Is there anything more frustrating than justifying brand marketing to your boss? And yet, I’ll explain why brand is more important in the AI Era!

Maybe this post will even help your next budget request get approved.

Today I will cover:

• Brand as the AI override
• How AI erodes competitive advantage
• Brand as the Trust Anchor

Brand as AI override

AI is having a cataclysmic impact on every aspect of marketing, but none more important than search.

While a cottage industry emerges to figure out the new rules of SEO, perhaps your money might be best spent avoiding the SEO dilemma altogether.

Here’s what I mean.

Last year I had ChatGPT plan my five-day trip to Paris in every detail. It dutifully created an itinerary that included the best activities based on my budget and taste, every Metro stop I needed to reach my destinations, and restaurant recommendations that accommodated my need to be gluten-free.

It did a perfect job. I didn’t see any ads, branded content, or influencer recommendations. I just followed the plan exactly.

Except.

I decided to use Delta Airlines. I chose my hotels based on brand preferences. I stuck with my favorite brand names when it came to things like soft drinks, the clothes I packed and my favorite On Cloud sneakers.

My brand preferences are AI overrides. It doesn’t matter what AI thinks, I like what I like.

Figuring out the future of SEO and AI search will be critical for many brands. But don’t overlook an investment in brand to sidestep the never-ending battle over keywords.

AI eroding competitive advantage

How do you create a sustainable competitive advantage for your business?

• Special market insight?
• Do you react to market changes faster than competitors?
• Employees with elite levels of intelligence?
• Significant iteration and innovation?

All of these advantages can be neutralized by a competitor with AI. What do you have left? Your brand.

In my book Audacious: How to Win in an AI Marketing World, I feature a case study on Liquid Death, the fastest-growing beverage in the world — a five-year-old startup! Founder Mike Cessario said that brand is all he has as a competitive weapon:

“You’re only going to win with branding. You won’t win with some functional ingredients you can’t own. In that case, when you’re big enough, Coke or Pepsi or someone else will just produce the same thing—same ingredients, cheaper, more widely distributed, and then you lose. With water, there’s minimal, if any, functional difference between the brands. The difference is purely marketing. People want to walk around with this thing instead of that thing. None of the water brands were interesting. I did my homework. There was a huge opportunity to tell a different story.”

Brand is what’s left when the substantive differences between products disappear. When AI erodes competitive advantage, branding still creates distance between you and your competitors, paving the way for future growth.

Brand as the Trust Anchor

There’s a paradox emerging in the AI era: the more content AI produces, the less people trust what they see.

My brain hurts from trying to figure out what is real.

And, I’m not alone.

Consumers aren’t stupid. They feel it even when they can’t name it — a creeping sameness, a vague sense that the voice behind the content isn’t quite human, that the brand they’re engaging with is running on autopilot.

In this environment, trust becomes a luxury, and trust, at scale, is what a strong brand delivers.

But here’s the part most marketers miss: trust isn’t rational. You don’t earn it with better specifications or a more accurate FAQ page. Trust is emotional. It accumulates through consistent experience, shared values, and the feeling that a company sees you and stands for something you care about. That’s the domain of brand, and it’s precisely the domain where AI falls short.

Think about the brands you love. Chances are, your attachment has little to do with product superiority. It’s about how that brand makes you feel. Maybe it reflects who you are or who you want to be. Maybe it’s earned your trust through years of delivering on its promise. That emotional connection is essentially AI-proof because AI didn’t create it and AI can’t replicate it.

Liquid Death understood this intuitively. There is no functional difference between water brands. Mike Cessario built his entire competitive strategy on making people feel something when they held that black can. Rebellious. Irreverent. Part of something that rejected the corporate blandness of traditional beverage marketing.

The product is water. The value is identity. That’s pure brand.

I know the fight for your brand is never-ending. You’re constantly being pulled into the trenches of Facebook ads and proving the ROI of that Instagram post.

But try this. Ask your boss to talk about their favorite purchase of the past year. Tickets to a show? A dream car? A special gift for a friend?

Then ask them WHY they bought it. Was it because of SEO or an ad … or was it because of how the product made them feel? Because it was something that they love?

AI can optimize your media spend, personalize your messaging, and automate your content, but it can’t make someone love you.

It can’t build the loyalty that makes a customer choose you before they even start their search.

It can’t create the feeling that makes a person walk past a cheaper alternative because this is the brand that “gets them” or reminds them of the best memory.

That work is yours to do. And in a world where your competitors have access to the same AI tools, the same data, and the same efficiencies, brand may be the last remaining source of true competitive advantage.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post Three reasons why brand is more important in the AI Era appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Some mornings, you just want somebody to serve you breakfast.

And on those days, I would drive to Cracker Barrel. Despite the fluffy eggs and smoky sausage, I never felt like I quite belonged in this place of silver-haired “old timers” and boxed sets of The Beverly Hillbillies. But it was close to my house, and I was hungry.

Then a new place opened — First Watch. This restaurant was clean and bright. It offered healthy alternatives as well as creative new options such as lavender pancakes, breakfast cocktails, and the GenZ signature dish, avocado toast. There were no Patsy Cline CD collections. And they leave the coffee pot on the table!

I have not stepped foot inside a Cracker Barrel since.

Apparently, millions of other people made the same choice. Traffic to Cracker Barrel declined by 16% in the last five years.

Something had to change for this brand, and fast. It was time for a refresh … and you probably know what happened next. Chaos.

What can we learn from this fiasco?

I won’t re-hash the debate, but as this unfolded, I couldn’t help but wonder … could a social media brand backlash like this happen to me? Could it happen to you and your company?

What do we need to do so that our own marketing efforts aren’t Cracker Barreled?

Was the backlash even real?

The most visible and public display of the change was a re-branded logo that eliminated the “old timer.”

The new logo was part of an effort to reach younger customers with a sleeker, more contemporary look. But this conflicted with the company’s old-fashioned, down-home image.

I thought the design was soulless, but I also approach these things humbly. I assumed this logo was probably the result of millions of dollars of testing and development. I was not in the meetings. There had to be a customer-driven logic here.

