Rethinking the Brand ROI
Cultural influence is the new consideration
Monetizing brand marketing is a challenge of measurement. We are not sure how to connect brand marketing with financial results, so we deem it immeasurable. (By the same token, in the false positives scenario, easily measurable things, like performance marketing, can be financially detrimental).
A few metrics used by companies for assessing success of brand marketing come from the previous media and cultural era. A connection between awareness, advocacy, or affinity and sales was once indicated by, for example, TV viewership or newspaper circulation. This isn’t the case anymore, yet the same metrics are still around.
To measure brand marketing, we need to go back to the role that brand marketing has in the first place.
Brand marketing was invented to create a link between a company and culture. It conveys the brand identity that transcends what a company sells. In contributes to cultural conversation through stories about humans, their aspirations, and their life.
Brand marketing is the strategy of cultural influence. Brands used to influence mainstream culture through their advertising on mass media like TV, print, billboards, or public relations. Today, they influence culture through the cultural products they create: content, merchandising, events, aesthetics, experiences, archives, history, entertainment, fandom. These cultural products are directed to subcultures, taste communities, and consumer niches. Through these cultural products, brands tell their story.
Cultural products, and by proxy, the brand story, are amplified through media. Media amplification inserts a brand’s cultural products in variety of cultural contexts. In some of these contexts, a brand’s cultural products will flourish; in others, they won’t get noticed. Job of the cultural influence strategy is to quickly assess the two: it is a calculated business and brand test, where creative executions live or die in the real world.
Media amplification also targets a variety of audiences: not just a brand’s current and prospective customers, but also cultural creators, commentators, observes, critics, and curators. All of these groups have a role in sharing and adoption of cultural products. They are critical for their potential success, and consequently, for the brand desirability and affinity.
Cultural products and media amplification always go together. Without media amplification, cultural products will stay niche; without cultural products, media is blindly increasing click-through rates without augmenting the brand’s influence with its desired audiences.
Through cultural influence, companies build their brands and grow their business. Brands and businesses with significant cultural influence command higher prices, capture greater market share, avoid commodification, maintain advantage over competition, and enjoy customer loyalty.
There is a clear and measurable commercial value of cultural influence (in the follow up analysis, I will break down how to measure it), and the job of corporate strategy is to direct investments towards contexts and audiences where a brand’s cultural influence will generate the highest financial returns.
Core tenets of a cultural influence strategy are:
Long-term + short-term. Cultural influence delivers both short-term and long-term results. It manages the immediate and stretched timelines. For some cultural products (like collaborations or content), the results can be delayed; for others, like experiences or events, they can be more immediate. Media amplification works on different timelines with different cultural products — some are easier to amplify than others — and with different cultural audiences. Calvin Klein’s Jeremy Allen White Instagram campaign was a cultural product that had impeccable cultural timing — a few days before the Golden Globes, where White received his reward, and going into the compressed awards season. Media amplification went from an instagram video to a full-blown campaign. In contrast, Desigual’s campaign with Hari Nef has remained in the Instagram videos-seeding stage, and hasn’t been since amplified. CK’s cultural influence was immediate, with 40M views on CK’s Instagram and 86% of YoY brand engagement increase. Sales influence is longer-term. During the period where Calvin Klein exerted the high immediate cultural influence, it’s stock fell 20 percent and sales in North America dropped 8 percent YoY. For the sales to catch up, Calvin Klein has to keep the cultural influence going (and not wait until the next awards season).
Story, story, story. “You can have the best technology, you can have the best business model, but if the storytelling isn’t amazing, it won’t matter. Nobody will watch,” noted Jeff Bezos. A clear and compelling brand story ensures that a brand’s products and advertising cannot be mistaken for anything else. It gives company context and substance, which helps increase its desirability. When brands sell products, they are selling a story. When consumers buy products, they are buying into this story. A clear brand story internally unifies the organization and streamlines the decision-making. It connects brand editorial with its products, steers design into a narrative, and streamlines merchandising, styling, and marketing. In addition to being a valuable brand currency, brand storytelling is also critical for customer acquisition and loyalty. Once consumers buy into a brand story, they are less likely to leave or switch than when they just buy a product. Most critically, a good brand story guides which creative products are developed, and outlines their rollout and their media amplification strategy.
Cultural products. Brand stories are told through cultural products. Best stories and best cultural products are interdependent. Cultural products, like archive reissues, enrich and add halo to a brand’s current story, and brand story connects separate cultural products, like merch or capsules, with the main collection.
Media. Defined as amplification of cultural influence, media spend becomes a creative exercise that revolves around identifying all the different cultural contexts for a brand to participate in. When a brand is present across different cultural contexts, it can be nimble and reactive to unexpected cultural shifts (like the sudden wild popularity of Stanley Cup or the emergence of various TikTok aesthetics). The cultural portfolio approach prevents customer deadlock (where brand repeatedly targets the same customer). Media’s job is to recognize cultural conversations, trends, and emerging aesthetics, and use them to amplify a brand’s own cultural products (example).
Audience segmentation. Strategy of cultural influence assesses customer segments based on their potential to grow a brand’s cultural influence in the way that generates the greatest financial returns. It then creates cultural products and media amplification plans to realize this return. Cultural products need to tell the story to the right audience in the right cultural context, in a way that will create financially lucrative cultural influence. Not all audience segments will have the potential to generate cultural influence, and brands needs to prioritize cultural products for those who do. To select key audience segments, companies first need to operationalize their brand goals: do they want their cultural influence to drive awareness? Increase differentiation? Achieve brand relevancy? Or drive brand desirability? Cultural influence strategy — the way a brand story is told through cultural products and amplified through media — will hit different segments differently, depending on the company’s business goals.
For companies to execute their cultural influence strategy, these three mindset shifts need to happen first:
Read the rest of this analysis on The Sociology of Business.
