channels make it possible to:
In the rest of this guide, we’ll offer some tips on how to make this possible for your organization.
Target category buyers with pin-point accuracy Hold people’s attention for long durations without additional cost Create truly memorable interactive experiences Gain free viral exposures if the content captures the public’s imagination
• • • •
The challenges of brand building in today’s media environment
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has proven beyond doubt that for a brand to grow in the long term, it needs to expand itsfor its user base by reaching a broad range of category buyers. In the past, this was possible with a single channel or two. But in today’s media environment, this requires multiple mediain media channels as no single medium can reach everyone. You’ll need TikTok and YouTube to connect with younger segments and linear TV to reach older audiences, and other channels to reach everyone in between. In other words, multi-channel strategies are required to achieve broad reach and strong ROI.
This means that brands need to create and optimize a lot of content to work across a range of different channels. And presents a complex challenge for marketers. They need to understand how to get the most from every channel they’re using, and how best to steer the creative development process.
Target category buyers with pin-point accuracy
Hold people’s attention for long durations without additional cost
Create truly memorable interactive experiences
Gain free viral exposures if the content captures the public’s imagination
Steps to build your brand
Final Thoughts
STEP 10
STEP 9
STEP 8
STEP 7
Step 6
Step 5
Step 4
Step 3
Step 2
Step 1
Big ideas do not need to be related to a societal cause or purpose. You just need to identify an idea that resonates powerfully with your target audience and is relevant to your brand. For example, Snickers’ big brand idea is to ‘restore you to your normal self when you’re hungry.’
The world’s biggest advertisers have known for some time that there’s a benefit to having a ‘big brand idea’ to inspire product innovation and communications. For example, Dove’s big idea is to ‘help the next generation of women develop a positive relationship with the way they look.’
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Big ideas help create cohesion between all the brand’s content. They provide a ‘North Star’ to guide the fragmented teams who create advertising assets. With a big idea, it’s easier for teams to come up with content that fits well together to build a strong, coherent brand identity.
Before choosing your brand’s big idea and using it to inspire all your communications, it’s important to check in with your target consumers to make sure the idea is credible and relevant for your brand.
The world’s biggest advertisers have known for some time that there’s a benefit to having a ‘big brand idea’ to inspire product innovation and communications. For example, Dove’s big idea is to‘help the next generation of women develop a positive relationship with the way they look.
STEP 1
Big ideas do not need to be related to a societal cause or purpose. You just need to identify an idea that resonates powerfully with your target audience and is relevant to your brand.For example, Snickers’ big brand idea is to ‘restore you to your normal self when you’re hungry.’
Confectionary brand KitKat uses a similar approach.
It may take months or even years to build a strong association with specific assets, but the long-term benefits are well worth it. McDonald’s uses its distinctive assets in much of its advertising, especially its Golden Arches. This means the ads are instantly recognizable as McDonald's and are able to communicate their message within seconds — which is more critical than ever in digital formats.
Choose channels suited to your storytelling needs
And this Heinz Tomato Ketchup ad to the left is among our favorite static ads. It combines one of the brand’s distinctive assets – the famous bottle – with a powerful visual metaphor that effortlessly communicates the product’s core natural ingredient.
Distinctive brand assets can make your advertising work harder. For example, a distinctive brand asset at the start of your ad helps viewers instantly register which brand the ad is for, without you needing to spell it out. This means that even if people swipe past or skip your ad quickly, as often happens in a digital environment, they will still be reminded of your brand. For brands that people already know and love, this can be enough to keep the brand salient and in people’s consideration frame.
If you haven’t yet established a set of distinctive assets, make this a priority. Identify or create a set of images, symbols, shapes, characters, phrases or sounds that are not associated with your competitors and use them in all your future communications.
This Heinz Tomato Ketchup ad is among our favorite static ads. It combines one of the brand’s distinctive assets – the famous bottle – with a powerful visual metaphor that effortlessly communicates the product’s core natural ingredient.