The backlash over the new design was swift and intense. Social and mainstream media lit up with criticism, including commentary that the brand had gone “woke” (more on that later).

My first instinct was to feel defensive and support the marketing team. It seems like everything in America is politicized these days. But would real Cracker Barrel customers even notice a logo change?

Research shows that there is almost no correlation between true public opinion and social media sentiment — a small number of angry people with large audiences can hijack the conversation and make it seem bigger than it is. Are the online critics even Cracker Barrel customers?

According to Cyabra, a social analytics firm that specializes in detecting coordinated inauthentic behavior, 21% of the outrage was generated by fake accounts and artificial amplification.

These weren’t throwaway spam bots. They were sophisticated actors creating 916 coordinated content units that reached “more than 4.4 million potential views.”

Despite being artificial, Cyabra found a measurable real-world impact. The manufactured posts generated more than 3,000 genuine engagements, peaking August 22 — coinciding with a 10.5% drop in Cracker Barrel’s stock, much of it triggered by signals that never represented genuine community sentiment in the first place.

When the backlash came, I hoped Cracker Barrel would remain steadfast and see the thing through.

I recalled a similar outcry — the famous Nike brand partnership with Colin Kaepernick. Some people were so angry that they burned Nike gear in the streets! However, the company stood by its position, and the stock price soared within a week.

Cracker Barrel should stay the course, right?

How to avoid being Cracker Barreled

As the backlash intensified (including a tweet from Donald Trump), Cracker Barrel reversed its logo rebrand and returned to its original emblem.

Had a political agenda defeated a rational marketing strategy?

Does this mean we abandon solid business priorities when Twitter runs hot?

Could any well-meaning, professional marketer be Cracker Barreled?

We need to examine the entire story. Information began to seep out that there was inadequate research behind the rebranding. The company cut corners by moving to creative before a thorough market analysis.

They committed the great marketing sin: Creative before strategy.

Polling showed that three-quarters of Americans preferred the old design, with only 23% viewing the rebrand positively. That should have been evident in the research before the rebrand. But there was no research.

What was different about the Nike example? Nike had extensive research on the values and priorities of its customers. Aligning with the controversial quarterback made sense. The company knew there would be a backlash — and they accounted for it. But the people who complained were not their core customers. Nike held the course and accomplished a great marketing success.

The Cracker Barrel debacle serves as a poignant reminder of a fundamental lesson in Marketing 101: Strategy begins with research.

Commit to research

There are no guarantees in marketing. But if there’s one thing we can control, it’s whether our big bets are informed by reality or driven by guesswork and emotions.

Research isn’t just a line item in a budget. It’s marketing insurance. Cracker Barrel cut corners and went straight to creative. Nike didn’t.

And for a big bet like this, research has to be something more than polling or running a focus group. Great research is multi-layered:

• Quantitative data — surveys, polling, and yes, even new synthetic AI-generated panels that can test ideas in hours.
• Qualitative insight — focus groups, interviews, or just observing how real people interact with your product in the wild.
• Cultural listening — paying attention to the broader conversations, memes, and movements that shape how people interpret your brand.

Starbucks doesn’t guess on something as small as cup designs. They study cultural shifts related to sustainability, digital convenience, and identity before taking action.

Doritos ran a campaign stripping its logo from packaging/ads, betting people would recognize them anyway. They validated the idea through brand recognition studies and social listening before going public.

Chipotle monitored viral TikTok “menu hacks” (like the quesadilla + vinaigrette combo) and tested them in small pilots. Basically, this was free R&D that shaped product decisions.

Treat every decision — a new logo, a pricing change, a product feature — as a hypothesis. Test it before you scale it.

Why didn’t Cracker Barrel pilot the idea first? Brand arrogance.

Wokification

If Cracker Barrel had robust research that supported the rebranding decision, would it have made a difference? I’m not sure.

The lack of research was only part of the story.

Much of the social media backlash centered on the opinion that the Cracker Barrel CEO was a “woke woman.” When the attack takes that ugly, polarizing direction, reason and data don’t make a difference.

Christopher Rufo, a right-wing activist, posted on X: “It’s not about this particular restaurant chain — who cares — but about creating massive pressure against companies that are considering any move that might appear to be ‘wokification.’”

The logo commentary was unhinged. Sean Davis, the chief executive of The Federalist, a right-wing website, wrote, “Cracker Barrel’s CEO and leadership clearly hate the company’s customers and see their mission as re-educating them with the principles of gay race communism.”

In what universe is a boring logo and new menu items a manifesto for gay race communism?

And if you followed this story, you’ll know that the president eventually weighed in.

Even if your research is sound, will a board of directors support your rebrand when the president of the United States piles on with negative tweets?

The new layer of fear

It’s impossible to know, but I don’t think any amount of research could have prevented the political backlash. It was a slow news cycle. The activists smelled blood and needed to stay in the culture wars spotlight.

Cracker Barrel messed up, but it didn’t deserve that level of hate. An interesting thought experiment: Could the highly successful Nike campaign be successful in this political climate?

For me, this incident highlights a new layer of fear in the marketing world. In my recent book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World, I named “fear” as the biggest reason why most marketing is boring.

We play it safe and create boring work because of fear.

Fear of upsetting a customer.

Fear of a reaction from the legal department.

Fear of being ridiculed.

Fear of losing your job.

Fear of being the next Cracker Barrel.

We’re no longer in a comfortable world where a brand is what you say it is. The brand is defined by what others say it is. Including the social media rabble rousers. Including influencers trying to catch the wave of public opinion. Including the president.

The enigma is, “safe” is lousy marketing. “Safe” is ignorable.

The surest way to avoid being Cracker Barreled is to realize that your customers are the strategy. Start with research and, like Nike, make sure your leadership team is on board with the risks.

Research and organizational alignment don’t eliminate political risk, but they ensure you’re betting with data, reason, and a defensible strategy on your side.

Before you redesign, research. Before you publish, pilot. Before you fold, fight.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post How to keep from being Cracker Barreled appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Marketers love talking about trust.

