BreaKing the brand vs. Performance silos

It's common knowledge that the world of advertising and marketing still operates on a very disconnected of solving problems in a hyper connected world.

The industry is still split. One side is the 'cool' creative world of big name agencies that tell stories smartly and hog all the attention with that hyper cool Superbowl ad and then there is the Performance world that geeks out of all things optimization, ai, adtech and the likes.

Both speak about connecting the dots via omnichannel solutions but on a practical level, the silos are pretty much there.

So what does a nimble, high growth brand gotta do with such a split when they need a unified solution to drive their metrics and brand. Especially those who understand the power of unified customer views and the importance of seamless, smart audience engagements across any touchpoints of the audiences' preference.

The answer lies in Performance Branding. A strategy coined by Forrestor Research analyst who clearly made the case for the same - especially for high growth brands relying upong customer repeat purchase - eCommerce, SaaS brands fit the bill very nearly.

Performance Branding brings forth the opportunity to build long term brand growth that is interwoven with short term performance realisations for marketers and brand leaders. It shifts our thinking from either-or to and. Which is why it is super powerful.

Here is a quick 90 second primer on what it is all about. We are just getting started. Do take a listen.

Eager to Open

Email Engagement For Purpose Led, Conscious Brands is about making audiences eager to open

We have all had that feeling of anticipation. When we wait for a word of empowerment from our favorite coaches, healers, shamans, motivational speakers, mentors, fitness experts, moon witches, vision quest guides who we have come to trust and love. 

We chance upon them through Youtube or Instagram & they enter our lives when we feel most receptive to what they have to share. We deeply resonate with their messages and presence. We like their posts. We watch their Videos & we sign up for their emails. And if they are half as authentic, we actually start looking forward to their posts and emails. 

This is certainly my truth. I  have my favorite set coaches, teachers and mentors. Every time I open up my inbox or social feeds, I actually forward to a note / post from them. And every time I see one, I do not hesitate to click. In fact, I am eager to open.

So, in between those pesky credit card offers that will never stop, emails from Amazon and your airline with more miles that take you nowhere and that odd MBA program that you thought of uprising but decided not to, you get these email from those whom you actually want to hear from. You literally ignore EVERYTHING else and you click that open.

May be there is a placebo effect going on here. May be it is pavlovian conditioning. Whatever it is, we open because we trust that the message contained and its source. We know that it will serve us and not just sell to us. 

As a purpose-led brand, we are that source of trust and empowerment. Through not just what we sell but how we make it and what we stand for. Every marketing message, every email is a call to connect over a common value and purpose. A call to empower, engage and earn trust. The most important part of crafting a powerful marketing journey for a conscious brand is to focus on eliciting this response of being eager to open.  Rest is easy.

So here are 5 simple tips to start towards making this ‘open’ magic happen:

1. Converse - Think of your email as a private one-on-one with your audience

2. Align your content - Make sure that your Email is penned by someone who is actually in alignment with your purpose, brand and audiences. People might not notice the dissonance and misalignment (for almost all emails are) but they do definitely feel the alignment

3. Be Authentic - Stop tying to be too clever with the subject lines. That might come across as manipulative and it comes across as trying too hard

4. Find your Cadence - Filter your email schedule on a ‘would I want to hear from me today’ basis. If it feels forced for your, it WILL feel forced for the audience. Unless you are a narcissistic psychopath, just don’t do it. Remember less is more.

5. Fill the right void - Find out which area of your audience’s lives that you serve and be an advocate for empowerment in that space.

Yes, an awesome subject line might help. Yes, a well structured email would help. Yes, timing it at the right time of the day might help. But the truth is, we tend to open emails from our favorite, trusted sources…no matter how shitty the subject line is or how god awful the time of the day it is. For frankly, when trust is earned, we are just eager to open. 

The power of listening

@resonantagency

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak' - Epictetus

We all innately understand the importance of #listening when it comes to developing deep, rich relationships. We trust folks who actually listen to us.

The same goes with building brands. Especially #purpose led #brands.

Audiences today are very discerning of who they choose to engage with.

But how does your brand know where they are? Where to connect with them? What to say to them? And when to say that to them?

This is where the power of #datadriven listening comes into play. The smartest brands design their #marketingjourneys rooted in discerning signals that result in true insights. Insights that they can use to respond and speak to their audiences.

That way, when you actually speak, they listen.

Building your tribe starts with designing your marketing around listening smartly.

If you are a purpose brand and resonate with this truth, DM us for a free consultation. We can make some true magic happen together.

#marketing #marketingjourney #purposebrands #digital #data #consciousbrands #consciousmarketing

From Consumerism to Audience-ism

Many of my marketing and advertising friends all over the world are actually very conscious beings.