STEP 2
Social media such as Facebook and Instagram have short dwell times and are better suited to brands that can remind people of their existence and what makes them special in just a few seconds – with the help of their distinctive brand assets — as we saw in some of our examples in the previous section.
Consider what your brand needs to accomplish, then pick the channels most suited to help you get there.
STEP 3
The best channels for your brand depend on the communication task. Take new brands, for example. New brands have a lot to convey and no established mental associations to make the job easier. A new brand has to get people to remember its name, show or explain what it does and make people feel it is worth considering. Ads that people watch for 1-2 seconds can’t do all this. Very few mainstream brands have established themselves using social media advertising alone. Do you know of any?
Media such as TV, cinema and non-skippable YouTube provide the longest dwell times and are well suited to brand building, especially early in a brand’s life.
The viewer experience varies from one media channel to another. You can’t just create one version of an ad and expect it to be effective on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. You have to tailor your content to perform best within the experience in each channel.
The main variables you should consider are:
Screen size: Does the ad work well on small and large screens? The high resolution of smartphones means that the experience may not be that different from large-screen viewing, but an overcrowded ad will be hard to process on a smaller screen.
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Sound: Some media (like Facebook) tend to be experienced with the sound off, yet others (like TikTok) are usually experienced with the sound on. Ad creative needs to be tailored accordingly.
User control: Some channels allow the user to scroll past or skip an ad, whereas others create a ‘forced exposure.’ You have more opportunities to tell a fuller story in a forced exposure context and more time to trigger the brand, grab attention and let a story unfold. With skippable ads, you have to fit your story into just a few seconds or be very distinctive or interesting to get people to want to see more.
Context: The environment in which an ad appears influences its effectiveness. In some contexts, people are sitting back looking to be entertained. In others, they are leaning in looking to engage in content. In some cases, a video takes up the whole screen, while in others it is surrounded by many distractions. It is well worth testing ad effectiveness in different contexts in order to determine where to invest.
Let’s look at an example. Try watching the Nike ad with the sound muted.
The viewer experience varies from one media channel to another. You can’t just create one version of an ad and expect it to be effective on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Tiktok. You have to tailor your content to perform best within the experience in each channel.
STEP 4
Sound: Some media (like Facebook) tend to be experienced with the sound off yet others (like TikTok) are usually experienced with the sound on. Ad creative needs to be tailored accordingly.
User control: Some channels allow the user to scroll past or skip an ad whereas others create a ‘forced exposure.’ You have more opportunities to tell a fuller story in a forced exposure context and more time to trigger the brand, grab attention and let a story unfold. With skippable ads, you have to fit your story into just a few seconds or be very distinctive or interesting to get people to want to see more.
The result of this effort was a Super Bowl commercial featuring Betty White which generated 400 million unpaid media impressions and launched a big idea (“You’re not you when you’re hungry”) that continues to work for the brand today.*
Pretty dull, right? But now watch it again with the sound on. This ad wouldn’t work in an environment where ads are likely to be viewed without sound.
And visual metaphors aren’t just for static ads. This ad for Volkswagen Tiguan shows how visual metaphors can also be exploited in digital video advertising.
Social media advertising has a lot in common with out-of-home advertising. Both use either static or briefly animated images, the exposure duration is typically about 1-2 seconds, and the ads often have no audio to help them grab and hold attention.
As a result, they both need a strong visual hook — a striking visual that is quick and easy to see against a cluttered environment and helps convey the brand’s message in the blink of an eye.
STEP 5
Visual metaphors can help you convey messages almost instantaneously. A great billboard ad is likely to work well on social media and vice versa. Here are some examples of ads that would work well in either channel.
With a little creativity and clever editing, it is possible to tell an engaging story within this time limit. Here are a few examples.
YouTube pre-roll ads can be skipped after five seconds. Twitter’s ‘Vines’ (remember them?) lasted six seconds. According to a Microsoft study in 2015, the average adult attention span is no more than eight seconds (one second shorter than a goldfish and four seconds shorter than it was 12 years before).
