In-depth analysis: Three global trends herald the arrival of the era of long-term branding

Current trends show that if a brand wants to develop in the long run, it must build long-term brand value. So, how to do it specifically? What kind of mindset do you need to uphold? The author of this article has made an in-depth analysis of this, so you might as well take a look.

Three years after the epidemic, more and more brands are returning to "value".

In China, on Xiaohongshu, McDonald's, which was founded 68 years ago, has become known as "McGate Forever" among young people, and they all sing the "McDonald's National Anthem"; overseas, the "Ketchup King" Heinz shot a creative video, asking consumers what the Roman numerals in "Super Bowl LVII" mean. The answer points to the iconic "57" on the Heinz bottle, making full use of its most distinctive brand assets.

Brand people feel the same way. In an interview with Morketing, He Yabin, CGO of P&G China, said that the Chinese market is likely to enter a period of adjustment. He said frankly, "Some of the growth and prosperity in the past decade were based on concepts, and some were unreal. There may be a process of squeezing out the bubble next, and what will be squeezed out are brands without moats and lack of differentiation."

It seems that overnight, marketers formed the first consensus in 2023: if you want to win, you must create long-term brand value and establish a brand moat .

Say goodbye to the impetuous traffic strategy. If brands want to establish long-term influence, they need to transform their thinking and actions. First of all, advertisers must understand why they should do long-term marketing and how to do long-term marketing well. Fortunately, after more than ten years of digital marketing, we have begun to have a more scientific strategy that can help brands achieve truly stable and long-term development.

1. Three major global trends

The three major trends of consumers, MarTech, and advertising products prove that "long-termism" can make a brand "soar all the way".

1. Trend 1: The “emotional value” of brands is returning, and post-95s consumers are particularly pursuing brand connotation

The younger generation of consumers around the world, represented by Gen Z, have more specific requirements for brand significance and brand values: multiple survey results show that Gen Z consumers strongly identify with value orientations such as sustainability, environmental protection, and circular economy, and attach great importance to the identification with circle culture and niche culture. They are also more willing to buy brands or products that are more in line with their personal values, even if it means spending more money for it.

In other words, if the value that a brand can provide is divided into "rational value" and "emotional value", today's consumers are a generation that pursues "emotional value" more than ever before.

So, how can brands capture this intangible emotional value? In the book "Manufacturing Consumers", the author proposes that consumers generally have a "fetish complex", that is, "consumers want to become a certain kind of person, without making any efforts to improve themselves, they can acquire these qualities simply by abstractly purchasing a certain brand."

Morketing believes that the emotional needs of consumers for brands and products are, to a certain extent, realized through the content of brand advertising - brands produce content that can meet consumers' emotional needs and are deeply tied to them, and then repeatedly mention them, gradually occupying the minds of consumers and forming a lingering long-term brand value.

2. Trend 2: Massive digital assets such as users and content need to be internalized into long-term brand assets

Catalysed by the epidemic in the past three years, global MarTech technology has developed rapidly, and traffic dividends have been quickly absorbed and diluted; at the same time, brand owners have established a certain scale of digital content assets and user assets.

Therefore, the focus of the competition for brand owners at this stage has become whether they can settle these online users into long-term dialogue partners of the brand? Can these digital resources be transformed into long-term brand assets? Once the above resources are internalized as the "power station" of the brand, they can continuously provide long-term marketing momentum.

How to obtain brand assets? We observe the common logic of digital marketing service providers, which is nothing more than: first, sedimentation, sedimentation of digital resources such as brand content, consumer groups, supply chain, etc. into long-term available assets; second, opening up, connecting the above resources to form a closed loop, and becoming an asset library that can enable the brand to achieve compound growth.

At the marketing level, when brands can use a systematic perspective to look at previously independent advertising activities, and make the customer base, advertising content, and media in their hands form a 1+1>2 effect, unique brand recognition and brand influence will follow.

3. Trend 3: The era of crazy volume buying has ended, and the industry is entering a scientific and healthy marketing era

In the past two years, the unspoken formula for hot products among marketers is "10,000 Xiaohongshu + 5,000 Douyin + 1,000 Bilibili + 1,000 Zhihu = 1 successful new consumer brand". However, this additional bonus brought by the early stage of the development of national social platforms has ended. Cassie, the marketing director of the healthy drink brand Innocent, told Morketing, "Due to their different attributes, each platform plays a different role in our communication with consumers. We are making various attempts to find a more effective combination. "

This means that after brands have understood the advertising effects of different types of Internet platforms, they will inevitably use a more targeted, cost-controlled, and higher-return combination to place advertisements.

