Over the years…I’ve worked on several campaigns to help promote a product or service. However, the most important aspect, I always question before putting the campaign together is: How will I make this campaign creative and innovated, so it can compete in a highly saturated market?
When a campaign is innovated, it’s naturally is more interesting. However, there needs to be trust within the brand and consumers, must like the brand before the messaging or concept is created.
For example, the Christmas campaigns which are put together each year are a talking point for all, especially for the most trusted and prestige brands, such as John Lewis, M & S, Sainsbury’s etc. Every year, it seems the competition is getting fiercer. This could be due to the expectations people have from the company, but again it’s down to people recognising the brand and liking they brand before purchasing from the company. If John Lewis has had a particularly good advert one year and everyone is talking about it, then naturally the sales will increase due to the additional word of mouth and social media promotions.
Another example, of a creative campaign is when each year, St. Pancreas station gives a brand an opportunity to sponsor the Christmas tree and surroundings within the station. This is another avenue that companies use to refresh their brands.
A few years backs the Disney Store sponsored the tree and filled it with Disney toys. It looked like Disney spent a lot of time decorating the tree by individually placing Disney characters on the tree as baubles. However, in 2018 Tiffany’s took a much simpler approach. Half of the tree is in plain sparkling white and the other half is Robin Egg Blue, a colour which they have now trademarked, as people have started to like it. In fact, it’s the colour which gives the brand a unique identity and which means they have innovated to compete in a saturated market especially during the Christmas periods, when sales are crucial.
Understanding the brand essence is also vital for companies to survive within a saturated market. Therefore, how do they go about strengthening or improving their brand essence?
Let’s look at brands like KKW (Kim Kardashian’s cosmetics and fragrance brand) or Kylie Cosmetics, who have sold out their products within hours of launching.
How do they do this…through social media channels of course! These channels have become so crucial to their campaigns, that without them they will struggle to survive within a busy market. Kylie cosmetics is now billion-dollar brand and it’s down to one little lip video she posed a year back which made her profits today. To her fans she shares mini clips about her passion for lip colours, which generated a craze to obtain those lipstick colours. Celebrities had not entered this market before, however she created a break-through using social media which has helped her create a successful brand for the most influential market.
Her sister Kim also wanted to get in on this success and produced the KKW brand. Instead of just selling make-up she took to the idea of selling perfume’s and produced an innovated and creative campaign to launch her perfumes. During the early 2000’s we have witnessed several celebrities launch perfume’s and try to create their own personal brand. Each of them has had their 5 minutes fame then disintegrated within the market. Kim was also a victim of selling these types of products as her brand was considered cheap and had very low market value. Therefore, KKW had to launch something new and different, as this was the second time round, and they decided to launch a perfume which was only available to buy online. Using the power of social media to promote heavily, it sold out within minutes of being launched. This was record breaking and it was down to several factors:
1) Kim Kardashian has a huge fan group, so with millions of followers they would be the first to buy anything she decides to sell.
2) She changed the way she packaged her product. She launched an ad clip on the social media channels, which showed that you must smash a chocolate heart to get to the product. This was highly popular with target group.
3) Without smelling the perfume, her product sold out within minutes and this was down to a successfully online advertising campaign using social media channels. Meaning she kept her costs low and her profits high.
After observing a number of creative campaign and being within the marketing business for over 12 years…there’s few things I’ve learned which will help brands stand out within a saturated market.
Firstly…keep your cost low, using social media channels to help promote your brand and product can help immensely.
Secondly…be different, be creative and be innovated...look at doing something different, which helps to highlight and strengthen your brand.
Thirdly… don’t feel afraid for your brand to lose control, especially on the social media channels. For example, the Iceland 2018 Christmas campaign, which got everyone talking for the wrong reasons, but again it got everyone talking and is the most successful food advert for this year.
Fourthly…really understand your brand and what it stands for. This will help you create a creative campaign which help encourage consumers to buy your products with confidences. The Kardashian products might not be made using high quality material, however, because they strongly believe in their brand and understand it, their consumers buy with confidence.
Finally, be passionate about what you sell. Most celebrities hook onto this idea and that’s how they make their millions.
So how do you create an innovated and creative campaign, which competes within a noisy market? Well, I would encourage all fellow marketers to produce an intense market research report on their competitors. This will help to identify a gap in the market. Once this gap is identified, then look at strengthening your brand by converting your brand weakness into opportunities first and then create an innovated campaign.