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Summer 2022 I was at consultancy gig and got invited to a company-wide meeting with the new-marketing director showcasing their vision for the business. They were some promising and energetic ideas how to fulfil the potential of the brand. What caught my eye was there was a section about marketing and data, one of the slides was a clip from Notting Hill and the famous quote from Julia Roberts “I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her” (one of the best scenes of rom-com films)

The analogy was that marketing and data needed more love from all within the business.

This got me thinking about love, rom-coms and my favourite marketing concepts.

My top 10 rom-com films: Love and Basketball, Crazy Stupid Love, 50 First Dates, Sleepless In Seattle, Pretty Woman, When Harry Met Sally, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, Friends With Benefits, Same Time Next Year, Namaesty London

My DVD Collection

9 rom-com films, 8 marketing first dates challenges…. (not all love stories end in love)

Love and Basketball > Brand Values

Core values is key to long term happiness.

Brand values are the guiding principles what the business stands for as part of its mission and its vision that it wants to achieve. Having clearly defined brand values it allows those brands to stand out from the crowd in a competitive landscape with their core values. The brands with core values at the heart of what they do have a blueprint of how things should be done.

A strong set of values can be transformative for the business and love.

Apple have consistently showcase their brand values across all touchpoints. The launch of the iPhone 14 is the best example, where the ad sells emotions and has a uber focus on the aesthetics of the product allowing it to be seen as a premium product.

Crazy Stupid Love > Brand Positioning

Position yourself to find love.

Brand positioning is about how the brand can occupy mental real estate in the consumers mind and keep the brand top of mind when they need to make a purchase. Remaining consistent in the brands values and beliefs will play a big role in winning customers. This will have a direct impact on brand equity.

50 first dates > Being Interesting

Being interesting has it’s challenges be it on a first date or for brands.

All brands in all categories will have low interest to most of their audience. The way brands can win is through building a connection by talking to future customers through brand building and storytelling. Creating an emotional halo is likely to influence those audiences to purchase your product or service.

To better understand halo, appearance matters. Be it on a first date or the brand image is likely to have a positive or negative impact if there is a second date or if the potential customer selects x brand.

Sleepless in Seattle > Mental & Physical Availability

Physical affection is core to building a bond.

When consumers think of a brand, they want to be able to access a brand. The success of a brand growing is through penetration, this is done by increasing mental and physical availability.

Mental availability is when the brand comes to mind at the point of purchasing a product or service. Physical availability is when the brand is available and easy to buy with distribution and supply playing key factors.

With the growth of e-commerce and more purchases are taking place online. Brands need to also think of digital availability in how accessible the brand is across digital channels. Being visible on digital channels will allow consumers to discover those brands in return positioning the brand into the consumers mind. Digital availability helps build mental availability.

There are challenges over measuring mental and physical availability where digital availability there is data available to better understand but requires a robust measurement framework.

Pretty Woman & When Harry Met Sally > The long and the short

In some cases, sex on the first date / touchpoint can be a winner.

To deliver marketing effectiveness how brands manage the balance between short term business objectives with the long term vision is the challenge for all marketers. It has become too easy to think about the short term, but it is the wrong focus it needs to be what is the long term vision and plan and how can I be flexible in the short term to achieve those objectives.

Measurement plays a key role in understanding marketing effectiveness.

Marketers can easily tangle themselves in measuring too much, but you want to be measuring the right things. You need to have a single-mindedness in looking at the right metrics but also have an understanding there are other metrics that can help build the narrative.

Marketing needs to make sure they can measure the impact of the short term and the long term.

How to lose a guy in 10 days > Customer Journey is important  

Having a shared vision and goal is key, it’s about the journey and how you get there.

How marketing is structured creates challenges in being able to better understand the customer journey. Internally within the brands and within agencies brand and performance needs to come together to better measure the full funnel top to bottom. With the shared vision it allows for improved planning and measurement across the entire funnel.

When measuring campaigns that span across the entire funnel, it’s all about performance in different guises and not separating brand and performance. This comes back to the shared vision and what the goal is of the campaign.

Having a refined KPI framework for the maturity stage of the brand becomes a necessity to measure the impact of multi-channel campaigns.

Friends with Benefits > The right KPI’s for the business phase

Being aligned on the phase of relationship will drive success in the long run.

For many brands there is a huge focus on ROI as the primary KPI for success as it’s ‘easy’ to measure. The challenge with ROI it causes friction and becomes more about driving efficiency where the focus needs to be on effectiveness.

Understanding the different phases of a brands maturity becomes critical as the brand will be running campaigns with different objectives and KPI’s for current customer segments v future customer segments. Where many brands fall-down on is there inability in not defining what success looks like and not being able to measure success. Getting a hold of how KPI’s drive success becomes imperative.

The focus needs to be on the primary and secondary KPI’s in defining success.

(example framework for Crawl stage for a scale-up business)

Same time. next year > Loyalty is over-rated

In love loyalty is everything which is opposite in marketing.

Loyalty is very much like an open relationship, not many want an open relationship and not many consumers are loyal to one brand only. The small segment who are loyal don’t really impact the bottom line in terms of profit. So, the goal of any brand is to ensure that you are giving the audience segment every option in selecting you. The focus should be on penetration which is more receptive to marketing then loyalty.

In the conversation of love so maybe brand love is an unrealistic aim but there are ways that brands can ‘measure’ brand love