According to advertising and cinematography guru Chuck Young, it takes about six seconds to create a ‘meaningful moment’ in any form of video.
The consensus seems to be that it takes 5-6 seconds to tell a simple story.
Toyota
Oreo
Here Toyota showcased the great handling of the ToyoYaris car in 4.9 seconds.
This Oreo ad lasts just five seconds but reminds people of the brand and how it inspires family fun.
This Skechers ad delivers the brand and message well within the six magic second
If you want to emphasize speed, here’s how to make a short ad length work for you like Mercedes-Benz did in this ad.
Skechers
Mercedes
These Spotify ads are slightly longer but they still get the point across quickly. The campaign was designed to get Gen X back into music. Their stories were told in very few words and seconds.
STEP 6
This Sketchers ad delivers brand and message well within the six magic seconds
Brands that have not yet established distinctive brand assets may find it harder to tell their stories quickly, as they don’t have access to the same ‘short-hand.’ Five seconds will rarely be enough to convey the brand’s name, what it does and why it’s worth considering. In such cases, TV or un-skippable YouTube may be the way to go since they tend to be watched for much longer.
Channels with shorter exposure durations may be viable but only if the creative draws people in quickly and holds their attention for long enough to communicate a compelling message. Three techniques work particularly well: ‘The Rollercoaster,’ ‘The Tease’ and ‘The Newspaper Approach.’
Rollercoaster ads grab attention at the start and never let go. Bright, lively imagery and fast cuts tend to work well. For unmuted channels, a catchy soundtrack synced perfectly with the visuals enhances the ad’s ability to keep the audience engaged.
The Rollercoaster
This Ben & Jerry’s ad works in a similar way.
Ben & Jerrys
Here’s a digital ad that exemplifies the ‘The Newspaper Approach’: Monday.com
Newspapers grab people’s attention and draw them in using a timeless formula:
The headline creates attention via shock or intrigue.
The short paragraph below summarizes the story in a way that entices readers to keep reading.
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2.
The text that follows gives more detail for the captive audience.
3.
This structure works well for digital video. Ads using this structure are effective even if people only watch the first few seconds, but they work harder for people who keep watching. The longer people stay with the ad, the more they hear about the brand’s unique product characteristics and benefits.
The majority of viewers will normally scroll past or skip ads within a second or two, so your job is to grab their attention quickly with the ‘headline.’
If you manage to stop people scrolling/skipping past your ad, use the next 3-4 seconds to either communicate your brand and key message/association OR create enough interest to get people watching for longer. For viewers still engaged with the ad, you have the next 10 seconds or so to develop
the brand story. This could involve building the emotions the brand wants to be associated with or describing its functional benefits.
If people are still watching the ad after the first 15-20 seconds, they’re either enjoying the ad or are actively interested in the brand. Use this opportunity to expand the story or start to explain the product features and benefits over the next 15 seconds or so. Very few consumers are likely to watch your ad for more than 30 seconds, but it may be
worth highlighting detailed product features and benefits to the potential brand advocates who watch your ad through to the end.
Digital advertisers can also take inspiration for the structure of their films from one of the oldest media: newspapers.
The newspaper approach
This ad for San Diego tourism is a good example.
San Diego tourism
This Oreos ad lasts 15 seconds. It’s hard not to watch it through to the end.
Ads using ‘The Tease’ rely on piquing the audience's curiosity early on. They create enough intrigue within the first few seconds to make people watch for longer.
The Tease
This video for web-design platform Webflow generates interest within the first four to five seconds to keep people watching. The film is amusing and intriguing throughout.
Webflow
This IKEA Instagram ad grabs attention and then creates intrigue via a ‘Groundhog Day’ mechanic.
IKEA
Rollercoaster ads grab attention at the start and never let go. Bright, lively imageryRollercoaster imagery and fast cuts tend to work well. For unmuted channels, a catchy soundtrack syncedand synced perfectly with the visuals enhances the ad’s ability to keep the audience engaged.
