Adherent Disciple

Stickiness. That, not reach or brand awareness, is what marketers need to get from their promotions. So sayeth the new publisher of Reader’s Digest.

Forget Y2K. The marketer’s millennial dilemma is IDC, consumers whose minute-by-minute actions shout, “I don’t care,” in the face of unprecedented product choices and promotional blitzes. The alarming reality is that everything we know to do in order to get a brand seen, heard, and bought will increasingly work against us in an over-solicited world. People are simply checking out. To succeed, we have to surrender our brand-centric way of business, shift our effectiveness criteria from awareness and trial to consumer involvement, and redefine marketing success.

Sound like something you’ve heard before? That’s the real problem: Nothing has changed. The marketing community has resisted addressing the enormity of the consumer-confidence crisis because a solution involves fundamental change in how we see marketing.

We talk about the need to alter our approach to consumers. Then we do what we’ve been trained to do as marketers. We re-examine and re-position the core benefits of our brands. We find additional places and occasions for all-out promotional assaults, on the theory that the more often we hit people with the same messages and offers, the greater our brand awareness, likelihood of trial, and repeat purchase.

That marketing principle was born of a simpler time when people felt in control and believed in companies and institutions. Predictably, it is backfiring in today’s world. According to Yankelovich & Partners, consumers at the turn of the century aren’t big believers in companies and institutions. When asked what they have a great deal of confidence in, only six percent of consumers mentioned corporations, compared to 10 percent voting for government, 18 percent for insurance companies, and 28 percent for public schools. Here’s the kicker: All of the scores are down markedly from two years ago. In fact, the only source that continues to be respected is an older person’s advice, in which 66 percent of people have great confidence.

What’s more, people are resisting promotional messages because they’re already compressed and overwhelmed. From raising a family while both parents are working full-time jobs, to dealing with complicated technology, to managing intricate finances, to dealing with aging parents and managed care, people are facing unprecedented pressures. The marketer’s predictable response: Tell them more about our products, hoping the right benefit will hit at the right time and spur trial. Dream on!

IT’S ABOUT ME, STUPID!

“Pay attention to me!” is the consumer’s silent scream to the marketing community. The great irony is that, the more choices consumers have, the more they look for intimate relationships with a few brands they can trust. Tomorrow’s brand relationships aren’t based on simple attributes (“Our tires last longer.”), they are grounded in a deeper role the brand plays in peoples’ lives. For while 44 percent of people today zap commercials, the same people tell researchers they need more information to make the right decisions in critical life events. What does that tell us about the way we are marketing brands?

Consider these statistics on healthcare, arguably the most emotional subject American consumers deal with on a daily basis. Reader’s Digest hired researcher Intersearch to contact 1,000 consumers at random earlier this year for a Healthcare 2000 study, and 63 percent said there is no one source of counsel they can trust. Moreover, 68 percent said healthcare information is overwhelming and confusing, and the same percentage said they are turning to pharmacists to separate fact from fiction.

Ironically, venture capitalists and upstart marketers pioneering the Internet seem to understand this consumer dichotomy. Fledgling sites evaluate business vitality on the basis of a measure sure called “stickiness,” which refers to how long visitors hang around. Rather than concentrating on applying traditional marketing and media tactics to the Internet, we need to apply Internet realities to all marketing.

In the words of Jon Mandel, co-managing director of Grey Advertising’s Mediacom, “Reach declines further and further as the array of information channels increases.”

So what really matters in marketing is stickiness, or involvement. How deeply customers involve themselves in a medium or promotion determines the lasting results for each participating brand. Focusing marketing efforts on tangible brand benefits – from cleaner clothes to a longer-lasting tire – misses the source of lasting opportunity. As the pace of Internet change demonstrates, competitors can equal or surpass technological innovations within months, if not weeks.

People need something deeper from our companies than the tangible attributes of a product.

WELCOME TO THEIR WORLD

Relevance is the wrong race. In the age of sound-bite communication, where we talk in theme-line speak, the most important thing any medium or promotion can do is generate the opportunity for true communication.

Can we command consumers’ continuing attention?

Do they instinctively turn to us for information on important life decisions, and do they use the information we give them?

Do they invite us to play a larger role in their lives by sharing personal information or requesting customized products and/or targeted communications?

It’s easy to conceive of a relevant promotion. You’ve got people interested in sports, so you do something around the Super Bowl. Great. But how do you guarantee that the consumers you want to touch will get involved in the promotion? That they won’t blur it out in the whirl of promotions bombarding their sports consciousness. There’s only one way: Connect with their deeper sense of need and approach them through vehicles they trust.