We toss around phrases like “authenticity,” “emotional resonance,” and “earning customer loyalty” as if every purchase is a sacred relationship between buyer and brand.

But here’s the truth: I don’t trust most of the things I buy. I just buy them.

I don’t trust my gas station (I probably don’t even notice the brand). I don’t have a meaningful relationship with the person who stocked the bananas. I don’t need my new ladder to make me feel something.

It’s time to fill the tank with gas. I want a banana. I need a ladder. And then I want to be left alone. I don’t want branded content, net promoter surveys, or a brand community.

So what gives? Is all this “trust marketing” talk a bunch of fluff?

Not exactly.

But let’s stop pretending that every product, brand, or moment requires emotional depth. Because marketing isn’t a single tool. It’s a spectrum of strategies, and trust is just one part of the picture.

The Two Faces of Marketing

At its core, marketing is about creating customers. But there are two fundamentally different ways we do that:

1. Performance Marketing

This is transactional. It’s about showing up at the right time, solving a real need, and moving on.

Examples:

• Google Ads for “urgent care near me”
• A $5 coupon for a wrench at Home Depot
• Bananas on sale at the endcap at your grocery store

No trust. No loyalty. No emotional arc. Just commerce.

2. Brand Marketing

This is the long-term play. It’s about emotional preference, identity, and recall.

Examples:

• Buying Patagonia over another cheaper jacket because you believe in their environmental story
• Lining up for hours to buy a new iPhone
• Knowing that “Nike” feels different from “Puma” even if the shoes are basically the same

Here, trust does matter. So does consistency, storytelling, and human connection.

Most companies employ a blend of these two marketing strategies. Start-ups may emphasize performance marketing to fill their sales pipeline. More established brands will focus almost entirely on brand marketing to create distance between their products and the competition.

Many everyday products don’t need brand marketing. They just need to be visible, relevant, and frictionless.

And that’s okay.

The Myth of Universal Trust

When I buy petrol, a banana, or a ladder, it doesn’t mean marketing isn’t at work — it just means it’s not obvious.

Somewhere behind the scenes, someone:

• Decided which bananas get top shelf space
• Sets the pricing strategy
• Designed the end cap packaging
• Built a reliable supply chain to deliver fresh fruit to your store

That’s marketing. It’s not flashy. It’s not emotional. But it’s real.

When I was a B2B marketing leader, I spent most of my time in transportation, accounting, and customer service, seeking ways to serve our customers better and improve our profit margin. Not very Hollywood, but a challenging job that required insight and creativity. I never won a Cannes Lion Award, but I created significant value for my company.

A Better Definition of Marketing

One of the most popular definitions of marketing is “Marketing is earning trust at scale.”

That is so oversimplified. It more or less overlooks the classic “Four Ps” of marketing, which still work really well! It overlooks the fact that I was a highly successful B2B marketer by keeping my head buried in spreadsheets all day long!

Here’s a definition that I think works better:

Marketing is the process of creating customers—through visibility, relevance, or desire.

Twelve words. No fluff. It holds up for pencils and Porsches.

Sometimes, we create a customer by showing up at the perfect time.

Sometimes, we do it by building a story that lodges in the heart.

Sometimes, we just put a banana where people expect to find one.

Final Thought: Let’s Respect the Whole Spectrum

If you’re selling designer jewelry, storytelling matters.

If you’re selling windshield wipers, trust probably isn’t the hurdle — visibility is.

So let’s retire the idea that trust is the only game in town. Let’s build brands when it makes sense.
Let’s optimize transactions when that’s what the customer wants. Let’s remember that some people just want to buy their banana and go home.

Normally, I write about what’s next in the marketing world. But there is always SO MUCH confusion about the essence of marketing that I wanted to pause and ground the discussion. There is too much navel-gazing about storytelling, AI strategy, TikTok, and even trust. Marketing is so much more.

The best marketers know how to use every tool in their toolbox, at the right place, at the right time.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post Do I Really Need to Trust My Banana? What Most Marketers Get Wrong About “Trust” appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

A common click-bait technique is to write a blog post with “The death of …” in the title. I’ve learned to ignore these, but I’ve seen such an avalanche of headlines with some version of “the end of brands” that it was time to comment. It’s not just a sensationally ridiculous idea, it’s a dangerous one.

I’d like to insert some common sense into the dialogue and explain why brands are more important than ever.

What is a brand?

Let’s take it from the top. A brand is an emotional expectation.

Here’s a little exercise I use in my classes: If I told you Coca-Cola was building a hotel in your city, could you imagine what it looks like?

Your mind immediately starts painting: Red velvet everywhere. Curved, flowing architecture like a bottle. A fountain in the lobby bubbling with happiness. The air smells like vanilla and spice. Even the receptionist’s smile sparkles.

You can see it, can’t you? Feel it? Hear it?

That’s a brand.

It’s not about sugar water. It’s about an emotional promise that’s so strong, so consistent, you could architect an entire building around it.

You can count on this “Coke feeling” in any circumstance, in any place. The trust in this consistency keeps that company at the top of your mind and maybe even at the top of your heart, almost everywhere in the world.

It doesn’t appeal to everyone, especially if you are health-conscious, for example. But the brand means something to enough people to make a difference, and make a profit.

There is no utilitarian advantage of a pair of 20-year-old Nike Air Jordans selling for thousands of dollars in Japan. There are better shoes, even pricier shoes. But this shoe makes us FEEL something and that makes it rise above the fray.

Creating this emotional shorthand isn’t easy. It’s like composing a symphony that plays in people’s hearts every time we see a logo.

But here’s why it’s worth it: When everyone else is competing on features and price, you’re competing on feelings.

And feelings? They’re priceless.

There are a few reasons critics claim brand marketing is in decline (or dead!). Let’s knock those down:

1. The Customer is in Control

One reason critics cite for the diminishing importance of brand marketing is the shift in power between businesses and consumers. In the past, brands held sway over public perception because they controlled the narrative through traditional media channels. Today, the internet has democratized influence, empowering consumers to control the narrative through their opinions, reviews, and posts.