If you manage to stop people scrolling/skipping past your ad, use the next 3-4 seconds to either communicate your brand and key message/association OR create enough interest to get people watching for longer.
For viewers still engaged with the ad, you have the next 10 seconds or so to develop the brand story. This could involve building the emotions the brand wants to be associated with or describing its functional benefits.
If people are still watching the ad after the first 15-20 seconds, they’re either enjoying the ad or are actively interested in the brand. Use this opportunity to expand the story or start to explain the product features and benefits over the next 15 seconds or so.
Very few consumers are likely to watch your ad for more than 30 seconds, but it may be worth highlighting detailed product features and benefits to the potential brand advocates who watch your ad through to the end.
Magnum created an extraordinary advertising experience in 2011.
Of course, it’s hard to estimate the ROI from this activity. Only a small proportion of the target audience engaged with the content, but those who did spent many memorable minutes enjoying the experience. Also, the publicity generated by the game helped boost brand awareness.
Given what’s possible with digital media channels, surprisingly few brands have exploited their unique interactive possibilities. Here are some examples of brands that have explored what’s possible and created memorable content.
Typex was another early adopter in 2013. The interactivity was a simple binary choice which didn’t significantly change what was shown, but the novelty factor made it a big hit.
The original use of technology like this tends to generate publicity and interest in the brand. Any brand that uses new technology in original and engaging ways tends to benefit – provided the benefits outweigh the costs.
While every brand hopes their ad will go viral, it’s not a viable strategy for the majority of brands. For every hit there are hundreds of failed attempts. Viral transmission is a nice bonus, but it’s impossible to guarantee the film you are creating will be shared widely.
You can, however, maximize your chances of success by understanding the three categories of brand videos that tend to go viral.
Three Dove films have achieved similar levels of fame over the years. All three films highlight the societal challenge the brand is trying to help address.
‘Reverse Selfie’ in 2021
‘Evolution’ in 2006
‘Sketches’ in 2013
Most ads have little social currency and very few are considered worth sharing. But once in a while an ad is so original, peculiar or controversial that it becomes a cultural phenomenon and generates millions of free views.
In 1992, UK soft drink brand Tango aired a series of ads featuring a large orange man who would slap people on both cheeks when they took a swig of the drink. The ads went viral and the phrase ‘You Know When You’ve Been Tango’d’ became famous overnight.
This Apple film from 2014 is a good example of how great cinematography and imagination can produce content that people want to share with others.
Cadbury’s ‘Gorilla’ ad featured a gorilla playing the opening drum sequence from Phil Collins’ hit ‘In the Air Tonight.’ It was bizarre, mesmerizing and highly shareable. Cadbury’s tried several times to replicate this success but without much luck.
Quirky ads that capture the public’s imagination
If your goal is to generate publicity through a viral approach, you’ll need to try out lots of off -the-wall ideas and cross your fingers in the hope that one of them takes off. You can maximize your chances of success by researching multiple concepts as prototypes to identify those with the most potential. Get feedback from consumers early in the ideation process to see if any of your ideas resonate — that way you don’t waste time and money producing an idea with no potential.
Producing a long-form blockbuster video is a risky approach to advertising. Using paid-for media to achieve significant exposure is prohibitively expensive for most brands. And there is no guarantee the film will achieve high reach through viral exposure.
Even the most compelling branded content can get lost among all the other great entertainment at people’s fingertips via YouTube, Tik Tok, Netflix, etc. Blockbuster films are only well suited to brands with the deepest of pockets.
These are films designed to captivate the viewer. They can last 1-2, 10 or even 60+ minutes and usually involve great artistry and creativity. These films are sometimes spectacular, often clever or poignant, and always absorbing.
Blockbuster branded content
An early example, from 2005 (the year YouTube started), was Sony’s ‘Heartbeat’ (bouncing balls) film for its Bravia televisions.
