Is Madison Avenue Guilty of the Same Hubris as Wall Street?
The Fall of 2008. Generations from now will remember it as the fall of the financial markets and a crucial turning point in global economics. So many slick, opportunistic decisions made by very clever financiers over the past decade are coming back to bite us… decisions laced with so much greed… stimulated by so little control and oversight. Unbridled opportunism has caught up with Wall Street—and us.
Are we on the brink of the same type of meltdown in branding?
Just as in the financial markets, branding has become slick and sophisticated over the past decade. A casual walk down the business book aisle at Barnes & Noble will attest to that. Dozens upon dozens of branding books are packed tightly together competing for attention. Marketers rush to them looking for the next big idea in manipulating their brands to create ever-higher levels of customer addiction.
Have emotion-based brand connections become marketing’s subprime mortgages? Have customer relationship marketing (CRM) and “cult branding” schemes become a marketer’s equivalent of credit default swaps? Have we resorted to cheap brand value builders while ignoring the true value the customer receives from using our products?
I’ve criss-crossed the United States, Canada, Eastern Europe and the Middle East over the past few years talking to hundreds of business owners and marketing professionals. And I hear a consistent strain of thought: “How can I improve how I talk about my brand?” But, what I’m hearing very little of is, “How can I improve the core product and service my brand represents?”
What I mean by this… our profession seems more concerned with how well we’re communicating our brands than making our brands stand for better products/services that meet the needs/desires of consumers better. It’s an artificial inflation of brand value at the expense of product value.
Should we spend more energy coming up with better products than better tag lines? Should we be focusing more of our attention on true consumer problems than on clever online interactive tools? Should we invest more in product research and development than in researching brand equity scores?
Do I have an answer? Unfortunately, not entirely yet. But I’m working on it. Diligently. Even so, the question still begs to be asked. And a peer dialogue needs to result. So, thoughtful marketer, what are you seeing out there?