I’ve written about this extensively, most notably in the book Marketing Rebellion, which suggests that nearly all the power to drive sales is in the hands of the customer. This doesn’t mean brand marketing is dead. It means that we can’t count on advertising any more. The new imperative is to create value and experiences so insanely great that people can’t wait to spread the word.

The Real Job of Brand Marketing Today:

1. Stop trying to control the narrative (you can’t)
2. Start creating experiences worth talking about
3. Give your customers something so amazing they become volunteer marketers

The customer is the brand marketer. How do we help them do the job?

2. The Rise of Performance Marketing

Over the past 25 years, performance marketing (SEO, targeted ads, etc) gained prominence over traditional brand marketing.  Businesses love how advanced analytics tools can track and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns in real-time. By comparison, assigning sales attribution to brand-building activities can be difficult or impossible.

Performance marketing is vital to many companies, especially early-stage companies that need to fill a pipeline and generate customers fast. But arguably, in the end, the brand is all you have to differentiate yourself.

In my book Audacious: How to Win in an AI Marketing World, I feature a case study on Liquid Death, the fastest-growing beverage in the world — a five-year-old startup! Founder Mike Cessario said:

“You’re only going to win with branding. You won’t win with some functional ingredients you can’t own. In that case, when you’re big enough, Coke or Pepsi or someone else will just produce the same thing—same ingredients, cheaper, more widely distributed, and then you lose. With water, there’s minimal, if any, functional difference between the brands. The difference is purely marketing. People want to walk around with this thing instead of that thing. None of the water brands were interesting. I did my homework. There was a huge opportunity to tell a different story.”

A successful company can’t stick with only performance marketing in the long-term. Building brand awareness powers long-term growth. When consumers recognize and trust your brand, performance ads become more effective. Case studies show that smart brand marketing can slash Customer Acquistion Cost by up to 70%.

Branding creates distance between you and your competitors, paving the way for future growth.

3. The Commoditization of Products and Services

Some say that the commoditization of many industries is killing brands.

Perhaps the poster child for this argument is Temu. Temu is an eCommerce company that ships generally non-branded, low-cost commodity products directly from Chinese factories. It is a company that has exploited digital technology and eCommerce psychology to the maximum and pioneered a new way to serve bargain basement shoppers.

Here’s the thing about Temu: They’re not killing brands. They’re just showing us what happens when price is the only story you need to tell.

There has always been a segment of consumers who love to hunt for bargains instead of brands for economic necessity or perhaps just for fun. Temu has digitized the treasure hunt.

Side note: I predict that at some point, Temu will create its own simple, reliable branded products, just as Amazon did. So, brand would matter, even in the commodity sphere.

4. Categories?

A recent exchange on LinkedIn offered an idea that creating “categories” is more important than brands.

Here’s an example: Dude Wipes. This company created a better, environmentally-sensitive way to wipe your rear. I literally never thought I would use those words in a blog post, but there you go.

Let’s break this down, from the bottom-up (pun intended)!

Dude Wipes didn’t just create a category — “premium man-focused bathroom hygiene.” They built a brand that makes guys feel okay about buying fancy toilet paper.

But creating a category without building a brand is like inventing a new sport and not telling anyone about the rules. Being first means nothing if you’re also forgotten first. Your brilliant new category is a sitting duck if you don’t wrap it in brand awareness. Your competitors are watching, waiting, and probably have deeper pockets than you do.

Look at what happened to:

• Friendster (created social networking, Facebook owned it)
• Zune (an early device to carry songs in a small device)
• Palm Pilot (invented PDAs, now a trivia question)

They all created categories. They all got steamrolled by brands that did it better.

Category without brand is silly.

5. The Impact of Social Media Influencers

Social media has fundamentally altered the way consumers interact with brands. Influencers, who often have more authentic connections with their followers, have emerged as powerful voices in the marketplace. Rather than relying on brand-created content, consumers turn to influencers for recommendations, reviews, and inspiration.

Hey … it’s still a BRAND! Whether it’s a person or a product, you’re still creating an emotional expectation. And the influencer is a lot more effective if their audience has heard of the brand!

Branding Forever

There is simply no rational argument for the declining importance of brand marketing. In fact, it is more important than ever, especially in an AI world. Here are a few quick takes:

• Branding alone creates differentiation in a crowded marketplace (like Liquid Death!)
• Brands are beacons of trust in a world of deep fakes and misinformation
• Branding isn’t replaced by “categories” or performance marketing. It enhances these initiatives.
• Loyalty to a brand enables consumer brand advocacy and influencer marketing.
• Brands and brand stories resonate across generations.
• In times of crisis, a well-established brand is better positioned to weather the storm.
• Brand trust and recognition is the fuel of international expansion.

In a world where anyone can make anything, brands are the difference between:

• Trust and uncertainty
• Loyalty and indifference
• Premium prices and commodity status

Declaring the death of brands isn’t just wrong — it’s like declaring the death of trust, loyalty, and human connection.

Need a keynote speaker about the future of marketing? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post The end of brands, or the end of common sense? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Disney Company, arguably the world’s greatest brand. Most lists put them in an elite category that includes Apple and Coca-Cola.

So this is a good excuse to celebrate the magic of this amazing company and explore this idea — what does it take to be among the world’s greatest brands? Is this something you could achieve?

The basics of the brand

In my book Belonging to the Brand, consultant Evelyn Starr defines a brand as: “The expectation of what you will get when you interact with an entity based on prior experiences with, and impressions of, that entity.”

Ideally, we would like that expectation and emotion to be expressed as trust, respect, and maybe even love.

Branding is critically important in a world overrun with choices. So the emotion attached to a brand creates trust and meaning. It helps create a signal above the noise.

It’s not easy to achieve, but I’ll show today that it’s not all about the money.

So much money, so little brand

To demonstrate the power of the emotional attachment to a brand, let’s do a little exercise.

Imagine that Disney built a hotel in your city. Can you imagine what it would look like? Can you imagine what it would feel like the moment you stepped through the doors? What would you see? What would you hear and smell?

