Love advice for brands: If you want to get married - don´t dress for a one night stand.

The classic purchase funnel goes: awareness, opinion, consideration, purchase, loyalty (and then back again I guess...) My version is based on another area of life, close to our heart, to illustrate that the relationship between a successful brand and consumer is really like a Relationship. Not a brief encounter, not a fling, not a long-distance relationship.

Sometimes you come across brand managers whose ultimate goal is "awareness". Or, nowadays in the time of social media, marketing directors also ask you to increase the numbers of Facebook Likes, which they often call "involvement", but is mainly a way to measure awareness...

If you were looking for a boyfriend and all you wanted was to catch their eye you could simply wear a very short skirt or a deep cleavage - even if this would most likely be contra productive...

Hmm. It always upsets me when brands ask for so little, and I would never settle with giving them "awareness". In reality, anyone can easily make people aware. Just do really weird stuff:

 

If you saw these people, you would be aware of them, wouldn´t you? But would you fancy them? Would you go out with them? Would you marry them? I´m sure they are all awesome and very likeable, but I´m sure you get the point... To only ask the agency to create "awareness" is to ask for scrubs.

You want consumers to like you long term. You want them to have a clear image in their head of what you stand for and what you can offer them. You want the money spent on a campaign today to generate sales a year ahead. You want more!

I know it´s tough times and all companies want quick results, and sometimes the brand manager is only there temporarily and wish to shine with an awareness campaign that leads to a quick sales peak - and nobody is really there to see what happened in 6 month or 12. Too far away - let the next brand manager take that ball...

But I´m just saying... If all you want to be happily married, don´t aim for a one night stand.