«Dear director, after thinking about it for a long time, I decided to dedicate myself to the project of my dreams». The first subject of the new campaign begins with a letter from a resigned young man Ikea. But in that definition of “CEO of my time” – as the boy specifies in the closing of the letter – we can read all the contemporaneity of the brand that tries to interpret this historical phase. Thus the Swedish giant winks at that global and transversal phenomenon known as great resignation. These are the great mass resignations that are raging almost everywhere in the world, a concept born overseas, but forcefully and quickly entered our vocabulary. Thus the new advertising declines the positive sides of the change.
From Italy to Germany. These days the new campaign has become a social phenomenon Hasbro linked to the game of Monopoly and which paradoxically stages screams, tears, snorts. Because the American multinational, the largest games manufacturer in the world after Mattel and Lego, has tried to update the narrative, while maintaining its identity consistency and exploiting an unusual but real aspect of one of the most famous pastimes: that of provoking quarrels and whims, especially among the little ones. “While it is unpleasant to witness it, these reactions can be positive because they teach how emotions are expressed and how disappointments are dealt with,” reports the multi-subject copy produced by the Dutch agency KesselsKramer. In the visual, positioned with a campaign out of home in major German cities, the reactions of children during the game.
On the hunt for brand consistency
Today, for brands, the challenge passes from consistency and the ability to orient themselves on a multiplicity of social platforms, online, offline. This is what emerges from the Branding e-volution data, a research promoted by Upa (Associated Advertising Users) and by the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano and previewed in Il Sole 24 Ore. The monitoring, which involved a sample of 134 medium and large companies, analyzes the contemporary role of the brand and its methods of building and measuring value. If the digital media linked to narration appear diversified for advertising activities, the overall vision of the editorial context is strategic for 66% of the sample. Following this, 56% considers the quality of the contents as a priority, 54% the profiling of the public, 39% the possibility of presiding over the area in which the advertising message is placed. A coherent and qualified context increases the effectiveness of marketing and communication initiatives: four out of ten companies expressly ask for the need to control the context in which the message is inserted. But there is more. Consistency affects reputation and therefore affects performance. Adweek, the bible of American marketing, put it on paper in a dossier with the eloquent title: “Either there is consistency or there is failure: it’s time for marketers to put their house in order”.
«Today the experience of relationship with a brand is revealed through multiple points of contact. In a context in which users are increasingly used to moving easily between different channels, the opportunities but also the challenges increase. Risk is a fragmentation of one’s image and the experience offered to consumers, ”Elizabeth Marsten wrote in Adweek. The balance is precarious between the need to experiment and the need to protect one’s image over time. The brand consistency, i.e. the consistency of a brand and its presentation on each platform. After all, Jonah Sachs, marketing guru and author of the best seller “Winning the Story Wars”, repeats like a mantra: «A brand is a story that develops through all the points of contact with the connected customer».
Short-term visions
But the “Branding e-volution” survey also tells us more. Because in this spasmodic search for coherence the strategies reduce expectations and in fact present themselves with a short, often very short breath. Only 22% of brands have increased their long-term investments in the last two years, compared to 40% who have focused on short-term investments and known as sales activation. But it is as if you are looking for a compass to orient yourself in a world in constant and unpredictable evolution. For 30% of the sample interviewed in the last two years, investments dedicated to research activities to measure brand value have increased and as much as 72% stated that they will increase the budget on digital media for the activities of precision marketing. In moments of greater uncertainty, people also look elsewhere, trying to intercept new audiences: just over half of the interviewees focused on influencer marketing to expand their market and therefore identify new potential consumers. Coherent yes, but by no means firm. Because while guarding the treasury of its positioning, the game is measured on the ability to sniff out new opportunities.