Brand Blindness: what is it, and how do you cure it?      By David Batten (Chief Executive of Crazy Horse) Published by The Wise Marketer in May 2005. Direct marketing needs clear brand thinking, yet this is strangely often overlooked, according to David Batten, who examines the pitfalls of 'brand blindness' and how to avoid possible brand damage... Now, more than ever, our business lives are performance orientated. Direct marketing departments are under siege in the UK because, apart from the relentless focus on achieving results, the precious commodity of time is in desperately short supply. You've got to do it well, and you've got to do it fast. Pushing the pedal down hard on achieving response to direct marketing can all too often result in neglecting the long-term health of the brand. It's hard to have brand peripheral vision when you're looking down the telescopic sights at the direct marketing target. Why brand blindness is an issue Before brand blindness can be tackled, it must first be acknowledged as the genuine problem that it is. The dangers of not keeping the brand always clearly in view are obvious. Such brand blindness results in discordant messaging, which leads to customer communications that lack a 'brand heart'. Consumers pick up on this and perceive the brand to be in a state of confusion, which means that valuable time and money are wasted and results compromised over the medium to long term. Companies must avoid at all costs the temptation for direct marketing to sacrifice brand for the sake of a quick hit. This is simple common sense. Think of a brand as a person. When you meet different people, it's natural to adapt yourself slightly to each of them, but you don't change the essential you. If you do, you may well elicit the response, "You don't seem quite yourself today. What's the problem?" How to avoid brand blindness Avoiding brand blindness requires both agency and client (particularly the latter) to think beyond their own narrow function, view the bigger brand picture and recognise a greater responsibility than their particular short-term, often tactically driven activity. Any traces of a 'job's worth' attitude, from client or agency, must be eliminated. No "That's not my job, someone else looks after that", and so on. The other fundamental is that the brand must lead and the marketing channels follow – not the other way around. This means that there must be brand leadership within a client, with clear brand positioning, clear values and clear messaging. These must be communicated internally, so that everyone can understand, articulate and buy into them. There should be a clearly designated 'brand champion' in every client company, and indeed within agencies on behalf of their clients, to act as a check and balance. This brand 'package' must then be disseminated outward to the agency, clearly and precisely. This often fails to happen, yet how can an agency really feel a brand unless it does? In this way, both sides share the same knowledge and appreciate the need to ensure it permeates all channel communication. Enhancing and building the brand Leading on from this, how can we make sure that all direct marketing, indeed all below-the-line-communication, while producing high ROI, also enhances and builds the brand? The best way to achieve this is to focus on the concept of brand response. Too often, superficial lip service is paid to respecting and enhancing the brand. Do we all protect the brand? Do we integrate the brand and the direct marketing message? Not always. To make this happen, it must be part of the corporate philosophy and methodology of a business. How is this achieved? First, every piece of direct marketing communication, big or small, must have both a clearly stated brand objective and a response objective, against both of which creative work should be judged. To arrive at these objectives, we must obviously develop hard-hitting above and below-the-line propositions. The task of a piece of direct marketing communication is to elicit a response. This, however, is not enough. By ravelling brand and response together, we make certain that the response is perfectly synchronised with the brand – that it is relevant and benefit led. So far, I've talked about responders. What about those who don't respond – the huge silent majority out there? To help build and protect the brand, this group is the most important. We need to understand what will trigger them to cross the line and respond. Often the catalyst of action will be brand-orientated feelings and messages. It is vital to pay very special attention to the responders of the future, through a profound understanding of the role the brand plays. Targeting Finally, a word about targeting. It is crucial to avoid striking the market in a scattergun fashion through a series of one-off tactical campaigns. Not only does this scatter results, it also splinters the brand. A standard modus operandi is always to define the prospect pool tightly and control all direct marketing so they receive a structured and logical sequence of communications, each playing a role in building the brand. This sounds incredibly obvious, I know. But so rarely are the disciplines closely and religiously adhered to. The biggest worry in all this is not knowing the damage you've caused to the brand. It doesn't become evident until long after the mailing is history. And by then, it may even be too late. Loyalty marketing... for real facts, figures, research, case studies, best practices, practical how-to's, technologies & examples, The Loyalty Guide 4 is the world's most complete report (1,000+ pages) that covers it all. Costing less than a conference pass, details of this electronic report's contents, chapter samples, pricing, and ordering details are online now at www.TheLoyaltyGuide.com. For more loyalty marketing feature articles: http://www.thewisemarketer.com/features   CUSTOMER LOYALTY & ENGAGEMENT: all you need to know in one 1,000+ page report...   Click here to tell a friend Copyright 2005 Crazy Horse / The Wise Marketer     About the author... David Batten is the Chief Executive of the UK-based brand response agency Crazy Horse, and believes that establishing brand without hearing the consumer's response is a waste of both time and money. The company is both brand-oriented and response-focused, and is driven by a need to deliver measurable ROI through a thorough understanding of the brand. The Crazy Horse team combines strategic brand expertise with direct marketing skills to produce brand marketing campaigns that can be monitored, measured and translated into bottom line financial value. Crazy Horse can be found online at http://www.crazyhorse.co.uk   Looking for permission to reproduce this article?   We are usually pleased to permit the reproduction of our Feature Articles in other trade journals (but not 'blogs'). If you would like to reproduce this article, you will need to obtain written (i.e. e-mailed or faxed) permission from our publisher (Wise Research Ltd) as well as the original author.   Contact the publisher by clicking here and contact the author by clicking here   Please explain your intended usage in your requests.