The Challenge Rambles and riff raff about all this and that

Micro Branding and Micro Marketing

Recent readings on the elongating tale, which led to re-reading the original long tail made me reflect about the concepts of micro-branding and micro Marketing.

What if while branding and marketing products we delivered tailored messages (and offers, and products) to small groups or even individuals. Today, more than ever the internet allows to pinpoint groups of interest gathered together sites and communities. If your brand has a sub-message that can appeal such niches, you'd broaden the number of individuals and groups interested in your brand on an exponential basis.

On today's world, where traditional marketing smells of lies, of impersonal, of mere punchlines emptied of content, an alternative might arise, one that is more easily built, is more personal and doesn't depend on the "proposition of the century" (an artificial device) to succeed. What if branding was also made into a conversation, just like the cluetrain manifesto demands on companies.
Mohammed Iqbal's post on long tail branding hits you as so obvious that you end up wondering how no one thought of it before.

For those not too versed on the long tail concept I'll try to summarize as much as I can, but I really recommend those interested in modern marketing to commit on both readings.. The main concept is that mainstream marketing focuses only on those products that do fit inside the Pareto distribution curve (that states that 20% of the products bulk for 80% of the sales), thus only massive products get the spotlight (and the shelve space) and get sold. The other 80% of the products represent loss.

Traditional (entertainment) product creation can be resumed into (And I quote Chris Anderson):

• A desperate search for one-size-fits-all products
• Trying to predict demand
• Pulling ‘misses’ off the market
• Limited choice

Now, Mohammed's genius was replacing the word "product" with "brand". The trend on mainstream marketing seems to be reducing brand propositions, and we're currently getting to single word propositions (maybe well see single syllable or even single letter brand propositions in the future, who knows?).

So, you are thrive on having a branding success, thus you spend big bucks on a single thick, general, hard to relate to proposition.

With this kind of approach you are ruling out all those people who are not mainstream in their relation with your brand, theyjust don't relate. And they might. Anyone knows that a potential customer is much better than no customer at all.

Mr. Iqbal's proposal is to have both mainstream propositions as well as secondary, tertiary and so on propositions (propostitionsⁿ?) for branding. Maybe this way marketing is not that ethereal entity that hits people as artificial and with which no one can relate because it is just too general, too unfocused, too bland, because the aim is to grab as much attention as you can with a single, unique proposition.

The idea of long tail branding is bold, and forces marketers to think more broadly. That alone should be good just for a change, but like everything else in this world, it is a two sided blade. In Mohammed's words:

The task of the advertising agency here is to generate all the myriad communication messages with which people could relate to a brand and create communication for them all. (...) No matter how deep-pocketed a brand is, populating the entire long tail curve with customized messages across the spectrum can be the shortest and quickest way to bankruptcy.

The first challenge is how to generate the appropriate messages, without going too far, too expensive. Here community comes into play. It is hard to perceive what the right propositions are from within a corporation, thus listening to the community is imperative. This works on an additive and a subtractive way. Additive comes from user experiences such as "your brand delivered this and that value"; subtractive in terms of what you think your brand delivers, but the consumers don't quite get or interpret. There you'll know the communication failed at some point, or you are just plain wrong with what your assumptions were regarding what your brand delivers.
Mohammed Iqbal, on the other hand, exemplifies community involvement with cases of user-submitted spots and adverts.

I'll take my chance to disagree with him on something. It was bound to happen. Point 5 for the long tail branding states: Don’t try and predict. Measure and respond instead. There we can read the following paragraph:

The role of an advertising agency in this case shifts from being a gatekeeper who decides on limited data and gut-feel which brand message will be a success.
It becomes that of an active agent investing in the communication market of a particular brand. Keeping a keen eye on the market and how a suite of messages are faring, the agency keeps altering its portfolio of messages to ensure maximum returns for its clients.

Although I do agree that this sort of micro branding is far more measurable, I still believe some gut-feeling needs to happen in order not to fall behind your own branding campaign. How come?

If you are always making adjustments and changing the micro-branding messages you'll end up losing your authenticity. Which is the matter that I think is most sensitive on this whole elongating tail, and I'll address it a little bit further down on this same post.

That being said, measurement is fundamental, and the tools to perform very profound zooms into what the users experience in terms of branding are have become more efficient than ever before.

My second digression with the document is with the title: "When you have infinite choice, context is more important than content". If you focus too much on context and not too much in content your offer becomes shallow. You need to find the right context -in which you can get the attention of the niches you are seeking to conquest- and then drive that attention to the right content to support it, else you'll end up with a negative impact. You might hook people with the appropriate, highly niche-focused proposition, but if after scratching the surface they find a poor content (as in massively tailored, generic and not well thought) the spell is broken and you don't fulfill the promise you made on your proposition,yielding as a result the opposite of the intended reaction.

To do a wrap-up of Muhammad Iqbal's "elongating tail" I'll quote two paragraphs that pretty much summarize the whole idea:

There’s lesson for advertising and brand-building in there. Traditional brand-building is (...) complicated and expensive, because we burden it with our do-or-do expectations of success. And with our overpowering need to control it and its every interaction and consequence.

In my opinion, the future of advertising and brand-building will also be 'fast, cheap and out of control. Unlike our tried and trusted mass media advertising that we can take ‘off air’, future media vehicles will not come with an off switch. When we pay very little to run them, we are actually relinquishing our control over when, where, and how they will run. Effectively they are on their own.

Exiting times ahead. And challenging as well. The chances of great success are equal to those of booming failure. As with everything new, you can't copy models, you have to build expertise as you move along.

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I think the most challenging thing about this approach to branding is not loosing identity. During the past we've witnessed an oversimplification in marketing messages, getting to a point where we want to define a whole brand, a company, all that a structure stands behind of, with a single word. It's like trying to define one's personality with just a word. No one can relate to something that is just one adjective (or verb, or whatever).The opposite might true as well. If you say too much about a brand you might start delivering the wrong messages at some point, or even end up contradicting the core aspects of the brand. Secondary, tertiary and all other further propositions should add up to the brand's identity, not contradict it. If you build upon a main premise, you will never be able to grab the niche standing in exact opposite corner.Building a brand's identity is a very challenging task. You need to be extra careful on giving the right image, sending the appropriate messages, coming up with propositions that identify what a company stands for. And you must be consistent while doing so. Coherence is not something that comes easily, and when broadening the spectrum of messages you send out it becomes not only imperative, but challenging as well.

The only good way I can think of achieving authenticity is being honest. Know the brand you are trying to market and what it has to offer, know both it's strengths and weaknesses. If you find out a message is not working for a niche don't replace it for the opposite, just because you need it to work. Credibility is lost in a second, but it takes ages to be built, putting it in jeopardy is about the dumbest thing that can be done.

Finally: be patient. Some results don't come up immediately and some premises take some time to settle and generate results. It might be hard to say if a strategy is simply not working or just taking it's time to yield results. It is very sad to see a half-mature strategy killed just because time runs against us all.