Ocean Spray pulled off a similar trick more recently. In September 2020, Nathan Apodaca, a factory worker from Idaho, skateboarded to work when his truck wouldn’t start. He kept swigging from a bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice and mimed to ‘Dream’ by Fleetwood Mac.
He filmed himself on the journey and posted the video on TikTok. It has received 29 million views so far and inspired hundreds of copies. Ocean Spray amplified the brand benefit by generating additional publicity. They gave Nathan a new truck full of Ocean Spray cartons.
It’s hard to engineer this kind of publicity, but if it happens spontaneously, your marketing and PR teams need to respond quickly and confidently to make the most of the opportunity!
User-generated flukes
From time to time a video created by the public that features a brand goes viral.
The first film showing the explosive results of mixing Mentos mints with diet cola was uploaded in 2005. Entertainment company Eepybird.com filmed their own version of the experiment and their video went viral, creating a meme.
The Mentos marketing team acted quickly to keep it going. They provided Eepybird with free Mentos and cash to fund their experiments and produce more films. According to the parent company of Mentos, Perfetti Van Melle, the free advertising was worth around $10m, roughly half of what the brand would normally spend on advertising in the US each year.
Even the most compelling branded content can get lost amongst all the other great entertainment at people’s fingertips via YouTube, Tik Tok, Netflix, etc. Blockbuster films are only well suited to brands with the deepest of pockets.
If your goal is to generate publicity through a viral approach, you’ll need to try out lots of off -the-wall ideas and cross your fingers in the hope that one of them takes off . You can maximize your chances of success by researching multiple concepts as prototypes to identify those with the most potential. Get feedback from consumers early in the ideation process to see if any of your ideas resonate — that way you don’t waste time and money producing an idea with no potential.
Where your investment is high behind specific ads and contexts, or when you’re heading in a whole new direction for your brand, it’s a good idea to get consumer feedback on your advertising as you develop it to make sure it’s strong and on strategy.
But this isn’t always possible when you’re developing many ads quickly and for different contexts. Even when you don’t have the ability to look at all your ads before going live, it’s always important to look back and learn from work you’ve already created so you can do more of what works and do less of what doesn’t.
What’s tricky is working out the best way to get these learnings. There’s no shortage of digital data available to you, but it may not always be the data you need to draw helpful conclusions about how to improve your ads going forward.
What did people like and not like about your historical ads?
Did they notice your brand in your ads? Will your brand get credit?
Have your ads helped to create positive associations with your brand?
What kind of ads have been working well? What themes should you draw on again?
Which contexts have been working well? What are the characteristics of the best ads in each context?
This type of information can only be gathered through specific consumer insights. We’ve seen many brands get value from taking a moment to gather consumer feedback on their historical ads at several different points throughout the year — like quarterly, for example. A learning platform can make it easy to access the data all in one place so you can see high-level trends and themes, and then dive into specifics to learn more or be inspired by individual consumer voices.
It can also help you understand how your digital ads perform in the context they appear to viewers, so you can learn how to maximize your performance in each context.
Once you understand how your digital ads are working to build your brand now, you can better understand how you can use them to build your brand in the future.
• • • • •
Your clickthrough and conversion data is useful to look at, but clicks aren’t that relevant for ads aimed primarily at building your brand. Instead you need to understand the impact on your brand: Whether your advertising reinforced or changed what people know, think, feel about the brand and whether it made the brand more salient and therefore likely to be considered.
Plus, you need more diagnostic data that tells you what worked, what didn’t work and why so you can learn for the future. It may help to answer questions like:
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Digital advertising may not have been used much for brand building in the past, but it’s time for that to change. As media continues to fragment, there’s no guarantee your entire audience will see your brand building activities if they’re relegated to a single channel or two. It’s time to see digital as more than just an “act now” channel. It can play a key role in building and sustaining your brand.
All it takes is a shift in your mindset and a willingness to test and learn!