Let’s imagine that same exercise for great brands like Apple, Coca-Cola, Nike, or Mercedes Benz. Can you imagine what their hotels would be like?

Now, I want you to imagine a hotel by United Airlines. How about your cellphone data provider like Verizon? Or your local bank?

They’re all spending a lot of money on marketing. But can you see anything if you think of their hotel? Do you feel anything? Maybe high prices and disappointment!

That is the real idea behind a brand. It creates a distinct feeling you expect to experience — everywhere, any time.

How would Facebook or Twitter (X!) be different if they were run by Disney? What if Disney ran a university? A car wash? The same feeling would be everywhere. And that is the unmissable, compelling power of brand marketing.

The brand payoff for Disney

The greatest brands have so much goodwill with customers that they are usually willing to overlook negative experiences and go to great lengths to defend them when there are problems. In other words, it’s a bit of a cult. There is certainly a cult of Apple. A cult of Coca-Cola. And Disney may have the biggest cult of all.

A recent article in The New York Times was titled “It’s Not Enough to Love Disney. They Want to Live Disney.” It describes a growing number of people who surround themselves with the Disney feeling through their home décor.

Part of Disney’s décor’s prevalence is its success on social media. On TikTok, for example, the hashtag “Disney home décor” has more than 42 million views and “Disney home” has over 275 million. One fan grew her Instagram following of more than 150,000 by sharing photos and videos of her Disney rooms and D.I.Y. projects.

One of my friends recently told me about going to a Disney-themed wedding. In these examples, the brand achieves such a strong connection it has become part of the fabric of their customers’ lives.

Can anybody create a meaningful brand?

That’s a hard question, but I usually answer this with one word: YETI.

About seven years ago, I noticed people wearing hats and shirts that said YETI. Wait a minute — isn’t that an ice cooler? Indeed.

Today, YETI is one of the fastest-growing consumer product companies, built almost entirely on word-of-mouth marketing. YETI aligned itself with influencers who spread the word that YETI is a rugged answer to life outdoors.

This was a mature and boring commodity category shaken up by a brand that had meaning. If you see YETI on any product, you know it is durable enough to hold up to anything.

YETI has a feeling and meaning that powerfully connects to the lives of their customers. They blew their category apart with a brand strategy.

How you can match the greatest brand

You don’t need to spend millions of dollars on brand marketing over a hundred years like Disney to forge an emotional connection with your customers.

In my hometown of Knoxville, TN, we have a little ice cream shop that quickly established itself as a community favorite brand.

Cruze Farm was established in 1980 when Earl and Cheri Cruze married. Earl was a fourth-generation dairy farmer dreaming of bottling milk with his name on it; Cheri was a 29-year-old entrepreneur who had bigger ideas.

The farm sold milk to local businesses and eventually experimented with ice cream.

After their daughter Colleen graduated from the University of Tennessee, she joined to help Cruze Farm grow by finding ways to sell surplus milk the farm produced. She experimented with a food truck at Farmer’s Markets and the name started to spread.

In 2016, Colleen and her husband Manjit opened the first Cruze Farm ice cream store pop-up, and within a year they had a permanent location. Today, they operate a number of stores in East Tennessee and are growing fast. Their downtown location normally has a line out the door while an ice cream chain store across the street is usually empty.

The difference is the brand. Cruze Farms tells its family story and establishes the local connection through visual prompts in its stories and social media accounts.

The goal of the little company is to link their family history to the community and become part of the fabric of life in our city.

Let’s break down this photo (featured on the company website) as a case study in brand genius on a budget.

Colleen has an MBA and this family runs a successful business. But there is nothing buttoned-down and corporate about this photo. What is the feeling expressed very intentionally by this scene? Family. Connection. Roots to tradition. No pretense (bare feet, chipped paint, old chair), old-fashioned wholesomeness (checkered dresses, overalls).

Their hometown of Knoxville is proudly known as The Scruffy City — no pretense, wholesome fun. In that context, isn’t this photo a perfect depiction of a deeply-rooted community brand?

Think about the careful thought that usually goes into a family photo. Would you pick a scenario where you’re not wearing shoes? Would you pose in front of the part of your house that needs a paint touch-up? Probably not. But this photo exudes the emotional expectation associated with this family business.

Everything about their store has the same friendly, wholesome feel, expressed here through iconic checkered uniforms:

Look at the joy in this photo. Could it have come from Disney? Yes, but it came from Cruze Farm, a family-oriented emotion that comes through consistently on every company post … without breaking the bank.

Cruze Farm spreads joy through ice cream. The interior of the store has an old-fashioned soda fountain feel to it, including hand-written signs, classic ice cream treats, and flavors that reflect local tastes. This brand value is communicated consistently across social media, interactions with employees, and anywhere you experience the name.

This is a family business that has a FEEL to it. It creates a consistent expectation of joy and fun and deep community connection. The chain store across the street … just sells ice cream. How will they compete? Discounts and coupons. Ugh.

Creating brand meaning is accessible to almost any business. If you can create meaning behind a commodity product like ice cream or ice coolers, you can probably do it for your business!

So cheers to Disney and the value of brand marketing. Thanks for being the Happiest Place on Earth for 100 years!

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

Top illustration and YETI image courtesy Unsplash.com

The post Learning From 100 Years of the World’s Greatest Brand appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Many years ago I had the opportunity to work alongside Sergio Zyman, the former Coca-Cola CMO and one of the most visionary executives of his generation. A colleague once asked him, “Sergio, how many marketing strategies should you have?” Without missing a beat, he said, “How many customers do you have?”

While this might seem like a whimsical or even flippant response, there is a deep truth here. A company needs to stratify its messages to the Nth degree, to personalize for individuals as much as the budget can afford.

It dawned on me that Sergio’s wish has come true, whether we know it or not. Every customer is receiving a personalized message about your company, and it has little or nothing to do with your marketing efforts. Everyone is forging their own brand reality. Let’s find out why …

The personalized brand reality

I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that most of the human race no longer has any shared reality.

