Can performance advertising smash big brands?
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Propagation Gymnastics” (ID : Chuanboticao) , the author Zheng Zhuoran.
Under the digital confusion, many brands are becoming more and more biased towards performance advertising.
A brand that is overly focused on performance advertising is equivalent to a crappy brand. They may gain an advantage in the short term, but in the long run they will lose the entire game.
The specific case is actually happening around us. A few years ago, the most popular Taobao brand has risen rapidly through traffic bonus and placement skills, but there are not many Taobao brands that are still active in the public view. Traditional brands; various celebrity catering online red shops have brought a large number of customers with their traffic advantages, but many of them ended in failure.
The rapid rise has quickly fallen into a spell that is difficult for new brands to escape in recent years. Today, some of our friends still have a fast-rising new brand such as Perfect Diary, HFP, Zhong Xuegao, and even Ruixing Coffee and even Xiaomi. There are no small differences as to how far they can go.
From a marketing perspective, the rise and fall of online celebrity brands all come from the company’s “effect advertising thinking”. Performance advertising can enable companies to achieve rapid growth in the short term (especially in capturing the platform traffic bonus). Bottom), but with the gradual retreat of the traffic dividend and the gradual decline of the delivery effect, the company’s own brand value cannot become a subsequent growth driver, and the net red brand has fallen.
“Effective fanaticism and disregard for brands” is a misunderstanding that many emerging brands are falling into today. Under the background of the demographic dividend peaking, it is unsustainable to rely on “effect advertising thinking” to achieve rapid growth in the future, and the value of “brand advertising thinking” will reappear.
The rise of performance advertising thinking lies in the monitoring of media delivery. With the development of media digitization and channel monitoring technology, more and more media can track the delivery effect, but there is a misunderstanding among many people that the effect of media channel itself does not mean that you should “Performance ads” are placed on the media.
For example, if you put on WeChat friends circle, you can get all kinds of effect conversion data such as PV / UV, conversion attention, etc., but although you can see all these data results, it does not mean that you put This ad is a “performance ad”, why?
Because of the essential difference between “performance advertising” and “brand advertising”, is not about whether you can monitor the effectiveness of your delivery, but whether it is for the short-term or long-term value of the brandService, which also determines the difference in the measurement of marketing. The key lies in the strategic orientation of the brand itself, not whether the channels are digitally monitored.
Why is the distinction between “brand advertising” and “performance advertising” still important?
Marketing is a movement of walking on two legs. “Brand” and “Effect” are indispensable. Brand advertising focuses on long-term competitiveness, and performance advertising focuses on short-term share. I encountered a ceiling or even a landslide at the point.
Imagine brand marketing as a running competition. If your legs are uneven, your running track will gradually become a circle, and you will never be the one who runs the farthest. You can refer to the following picture:
If you place too much emphasis on performance-based advertising, your brand may reach the critical point of development faster, but it is difficult to achieve further development, and lose to a brand with a balanced performance on a long-term scale. Therefore, a major difficulty in brand marketing is how to balance the short-term and long-term benefits of marketing.
What are the limitations of performance advertising thinking?
In fact, there are many similarities between corporate marketing decisions and human decisions. We may as well start with human decisions.
The most common example we use is for example, a person who needs to lose weight hesitates to make a decision in the face of food. Eating can bring short-term pleasure and excitement, but it is not good for losing weight. If you do n’t eat, you may endure short-term pain , But good for long-term weight loss. So you are in a tangled state.
You can say that this is a struggle between reason and emotion, or the division of labor between System 1 and System 2 written in Thinking Fast and Slow. In short, long-term goals and short-term goals are mostly mutual. Conflicting and different emphasis.
The human brain has a part called the amygdala, which is used to quickly judge the emotional impulse. When you want to eat food, it is a signal from the amygdala; there is something in the brain called the cerebral cortex. As a rational judgment of logical thinking, your refusal to eat food comes from the role of “cerebral cortex”.
But for decision-making efficiency, the human brain is designed to give priority to emotional judgment.What most people can’t withstand the temptation of food, and the exercise of weight loss is quite anti-human.
The same is true of corporate marketing decisions. The “almond core” of an enterprise allows marketing to quickly satisfy the short-term market thrill and promote effective advertising. The “brain cortex” of an enterprise focuses on brand advertising to create long-term value, but it is often a low priority Always ignored.
The disadvantage of “effect advertising thinking” is that it takes up resources that should create long-term brand value to get short-term market benefits. In the long run, companies will completely ignore branding because of short-term “coolness”, which makes it difficult to achieve high brand premiums. Difficult to achieve high brand premiums means that companies need to rely on the amount of paving to achieve growth. The competitive pressure of the brand will also cause a lot of problems in the internal and external management radius.
The indicators that “brand advertising” and “performance advertising” value are not the same or even conflict with each other, which means that “integration of product and effect” is actually a false proposition from a single launch. “Integration of product and effect” needs to be completed by placing a combination.