The reason is that each marketing channel not only has an impact on consumers in the short term, but also has a long-term advertising effect. For example, a study by Analytic Partners, a business data analysis consulting company, pointed out that the long-term and short-term ROIs of different marketing channels are significantly different. For example, the short-term ROI of paid search and e-commerce advertising is significantly higher than the long-term ROI, which means that such channels have a boosting effect on the short-term burst of product sales; while the long-term and short-term ROIs of paid social media (Xiaohongshu, Douyin in China, Instagram, YouTube abroad, etc.), video advertising, and public relations (PR) are relatively flat, and such advertising is more conducive to increasing the brand's voice.

But one thing that is beyond doubt is that different forms of advertising will have a certain degree of short-term and long-term impact on brand sales. The lower the investment cost of advertising media, the lower the average organic sales will be.

Therefore, as companies pay more and more attention to healthy and scientific marketing methods, they need to be familiar with the short-term and long-term impacts of various marketing activities on the brand, so as to choose a reasonable combination of marketing campaigns according to local conditions.

In summary, the three latest developments in the dimensions of consumers, MarTech technology, and advertisers all point to one direction: bidding farewell to the impatient and unstable era where traffic is king, and brands are beginning to calm down and hone their long-term value.

2. How to grasp the long-term value of the brand amid fluctuations?

In fact, all major brands have been formulating corresponding marketing strategies based on the brand's growth stage. Here are two examples:

First, Adidas' public "admission" in 2019 was still hotly discussed in the marketing circle until last year. At that time, Simon Peel, Adidas' global media director, said that 73% of the budget was invested in performance advertising, which led to the brand facing a lack of long-term growth. After learning from the pain, Adidas decided to find a balance between short-term interests and long-term construction.

Second, Babycare, a new consumer brand that precisely targets mothers and infants, has achieved a GMV of 5 billion yuan in the past six years. Chief Brand Officer Iris told Morketing last year that before the GMV reached 5 billion yuan, they allocated part of the brand advertising budget to product research and development; only after the brand grew stronger did they start shooting TVCs and promoting brand advertising.

Morketing believes that these two typical cases form an echo of the old and the new. Adidas represents a traditional brand with a long history. Although Adidas believes that excessive advertising is a misjudgment, it is undeniable that this investment has brought a rapid increase in sales in the short term. Its transformation from focusing on performance advertising to balanced advertising is also a vivid example of the alternation of the advertising era in recent years. Digital marketing expert Dong Haoyu once analyzed, "Adidas is optimizing and adjusting after systematically changing the advertising logic." Babycare represents many emerging brands born in the digital advertising era. After the customer base and turnover have grown to a certain level, they began to try to accumulate brand assets. For them, as long as the brand wants to survive for a long time, brand advertising is a must. The only difference is the time.

As shown in the figure above, according to a study by Analytic Partners, investing more in brand advertising can help brands accumulate deeper brand assets and enable long-term development.

It can be seen from this that , on the one hand, whether it is the renewal of an old brand or the expansion of a new brand, it should insist on building the long-term value of the brand; on the other hand, there is never a "fixed solution" for brand advertising strategy. This depends on factors such as the size of the brand, the stage of the brand's life, the short-term and long-term plans chosen by the brand, and so on.

So, with so many variables including a brand’s product characteristics, level of competition, target customer groups, etc., how can we find the “optimal solution” to establish a brand’s long-term value?

For example, the ROI Genome marketing think tank research by Analytic Partners shows that if a company is in a relatively healthy and balanced state and pursues both long-term and short-term ROI growth, it can give priority to public relations (PR), paid social media, etc. Of course, if the company is currently pursuing the ultimate short-term impact and increasing recent sales, then it can try paid search, e-commerce advertising, etc.; if it is more focused on boosting long-term impact and enhancing brand influence, then sponsorship advertising is a very good attempt.

However, among the four quadrants in the above figure, how can an enterprise clearly identify its position and make marketing media selections based on specific analysis of the specific situation?