Thirty years ago, we would get our news and information from one or two daily newspapers, three network television stations, a couple of family magazine subscriptions, and maybe the radio during our commute to work.

So, there was a limited and common base of understanding. You might not agree with your neighbor, but at least you were debating the same facts that you gleaned from the evening news.

Today, through the infinite opportunity of the internet, we surround ourselves with whatever news and information supports our peculiar worldview.

There are endless resources that cater to every nuanced political and philosophical position. You can surround yourself with people and news sources that will logically support that the world is flat or that a man never landed on the moon.

A recent poll found that 15 percent of Americans believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory that the levers of government power are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles. That number is larger than the membership of the Protestant church in America. That sort of bizarro world reality could only occur now, in a world of self-selected internet news.

People in these reality bubbles will think you’re crazy if you don’t share their world view because everyone they know, and everything they read supports their perspective. How can you be so dense?

The internet has become a scaffolding that holds an individually-created reality in place.

This also extends to feelings and beliefs about products and companies.

Whether you believe that the Denver Airport is the headquarters for a secret society plotting to take over the world, that Coke can dissolve a human tooth, Elon Musk is an alien, or that the COVID vaccine injects trackable microchips under your skin, you can immerse yourself in the right media to support whatever you want to believe.

It’s an interesting dilemma from a business standpoint. People surround themselves with supporting media and there’s probably nothing you can do to change their self-selected brand reality!

The Google assist

Our self-induced personal brand reality is supported and enhanced by the bubbles we’re kept in by Google, Facebook, and other search algorithms.

If you and I searched for “best luxury automobiles,” the result could be quite different for both of us, even if we’re using the same terms. The results can be impacted by:

• Where we live
• Our past search history
• Local advertisers
• What our friends search for

… to name a few.

One time, my wife was searching for a very specific type of shirt for me. I started seeing ads for that obscure shirt in my own news feed … although I had never searched for it! The algorithms knew we were connected and responded accordingly. I’m sure you have your own creepy examples of how these snippets of code hold our own personal realities in place!

The implications

If you think through the implications of these ideas, it’s easy to see that Sergio’s wish has come true, whether we like it or not. Our online reality has been fractured in millions of ways so that over time, our individual online experience conforms to our views and expectations. We are all surrounded by semi-permeable, or perhaps impermeable, brand bubbles.

In 2020, the average American spent nearly eight hours a day on the internet. Arguably, the internet is our reality.

I wonder if marketing strategy today is really about creating a brand story about a product, or is it finding a creative way to lure people out of their bubbles … or keeping them in one?

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of several best-selling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Illustration courtesy of Unsplash.com

The post How every customer creates their own brand reality appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I was asked this question during a meeting of young marketing professionals recently: What is the difference between marketing versus branding?

A deceptively simple question but an important one and I thought I would answer this today.

Let’s start with the basics and advice from an old friend.

What is marketing?

Marketing is such a rich topic. But let’s avoid navel-gazing and keep our definition simple.

The most important mentor in my professional life was Peter Drucker, the best-known management consultant in history (and also the most brilliant person I have ever known!). Here is his iconic quote about marketing:

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

This is just so beautiful in its simple elegance. At its highest level, marketing is about creating and keeping customers. 

Another great influence on me is Dr. Philip Kotler.

He expounds on the basic idea presented by Dr. Drucker:

“Marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit.  Marketing identifies unfulfilled needs and desires. It defines, measures and quantifies the size of the identified market and the profit potential. It pinpoints which segments the company is capable of serving best and it designs and promotes the appropriate products and services.

“The most important concepts of marketing are segmentation, targeting, positioning, needs, wants, demand, offerings, brands, value and satisfaction, exchange, transactions, relationships and networks, marketing channels, supply chain, competition, the marketing environment, and marketing programs.”

We see from Fr. Kotler that is marketing is A LOT … even down to the supply chain. Marketing is certainly much more than Facebook Likes, isn’t it?

But here we see the term “brands” pop up. Dr. Kotler shows us that branding is part of the subset of the wider world of marketing responsibilities. So what is branding all about?

What is branding?

In my speeches, I often describe branding as the process of building and sustaining an emotional link to your customers.

When somebody mentions your company or your brand, what comes to mind? At the highest level this is your brand … what people think of you.

Here’s a little experiment to make the idea of “brand” real to you.

I recently gave a talk in Poland and asked, “when you think of Coca-Cola, what comes to mind?” Immediately, somebody in the audience shouted “polar bears!”

Wow. Even in Poland, Coke means polar bears!

It doesn’t mean brown sugar water.

It doesn’t mean a product that is bad for your health.

It doesn’t mean mountains of plastic packaging waste.

Coca-cola could mean all of those things, but it doesn’t. Coke is this:

Coca-cola isn’t just a soft drink. It’s a feeling. What do you feel when you see this familiar polar bear image? Maybe it’s

• Warmth
• Family
• Happiness
• Fun
• Holidays

And, as Peter Drucker said, this IS the distinguishing function of the business. Exactly! This brand feeling is what makes Coke different than any other product in its category. It’s not promising to be the cheapest soft drink or even the best soft drink. But it provides a certain strong, positive feeling.

Most important, it has been able to sustain that feeling for decades and — through  branding — remain relevant across the generations.That’s what make Coke magical from a marketing perspective.

Marketing versus Branding

I recently wrote about how the role of marketing and branding is evolving. In the earliest days, a brand was primarily what was established through persistent advertising. Today, an idea about your brand could occur at any customer touchpoint. Even a single tweet can impact your brand!

So everything you do, and everything you don’t do, can influence what people think of you and your brand. That’s why increasingly, the role of the CMO is being reimagined as the person responsible for the total customer experience.

I realize that some may see my definitions today as overly-simplistic, but I think if you had to explain marketing versus branding to somebody in five minutes, this would do the job!

Marketing is the distinguishing function of the business. And endlessly fascinating.

I don’t think I could have ever selected a more interesting career.

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

The post What’s the difference between marketing versus branding? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

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I dwell in the future. At least my brain does. So there is nothing I like more than thinking through the marketing megatrends coming next!

