RIP digital marketing; brand building is the new name of the game
That is according to Marc Pritchard, Procter & Gamble's global brand building officer, who boldly announced the death of digital marketing at Dmexco a few days ago.
That is according to Marc Pritchard, Procter & Gamble's global brand building officer, who boldly announced the death of digital marketing at Dmexco a few days ago.
Marc Pritchard, Procter & Gamble’s global brand building officer, has boldly announced the death of digital marketing at a recent conference, explaining instead that brand building has now taken precedent.
As reported by The Drum, Pritchard’s speech at Dmexco, the Digital Marketing Exposition & Conference, urged marketers to stop thinking of digital is purely technological terms, and instead see it as something that effects peoples daily lives.
“We [Procter & Gamble] try and see it for what it is, which is a tool for engaging people with fresh, creative campaigns,” Pritchard explained, adding: “The era of digital marketing is over. It’s almost dead. It’s now just brand building. It’s what we do.”
The success of P&G, he explained, was down to: “freeing up our minds on building creative ideas that come to life through the mediums that we engage with every single day“, such as online, mobile and TV.
By following a ‘Digital Back’ approach, Pritchard believes marketers can take all the brand-building and audience-engaging approaches used across social media and digital marketing to positively effect a wider strategy: “start in the digital world and build your way back to the rest of the marketing mix. Our best agencies do that right now…it’s an approach that is building our brand equities, our sales and our profits.”
He also explained that even if you had the greatest technology in the world, brand insight and creative ideas are the key to any successful promotion, and shouldn’t change at the launch of a new campaign.
As a large FMCG P&G has no choice but to use branding as the tool that powers their customer buy through, unfortunately.
Branding is synonymous with large corporations trying to niche their products to customer channels and get sales – its rather reminiscent of the 1980/1990’s product delivery methods and is not only outdated but crass in its forms and function – it doesn’t deliver new product experience – just new packaging.
To say technology is not the driving force for business now is wrong wrong wrong, with so much resources available to large multinationals like Proctor & Gamble they could actually benefit the customer, society and the business environment by developing ethical,environ friendly, sustainable, novel products through their massive R&D availability.
I find it difficult to swallow that the head of a division in P&G is still advocating brand building exercises and not trying to deliver uniqueness and innovation. It seems that the trenches that the Blue Chips still operate in are still full of capitalist/thatcher boys and girls grown up – with little desire to offer, other than fattening their companies bottom line for the short term.
Where is the novelty and customer experience in this? Nowhere!`
it not a healthy long term approach as we the customer are increasingly aware of marketing techniques and more educated – Please…
It’s easy for P+G – a collection of the biggest brands in the world – to talk about ‘brand building’. But for the rest of us with small businesses, branding is not a viable option because of the lack of scale.
Marc’s comments illustrate after more than 15 years most corporate brands still don’t get digital marketing.
1) Marc confuses marketing with advertising… which is only one of marketing’s
many components. Marketing or “promoting” also includes “branding” and packaging
2) Rock’s and Roll is still not dead
Traditional Marketing is not dead…Still over 75% of the total
Digital Marketing is not dead…Changing …but still growing strong
Digital Advertising is not dead…Look at Googles profits
Even Microsoft is not dead…Just had their most profitable quarter
What is dead are brains that overuse and overstate “dead”
3) What is quickly dying are sales of branded packaged foods
Consumers are replacing national brands with better value store brands
or better for you unprocessed unpackaged real food,
4) Fresh creative is only persuasive on those who don’t know better.
Even when the consumer isn’t informed by a friend or a post and Marc’s
promotion works…They will know if they got what they paid for as soon as they open the box.
5) Brand equity is the sum of customer experience, expectations, & perceptions.
The more product interaction the more actual experience shapes perception.
P&G might create some great social media. ..but the brand would be stronger if they first improved what’s inside the packaging