We’ve all seen it–and some of us have done it. Created marketing or advertising that gratifies our sense of Our Brand (or perhaps our own value), but it has no value to the people we serve, namely our customers. In other words, brandstanding.
grandstanding: conducting oneself or performing showily or ostentatiously in an attempt to impress onlookers. –Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged Edition
brandstanding: engaging in ego-driven marketing that is of no real value to your customers or prospects. –Tracy Carlson, Founder, Right-Brain Brands
I’ll be calling out examples of egregious brandstanding from time to time. Here’s a sample, for starters: what it was, and what it could have been.
A tantalizing surprise?
Catching up on a stack of magazines recently, I flipped through the September issue (okay, it’s been awhile) of More magazine and went through my ritual, ripping out all the inserts. It’s usually standard fare: a mix of perfume samples, coupons and tipped-in subscription cards.
This time there was something mysterious: an extra-thick turquoise insert from Vanity Fair lingerie. Tiffany blue–and intriguing! Delicacy was required to remove it from its backing and pull open the paper tab. Once open, it was still mysterious.
Finally I figured it out: It was a complex pop-up photo diorama of women in lingerie from different decades. The tagline: Elegance evolves.
Um, now what?
Hmm…What exactly am I supposed to do with this little diorama besides toss it and its turquoise debris into recycling?
Oh right, I forgot. I’m supposed to marvel at the Vanity Fair brand and how It’s Been There Over Time, creating elegance. Elegance that has Evolved!
Brandstanding strikes again
Thunk. Can’t you just hear the discussions between all the players: the client, agency and ad rep? Lofty talk about brand image and how to bring the tagline to life…
I’m sure they had good intentions. Vanity Fair is a perfectly decent, ordinary brand of lingerie sold in perfectly decent, ordinary stores. It can feel tough to create much meaning or excitement with those ingredients. But in their efforts to do something for the brand, they got caught up in their own little Brandland bubble. Lost in a world of abstractions, they forgot completely about the folk who buy mainstream bras, slips and panties. (Need I add: the people who pay their salaries?)
The impact…
How much did this little effort cost? Based on the rate card in the media kit, it was probably well over $150K, just for this one magazine alone. All to create a brief experience among More subscribers across the land—mostly of annoyance.
Beyond the environmental cost (and the risk of irritating those who hate waste, surely a growing number), there’s also the opportunity cost. What else could they have done with that money?
The alternatives
For starters, they could have thought more imaginatively. With the theme of Elegance Evolves, why not sponsor a series of tie-ins around historic fashions? Imagine what a handful of local museums or historical societies could do with a generous donation and some marketing support. Imagine the the potential for local visibility with a well-crafted program: involving retailers and local media, and learning for possible scaling later.
Or here’s another idea: a contest with family photos of women in their finery across generations, getting all that good social media stuff working. In short, plenty of options besides a one-shot ho-hum, at best.
I’m not anti-insert. In fact, I admire ones done with imagination. The same magazine had a terrific multi-page insert for Target’s Merona brand. It was fun and interactive: with the same model in a different outfit on each page, it was perforated across the middle, so you could mix and match tops and bottoms from different pages. It was clever, fun, with a $5 coupon to boot. Smart marketing for sure.
Brandstanding Hall of Shame?
I welcome your submissions for future brandstanding spotlights! Sadly, I suspect we’ll never run out of examples, but let’s have some fun along the way.