It’s become a sort of tradition on The Marketing Companion to spend a little time on marketing megatrends and Brooke Sellas and I cover some provocative ideas on the new show.

Here are a few of the big ideas we talk about in this unmissable episode!

Culture in, brand out

It used to be that companies would develop their brand positionings largely through introspection — by identifying what they saw as the defining attributes and benefits of their brand, then pushing that version on to the market. They operated as though they were in complete control.

Now, the idea of building brands in such an insular manner feels archaic. Today, brands need to look more actively and purposefully at the culture buzzing around them — in entertainment, in fashion, in news, on social media—and use that awareness to inform how they should best position and integrate themselves into the world at that moment.

This is a more powerful form of branding because by engaging with culture more directly, brands in effect can become a part of that culture, thereby deepening their relevance and connection with customers. And that has never been more prescient or necessary.

In the show, I discuss how this unusual trend is showing up at Pepsi and other places.

I’m not sure I have completely wrapped my head around this one. Listen to the show and let me know what you think.

CMO = CXO

Although Customer Experience is nothing new, making it the centerpiece of the marketing leadership role is. In 2020 and beyond, this will be the biggest driver of CMO success.

Marketers now have access to tools that can easily improve the overall customer experience. These tools should be used to help marketers focus on areas where they can undoubtedly improve customer experiences, like …

• Personalized support to customers
• Increasing customer engagement & loyalty
• Producing content that solves customers’ problems

The era of marketing navel-gazing

Marketers are under attack and, perhaps this is a response to the fact that we’ve entered a new era of fluffy self-importance where brand “meaning and purpose” define the role.

In this podcast episode, I provide an example of ridiculous marketing self-puffery.

Look, most people do NOT want a relationship with your brand. They just want to be left alone. So let’s get real and look at the marketing realities of our day.

An AI + Human Partnership

You’re probably expecting artificial intelligence to show up on a list of marketing megatrends, and with good reason. It’s time to move beyond AI as the “trend” and start thinking about the ways in which it can make us better, more data-driven marketers and business leaders.

Moving forward, focus on the areas where AI can help teams collaborate better. For us, that has meant delivering solutions to our clients in areas around …

• Product development
• Audience and trend analysis
• Content development
• Identifying influencers

AI, paired with super-smart humans, can both drive revenue and reduce costs. And since many tools already leverage some form of AI, the “trend” should be way past the technologies themselves and instead be focusing on business outcomes.

Nationalism: The most unusual of marketing megatrends!

Nationalism is not just a political trend. It might end up being among most important marketing megatrends of the next 10 years. Maybe on the surface, this doesn’t make sense. But consider:

• U.S. tech giants are being forced to pull out of India amid a wave of nationalism
• Russia is developing an independent internet that can be isolated from the rest of the world
• EU leaders in German and France are looking for ways to stem American influence via ubiquitous tech platforms
• Pakistan, India, and other countries routinely flick the internet on and off in the midst of crisis.
• Brexit will probably lead to more insular internet solutions in the UK

At one time, the internet held promise to be the great equalizer where any company could digitally connect with any market, but that is no longer the case.

Customer Care replaces customer service

If you’re not yet clear on what Customer Care is, think of it this way: Customer Service is reactive in that it serves one customer at a time and is triggered when the customer comes to the brand with a question or complaint. Customer Care is proactive; it uses human-centered AI to look for things like sentiment around branded keywords and topics and allows marketers to join the conversation for better Customer Care (even before a customer is a customer).

A true Customer Care strategy must also include immediacy. This means when a potential customer or customer reaches out with a question or complaint, they now expect an immediate answer (to every question, anytime, on any channel they choose).

To put it in perspective, a recent Google report underscored how “best” and “right now” mobile searches have grown by over 125%, while “where to buy” and “near me” mobile searches have grown by over 200%.

This is certainly an idea worthy of the marketing megatrends list!

Now I know this is hard to believe, but this post is only scratching the surface of what cover in the unusual marketing megatrends show!

You won’t want to miss this!

Click here to dive into Episode 178

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Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

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I came across this charming ad from Coca-Cola. It’s from 1890. It’s obviously from another era, but the intent behind the brand is the same — Coke is trying to evoke an emotion of youthful vigor and sophistication … all at a good price.

Some things never change, but mostly they do. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. How has the idea of “brand” evolved over the decades?

What did “brand” mean in the 1800s? 1900s? The “Mad Man” days … versus what is happening now? Are some fundamentals of branding foundational and evergreen, or is the idea of “the brand” shifting toward something new?

I have some of my own ideas about this, but I polled some of my smart friends and they came through for me with some great perspectives. Let’s get into this fascinating debate.

Branding is more important than ever

I first started studying this question of brand evolution in 2014 as I was writing The Content Code. In this book I envisioned a new content marketing approach required by a world filled with far too much content. One conclusion: Branding in the modern world is more important than ever.

Content marketing today is a war for attention. If you already have some brand recognition, and maybe even an emotional response to a certain brand, you have an advantage in winning the war.

But how we gain that attention and sustain that meaningful emotion is changing dramatically, as my friends tell us:

Evelyn Starr, CEO and Founder E. Starr Associates

Branding is not the same today. There has been a huge shift in the idea of a brand, from a manufactured image to a collection of experiences. It is the reason companies are now focused on customer experience. The most forward-thinking companies realize that employee experience makes the customer experience. Progressive CEOs I have interviewed have literally said “my employees are 98% of our brand.”

In the past, companies could influence their brand image by tapping the dominant media of the time — TV, radio, print. But they were never really in control, which is why when social media came along things unraveled so fast.

Samantha Stone, Founder and CEO Marketing Advisory Network

The goal of a brand in the Mad Men era was to sell something. Today, our primary goal remains to sell something. However, the most durable brands also have a goal to stand for something — not only to their customers but for their team.

Carlos Oramas, CEO GEMS Group

The work of the Mad Men time aimed at having people aspire to belong to the brand, whereas today brands aim to belong to the people.