In addition, the effectiveness of Brand Advertising cannot be accurately quantified. Why?
Although today ’s various types of delivery can feedback performance indicators such as exposure and clicks, the true effect of “brand advertising” cannot be quantified, and what most third parties call the “brand index” does not make much sense ( May have a PR meaning).
The reason is that after brand advertising is launched, the audience ’s cognitive depth and trust depth cannot be quantified, and there are too many variables and uncertainties in terms of long-term brand value creation Can hardly be attributed to single-serving performance.
So, if someone tells you that you can use tools to measure the contribution value / contribution index of brand advertising to brand value (such as monitoring the brand index from 90 to 95 after advertising a brand), this is not practical. Meaning, it’s best not to believe it.
Conversely, if the long-term effect of a “brand advertisement” can really be effectively measured, then it can be converted into short-term effects through discounting (this is unlikely). It is still essentially a kind of “Performance ads.”
You may know that rejecting sweets can lose weight, but you ca n’t predict exactly how long it will lead to weight loss, because there are too many variables and too complicated, but you should believe that the benefits of weight loss are far greater than Just eat sweets every day.
The effect of “ Brand Advertising” cannot be accurately quantified. We will call it the “uncertainty principle” of brand marketing. It is exactly the same. The ability to build brand value is the most critical and “personalized” part of a company’s long-term competition.
For eachFor people, it is necessary to continuously overcome the urge to eat sweets in order to successfully lose weight; the same is true for companies, and to continuously overcome the “effect advertising addiction” in order to build a great brand.
In fact, there are many similarities between corporate marketing decisions and human decisions. We may as well start with human decisions.
The most common example we use is for example, a person who needs to lose weight hesitates to make a decision in the face of food. Eating can bring short-term pleasure and excitement, but it is not good for losing weight. If you do n’t eat, you may endure short-term pain , But good for long-term weight loss. So you are in a tangled state.
You can say that this is a struggle between reason and emotion, or the division of labor between System 1 and System 2 written in Thinking Fast and Slow. In short, long-term goals and short-term goals are mostly mutual. Conflicting and different emphasis.
The human brain has a part called the amygdala, which is used to quickly judge the emotional impulse. When you want to eat food, it is a signal from the amygdala; there is something in the brain called the cerebral cortex. As a rational judgment of logical thinking, your refusal to eat food comes from the role of “cerebral cortex”.
But for decision-making efficiency, the human brain is designed to give priority to emotional judgment.What most people can’t withstand the temptation of food, and the exercise of weight loss is quite anti-human.
The same is true of corporate marketing decisions. The “almond core” of an enterprise allows marketing to quickly satisfy the short-term market thrill and promote effective advertising. The “brain cortex” of an enterprise focuses on brand advertising to create long-term value, but it is often a low priority Always ignored.
The disadvantage of “effect advertising thinking” is that it takes up resources that should create long-term brand value to get short-term market benefits. In the long run, companies will completely ignore branding because of short-term “coolness”, which makes it difficult to achieve high brand premiums. Difficult to achieve high brand premiums means that companies need to rely on the amount of paving to achieve growth. The competitive pressure of the brand will also cause a lot of problems in the internal and external management radius.
The indicators that “brand advertising” and “performance advertising” value are not the same or even conflict with each other, which means that “integration of product and effect” is actually a false proposition from a single launch. “Integration of product and effect” needs to be completed by placing a combination.
In addition, the effectiveness of Brand Advertising cannot be accurately quantified. Why?
Although today ’s various types of delivery can feedback performance indicators such as exposure and clicks, the true effect of “brand advertising” cannot be quantified, and what most third parties call the “brand index” does not make much sense ( May have a PR meaning).
The reason is that after brand advertising is launched, the audience ’s cognitive depth and trust depth cannot be quantified, and there are too many variables and uncertainties in terms of long-term brand value creation Can hardly be attributed to single-serving performance.
So, if someone tells you that you can use tools to measure the contribution value / contribution index of brand advertising to brand value (such as monitoring the brand index from 90 to 95 after advertising a brand), this is not practical. Meaning, it’s best not to believe it.
Conversely, if the long-term effect of a “brand advertisement” can really be effectively measured, then it can be converted into short-term effects through discounting (this is unlikely). It is still essentially a kind of “Performance ads.”
You may know that rejecting sweets can lose weight, but you ca n’t predict exactly how long it will lead to weight loss, because there are too many variables and too complicated, but you should believe that the benefits of weight loss are far greater than Just eat sweets every day.
The effect of “ Brand Advertising” cannot be accurately quantified. We will call it the “uncertainty principle” of brand marketing. It is exactly the same. The ability to build brand value is the most critical and “personalized” part of a company’s long-term competition.
For eachFor people, it is necessary to continuously overcome the urge to eat sweets in order to successfully lose weight; the same is true for companies, and to continuously overcome the “effect advertising addiction” in order to build a great brand.