Attention All Marketers!

Here’s what your New Year’s resolution should be:
Take better care of Your Brand.

I’m not here to tell you that SEO, paid search, performance marketing, influencers, and “the funnel” don’t matter. But I am unabashedly here to tell you that Your Brand matters more than all of those things combined. In fact, you should be using those things to reinforce your brand purpose, message, and point of differentiation as much as humanly possible. While that might seem obvious, it’s certainly not happening consistently when you take a look at the consumer journeys for many brands.

Marketing is changing faster than ever, which means it’s very easy to get caught in the trap of keeping up with what’s new instead of keeping Your Brand’s heart and soul shining. The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Much to the contrary.

New platforms can make Your Brand even more powerful.
Your Brand might not be the reason someone picks you, but it will certainly be the reason they stay with you. They will be pulled into hundreds of other directions by stalwarts, upstarts, and all of the competition in between. Deals, promotions, pinpoint-accurate media buys, TikTok…all of the tools in the arsenal will pummel your consumers’ eyeballs. Within this context, what will you do to make them love, appreciate, maybe even covet Your Brand more? As Sun Tzu said, “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”

For example, if you’re partnering with influencers and content creators, how are you choosing them? Most of these folks base their content on their own authenticity and staying true to what their followers seek from them, but what does their point of view do for Your Brand? Gen Z’s propensity for TikTok and influencers is actually pushing upward, infiltrating the purchasing lives of older generations. It’s also turning some platforms into something akin to QVC. Product after product, promo after promo, gimmick after gimmick. Ironically, Gen Z is also the quickest to turn away from “ads,” sniffing them out and moving on, which plants a seed of negativity or unbelievability in their minds. We can probably assume Millennials, Gen Xers, and beyond will follow suit (and already are).

So it’s not enough—and it’s not wise—to do these things just because you can or just to “stay current.” Paying an influencer to try, use, or vouch for your product can actually hurt your brand. Making mediocre TikToks can be very…cringe.

An especially egregious example of this is a brand trying to be overly relatable to its audience. Friendly, innocent, chummy—and clearly trying to sell you something. I’m not going to put an example here, because that’s a crappy thing to do. However, it’s pretty easy to understand that positioning Your Brand as your consumers’ friend is also saying, “Hey, friends help each other, right?” People don’t buy that sh!t.

Your strategy for influencers, content creation partners, and “new” platforms should support your core values and draw your consumers in, continually making sure they see and feel what they love about Your Brand. Leverage new platforms to further articulate Your Brand in a modern and thoughtful way.

Use AI. Definitely. But do NOT forget the human touch.
“Breaking through the clutter” has been marketers’ goal for decades. Well, there’s more clutter than ever, particularly driven by the increase in the scale of content creation enabled by AI tools.

Back in the 70s, the average person saw between 500 and 1,600 ads per day. In 2007, that number spiked to 5,000 per day. In 2021, we each saw about 10,000 ads every day. Sounds insane, and maybe “see” isn’t even the right word. Most of the ads roll right across our corneas without much recognition, which is a vicious cycle that makes consumers digest less as more stimuli bombard them.

Generating imagery and content using AI can significantly speed up the process many of us are accustomed to. The tools are also improving daily, particularly from a quality and versatility standpoint. That doesn’t change the fact that the output is missing something. That something is heart. Ironically, it’s not the AI’s fault this is happening; it’s the people. Brands are becoming infatuated with speed and tweaking “creative” based on lightning-fast analytics.

That word worked better! Keep using it.

We got better response when the bottle was turned sideways. Do that!

No more long hair! Only short hair.

The folks in charge of the AI tools (most often creative teammates) keep cranking stuff out. Then suddenly, the viewer stops noticing the brand. Why? Because the process has become formulaic, the responses have led the marketer down a path that actually removes the aspects that made the brand unique, and the viewer has begun to subconsciously ignore the brand. Which then often pushes the marketer to try to figure out very quickly “what’s wrong” by continuing to flood the platforms.

Does that scenario seem exaggerated or overly simplified? If you answered “yes,” then you’re wrong. It’s happening every single day. The point: you must NOT forget the human touch and the soul that is Your Brand. It’s why you exist and it’s likely why people gravitated towards you to begin with. This is a classic case of slow down to speed up. Go ahead, use AI. But use it to make Your Brand more awesome, not more common.

Social search and shopping are rocketships. Where they’re taking Your Brand is up to you.
Social platforms are becoming the first destination for commerce, and not just for the youngest generations. Effectively selling on Instagram, TikTok, etc. requires a good bit of content. It also requires freshness.

What most often sells is product photography. This begs the question, should you be putting a lot more product photography out there? The answer: you should be putting a lot more better quality, more brand-centric product photography out there.

People don’t care about something because they see it a lot. They might remember it better if they see it a lot, but HOW will they remember it making them feel? How do you want people to feel about Your Brand? Do you want to motivate them? Do you want their mouths to water? Give them goosebumps? Make them feel safe? Think of you as THE innovator in your category?

Whatever you want them to feel…is the product photography you’re putting out on social sparking that? If not, it’s not right. Every image is an opportunity to evoke interest or reduce interest.

Take care of Your Brand, the most important asset you’ll ever have. And if you need help, contact Planit’s brand experts today.