Chad Illa-Petersen, Founder Social Chadvisor

An old-school definition of brand: “a particular identity or image regarded as an asset.”

This is still the case. The identities, images that represent the “brand” may have changed, but “the brand” is still your biggest asset. Whether that’s is people, causes, quality, or a tiger on a cereal box, your brand is still the thing that makes you grrrreat

Shannah Haley, Director of Communications, City of Plano

Marketing still touches on the issue of creating attention (building awareness), but it’s much more about creating experiences (including the issues of FOMO and belonging) that lead to trust.

Gene Petrov, CEO Petrov LMC

The highest aim of a brand should be to serve people not necessarily sell. I think we are moving closer to that ideal, but it is obviously still a work in progress.

Jeff Thomas, President 30dps

Branding is still about being noticed and recognized, but it’s so much more about THEM (the customers) instead of US (the marketer). I still run into marketers who think that branding is all about self (who WE are as a company). While brands must be authentic (and transparent) to succeed, if the brand isn’t first and foremost about THEM, I believe they are ultimately doomed to failure.

Tyler Lessard, VP Marketing Vidyard

It feels like we’ve moved from a “one-dimensional” world of brand which was flat and static (Mad Men advertising, one way push), to a two-dimensional world of brand that is two-way and real-time (social media). We’re on the cusp of the “3D” brand where it’s a living organism. How it acts and behaves is just just as important as what it says.

Nir Betan, COO at StudeoHQ

The erosion of centralized control is one of the biggest paradigm shifts in branding today and is likely to only accelerate.

My own view

• Many aspects of branding are the same … and always will be. The “Four Ps” are still solid – Place, Product, Promotion, and Price all matter, all communicate. I would add a fifth P in some cases – Purpose, which is quite different form the MadMen days.
• Great branding requires that you connect some emotion to your product that compels a customer to buy.
• Creating a long-lasting brand image — like Disney, Nike, or American Express — is important. But increasingly, branding is in-the-moment as consumers are always-on, always discovering, always reacting to the pulse of the culture. Example: Budweiser created a campaign in 12 hours based on a single strange event at a baseball game.
• A brand used to be about changing a consumer. Today, it is more about respecting a consumer’s ability to make up their own mind and coming alongside them.
• A brand used to be what we told you. Today, a brand is what consumers tell each other. Marketing today is about earning a place in that conversation. The customer is the marketer. How do we help them do that job?

What would you add?

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

The post Is the idea of “brand” constant or evolving? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

By Brooke B. Sellas, {grow} Contributing Columnist

I’m a sucker for good marketing slogans. And a jingle! Don’t even get me started on catchy jingles.

However, bad marketing slogans make me cringe. Who approves this stuff?!

Apartments.com started me on this ranty rage, and well, I just couldn’t stop there.

Here are three marketing slogans I’d change ASAP!

Apartments.Com

I adore Jeff Goldblum. I actually really like him in the quirky Apartments.com commercials.

But I hate their marketing slogan.

“Change Your Apartment, Change The World.”

Maybe it’s because I used to work in real estate and sold millions of dollars of apartments for my multi-housing developer.

I realize it’s tongue-in-cheek humor they’re using here. But it would be so much better if it were, “Change Apartments, Change YOUR World.” Or, “Change Your Apartment, Change Your World.”

Because that’s what happens when you move into a new place. I moved a zillion times when I worked in the multi-family world. From one-bedrooms to two-story penthouses, I tried them all on for size.

And it wasn’t world-changing, but it certainly changed MY world. Even when I moved to a different unit in the same complex, my world shifted a bit because there are new neighbors, with new habits, and new scenes that play out during your routine.

Plus, it’s just more personal. It’s speaking directly to someone versus using that humor to play out through the end.

Be humorous. I like that. But make it about me! Be customer-centric.

Time Warner

Time Warner’s “Better Guarantee” has them slapping “Enjoy Better” on most of their sites.

Enjoy better? Enjoy what better? Terrible TV service that has one-star ratings and some of the lowest marks?

The “Enjoy Better” marketing slogan is seemingly a trend or theme with brand slogans: trying way too hard to be aspirational.

What’s up with verbs next to an indefinite pronoun? Has anyone else noticed this trend?

Plus, it just sounds wrong. Even when they’ve gone and added places in, like, “Enjoy HOME Better” I still don’t like it.

I’d just take the top sentence in their offer and make that the marketing slogan.

“More of what you love, online.”

Or …

“More of what you love, OnDemand.”

Victoria’s Secret

I’m gonna be spiteful here and say I’m glad this company is in trouble. We all know the truth when it comes to bodies and this mega lingerie brand: unrealistic body image.

Do a quick image search and you’ll see stick-thin models in every picture.

So a few years ago when they came out with their “The Perfect Body” campaign, people were outraged. They got so much backlash that they ended up changing the campaign to, “A Body For Every Body.”

Which is what I want to pick on today. Are they selling bodies?! Or lingerie?

It literally makes no sense.

My simple but honest change makes way more sense for this “perfect” body brand.

“A Body For Every (Under Size 2) Body.”

Or …

“Perfect lingere for perfectly skinny people.”

Marketing Slogans Need Meaning

Above all, you really have to think about your audience when crafting a marketing slogan that will last.

Other tips …

• Differentiate
• Be specific (“enjoy better” could be any brand or thing!)
• Make it last
• KISS (keep it short & simple)

Not to toot my own horn, but I love how our slogan at B Squared Media, “Think Conversation, Not Campaign” has carried us through the last seven years.

Yes, we create campaigns. But we like to focus on human-centered marketing and I think our slogan represents that beautifully.

What marketing slogans do you detest? Let me know in the comments section below!

Brooke B. Sellas is the CEO & Founder of B Squared Media, an award-winning done-for-you social media management and advertising agency. Recently, she joined Mark Schaefer as the Co-host of the Marketing Companion Podcast. Brooke’s marketing mantra is “Think Conversation, Not Campaign” so be sure to give her a shout on Twitter!

The post Three Marketing Slogans I’d Change For The Better appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.