In order to achieve the best synergy, Analytic Partners launched a commercial analytics solution. According to official information, brands can make decisions that are directly beneficial to performance through more scientific combination models and analytical methods. ROI Genome marketing think tank research also shows that companies that adopt data-driven decision-making grow five times faster than those that do not.

In essence, this marketing quantitative evaluation and optimization solution provides two insights into brand "long-termism":

First, companies should adhere to a balanced "long-term + short-term" marketing strategy. Kotler's classic 5A model (Aware-Appeal-Ask-Act-Advocate) depicts a long and interlocking consumer purchase journey. Brand advertising is essentially a "mind battle" with consumers. In the process, brands need paid search, paid social media advertising and other forms to encourage consumers to inquire and buy; they also need sponsored advertising, television and other forms to enhance consumers' overall awareness of the brand, thereby increasing the volume of potential consumers and driving sales growth in the long run.

Second, companies should pay attention to marketing effect evaluation and marketing ROI measurement. In the era of traditional media, being featured on CCTV advertising meant gaining nationwide popularity, and brand slogans sung on the streets implied huge brand benefits. This era is over. At the beginning of the digital advertising era, the era of grabbing search engine advertising space and showing off in video ads to grab consumer attention is over. In the past few years, major social media platforms have taken turns to invest, and sales have continued to rise, and then they have continued to compete for traffic until the dividends have shrunk to almost negative. This era is also coming to an end. Today, more and more companies have realized the importance of integrated marketing from practical lessons. Therefore, brands need to systematically and scientifically evaluate and review all advertising channel data in order to achieve true full-link "digital marketing" and long-term profitability.

3. 4 benefits of long-term marketing thinking

After establishing a long-term marketing mindset, the brand can truly benefit in terms of sales, customer reach, and value display.

First, a higher return on investment . Brands can not only guarantee short-term sales through advertisements that stimulate consumers to buy, but also guide consumption in the long term through advertisements that deepen brand value. In this way, the brand's marketing budget can be more reasonably allocated, while continuously increasing sales and market share.

Secondly, build a healthier brand image . Advertisement itself is a medium for brands to communicate with consumers. However, over-reliance on a certain form of advertising will amplify negative effects, causing consumers to think that the brand is either too high-end and out of touch with reality, or too eager for quick success and frequent promotions. Long-term thinking can help brands find the "middle point" of dialogue with consumers, forming a balanced state of "push-pull mode", thereby gaining a more three-dimensional, healthy and positive brand image.

Third, the brand life cycle is longer and the differentiated competitive advantage is maintained . This vitality can even help brands cross economic cycles. According to a study by the ROI Genome marketing think tank, during the last recession, 60% of the brands that increased their media investment saw an increase in subsequent ROI. At the same time, brands that increased media investment achieved a 17% sales growth. This shows that even in times of economic downturn, it is necessary to speak to consumers through effective advertising for a long time. Moreover, when the brand reputation is maintained for a long time, the brand will have the opportunity to grow into a true century-old brand.

Fourth, at the operational level, it helps companies build a more scientific brand marketing system . Obviously, under the long-termism of brands, brands will flexibly and in real time adjust the proportion of different delivery channels to make marketing methods more scientific. Moreover, this snowball effect can undoubtedly help brands establish, implement, and solidify brand assets, allowing brands to stand the test of time.

IV. Conclusion

Since the rise of the brand concept, long-termism has been highly praised.

After moving from the traditional advertising era to the digital advertising era, the long-term nature of this brand has not been abandoned by the times. Today, taking Commercial Analytics, a solution from Analytic Partners, as an example, on the one hand, it can more comprehensively and effectively measure and quantify the driving factors behind performance growth, more accurately evaluate and optimize marketing ROI, and guide brands to make more reasonable marketing budget allocations; on the other hand, it conducts sales forecasts and evaluates the impacts of different potential scenarios, which can help brands balance long-term and short-term marketing strategies, maximize growth potential, and drive brands to achieve truly sustainable development.

In the future, as digital marketing channels become more diverse, the demand for marketing quantitative evaluation and optimization solutions will become stronger. Use data scientifically and gain insights into growth opportunities from the data.

(All pictures in this article are from Analytic Partners)

Author: Claire

WeChat public account: Morketing (ID: Morketing)