Building brand awareness is fundamental if a brand is to be front of mind of consumers considering purchase. The greater their awareness the greater the chance of a brand dominating any market.
When looking at any major brand there is always stiff competition, this means the pool of potential consumers is often diluted and the risk of losing existing consumers is higher. To maintain dominance brands need to not only make sure their brand is front of mind but also reach out to existing and potential consumers in a more strategic way.
If we look at Red Bull as an example, they gained massive brand awareness through simply using guerrilla marketing techniques. They placed their product in the hands of the influential underground urban sports star. This made Red Bull a credible brand within the target demographic 18 to 34 year-old-males. By linking the product to a person’s lifestyle and passions Red Bull gained an emotional connection with their audience thus tying them into the brand and its values. Red Bull has now moved on to gaining mass awareness and loyalty illustrated in the Dragonfly Effect Model.
From this we take a valuable lesson that strong brand awareness isn’t always created through traditional advertising such as TV and Out Of Home; just because your brand appears everywhere doesn’t mean it’s being noticed or, more importantly, influencing your target audience.
Planning and executing a campaign in a focused and tactical manner delivers the key brand messages in a more direct and succinct way, meaning the consumer/potential consumer develops emotional brand connections, brand/product education and brand loyalty. The output of this is customers become “brand advocates”, flying the flag and spreading brand awareness organically increasing the word dominance within potential pool of consumers.
Written by: Tim Davey, Account Manager, AmbientWW
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