Design for comfort, not confrontation. Breaking through the clutter often translates into hype and shock. Given the fragmentation of media, many promotional vehicles (whether in-store, on the Web, or at soccer fields) are better positioned to forge connections with particular consumers. When you create an ad or promotion, is it a sticky position and execution? Does it create a comfort zone you want to spend time in? Or does it grab you by the lapel like those Dick spots from Miller Beer?

A comfort zone is a kindred spirit that consumers sense in a brand, the subtle connection that strengthens with every contact. Promoters need to start planting their campaigns in consumer oases.

The marketing lesson in the home movement of the ’90s is that consumers hdhhd seek shelter in familiar surroundings as life’s choices multiply. Comfort-zoning is Kraft getting heavy into recipes, because people need that kind of support. It’s a car maker creating new on-board security and automatic roadside assistance features. The message to consumers is that we’re going to take care of them.

Promotion and media buyers have to begin to evaluate media vehicles based on the intensity of their connection with their audiences. For example, magazines are brands, while most television networks are channels. You pick up a magazine because of the masthead, and then you get into the content. With television, you turn on a station for the programming, which just happens to be on a certain network.

There is more loyalty to a magazine brand than there is to a network symbol, which means there is more opportunity for franchise expansion and for productive multi-level involvement for marketers.

FOLLOW THE LEADER

What has the deeper connection: your brand or a medium, your brand or a retailer? Not wanting to give up control in the partnership, many promotion sellers keep trying to sidestep a simple fact in negotiating: The partner’s consumer connection is often stronger than that of the client’s brand. In the years ahead, it is imperative that we identify, then fully exploit, whichever connection is greater. You’re not leveraging a relationship unless you’re taking that same connection into every possible promotional vehicle.

If you decide ESPN’s phenomenal relationship with sports-minded people is stronger than your brand’s foothold, then your promotional involvement with ESPN should start with advertising time alone. Get involved with ESPN’s magazine and Web site and build a branded database promotion, and now you’re starting to create a relationship in the consumer’s mind as related to the trusted ESPN brand. Maybe they’ll transfer some of their relationship and sense of connection to you. Consumers recently told researchers they trust Reader’s Digest second only to their family doctor as a healthcare information source. There’s a relationship pharmaceutical brands can tap into.

The same holds true for retail promotions. In a mass-merchant world where one category manager’s bad mood can wipe out five years worth of sales inroads, continuing to believe that major retailers lack true brand connections with consumers is suicide. The surest way to fortify a brand relationship with consumers is to leverage the right retailer’s trust center through a variety of initiatives.

That’s a major overhaul of our promotional development cycle, to be sure. It can be done. Saturn created the greatest relationship-marketing story of modern times by solving a fundamental problem: Consumers don’t like spending time in car dealerships. Nike, meanwhile, rose on purchased star power only to fall victim to self-centeredness.

>From the day it was conceived, Saturn was solving consumers’ problems. Saturn’s promotional message is intrinsic in the brand’s day-to-day operations – consistent pricing, low-key selling, simplified trade-in policies. The result is a relationship that far transcends the metal. Three years ago, 44,000 people scheduled their summer vacations around a trip to the Springhill, TN, Saturn plant just to see where their cars were made and who made them! Understand why that happened, and you’ll know what it will take to meaningfully separate your brand from its competitive set in the years ahead.

By contrast, Nike is the creation of clever promoters and a huge bankroll. The brand has the most impressive array of endorsements the sports world has ever conceived, and the products are high-quality and trend-setting. However, where Nike now labors to create aspiration, Saturn fulfills existing practical and emotional needs.

Like many successful brands, Nike fell into self-centeredness. The real problem: Pro sports is an awareness zone, not a comfort zone, and Nike overstayed its welcome. Saturn, on the other hand, has the feeling of family; it’s already welcomed.

NEEDY THINGS

Increasingly, promotion people tell me that the solution to clutter is surround-sound – hitting consumers from all sides with a product message, replicating it in many forms of media, and calling it integration. Fact is, promotions that really work grow out of consumer needs, and this needs solution must be rooted in the heart of the brand itself. Market magic doesn’t happen by accident, or by layering a facade on an empty shell. It starts from a core belief and set of values that align with consumers’ very real needs. That’s what Saturn, ESPN, and Reader’s Digest did. There’s no faking it. When you do it right, 44,000 flock lemming-like to a factory and 100 million people say you’re the most involving magazine on earth.