While they have a carefully cultivated ‘Mad Men’ persona, they are also much more ‘consciously inclined’ than what meets the eye. Most of the creative types do yoga, smoke weed, go to burning man or similar festivals where ever they are in the world to expand their minds and come up with fresh ideas. For without fresh ideas, they soon become irrelevant in a notoriously competitive industry.

They also understand the power of the words that we use.

After all, they are the ones that give us tag lines that we remember and write the copy that makes us move and the needles too. 

I for one deeply believe in the power of words. I am sure dear reader, you do too. 

Given the great shifts in consciousness in commerce that is happening around us, marketing as such is also experiencing a forced shift towards the same.

Which brings me to the topic of how we see the ‘market’.

In his insightful essay in the Atlantic about ‘How humans became ‘Consumers’, Frank Trentmann clearly illustrates how consumption was hardly a thing before the 19th century. 

From Adam Smith’s 1776 proclamation of ‘Consumption is the sole purpose of all production’ to Robert Boyle’s question that asks..’Would God have created a world rich in minerals and exotic plants, if He had not wanted people to discover and exploit them? The divine had furnished man with a “multiplicity of desires” for a reason’  have all led to outdated ideas around ‘consumerism’ that still stubbornly persist today. 

The good news is, ever since the advent of sustainable commerce, this tide is turning towards more conscious ways of seeing the world and engaging the people who buy they things we so powerfully market.

In this context is why we must understand the reasoning behind letting go of old words that point to less conscious paradigms. 

‘Consume’ comes from the latin root ‘Consumere’ - which literally means to eat up, to waste. Which evolved into French and then to English in the late 14th Century to mean ‘to destroy’. 

So when see the world as a ginormous pool of ‘consumers’,  we might see them as folks who will buy from as but what we are actually, subconscious seeing them as are those who will also use it up to waste it away.

If I go one step further and let you into my conscious, spiritual closet, I do believe that such unconscious use of words have a profound implication in the reality we create and live in. 

Ever wonder why there is so much ‘waste’ created by ‘products’?

We have been super smart thus far at making them ‘consume’ and so it is a natural consequence that they end up creating billions of tons of waste. Which is good for no one, let alone the brand.

As a conscious, spiritually aligned marketer with a deep grounded in the reality of how ‘big-tech marketing’ actually works, I can see how powerful a small shift in consciousness in how we see the market will change the world for the better.

I posit that using the word ‘Audience’ makes for a more conscious way to engage the market than seeing them as just ‘Consumers’ 

Audience comes from the Latin root ‘audentia’ - which meant listening which evolved into something that meant ‘the opportunity of being heard / listened’. 

A switch to imagining the market as a set of audiences fundamentally shifts how we engage with it and there by how we drive our campaigns and commerce. 

Some, conscious frontier brands are already doing this. Thirdlove has a program that donates slightly used brands that are returned, thereby not wasting them. Other conscious brands are following suit, by seeing their audiences as part of the ‘collective whole’.  

Personally, I deliberately try NOT to use the word consumers or even customers (it comes from the latin word that means ‘being a toll collector’) and use the word audiences. 

It will also force us to make smarter business / media decisions because we know we don’t have to shout at everyone to consume but to speak to only those who appreciate our act.

“Raise your word, not your voice. It is the rain that grows flowers, not thunder” - said Rumi.

This is true for marketing today as much as it is true for our lives. 

Small, conscious shifts such as these can be greatly powerful levers to gain an unfairly high audience love. 

Words matter. Deliberate, conscious marketing engagements matter in the new economy. How we see the people who we want to be a part of our brand growth journey matters even more. 

If you are frontier, sustainable, conscious CMO, you will clearly understand how powerful such seemingly small shifts are. s

It is time to embrace Audience-ism. Well..I know it doesn’t rhyme…make up your own word for it. But my plea today is for you to be at least open to it. 

The ‘funnel’ is dying

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The marketing funnel as we know it is fast becoming obsolete. Especially when it comes to winning the love of conscious, sustainable audiences. 

We are now clearly in a ‘values-first’ era of business. Which means this entire global shift towards sustainability, equality, openness, privacy, earth-friendliness, body-positivity etc. is not driven by brands but audiences.

And it’s not just a small segment of niche audiences. It is very much the mainstream. Global majors like Nestle have clearly admitted this and responding to this.

The Funnel’s fundamental assumption is this…if a brand drives awareness (through paid media mostly - as brilliantly illustrated by the ever funny Tom Fishburne here) then it can generate enough interest for the audiences to jump in ‘their’ funnel. It is a ‘Brand-out’ proposition that expects audiences to toe their line.

Contrast this with what is actually happening on the ground.

Audiences are DEMANDING values-alignment from the brands and increasingly choosing the ones that respond and prove that they are indeed in values-aligned. 

It would be wise to pivot towards a more audience-first approach to driving marketing. 

So instead of still holding on to an 1898 - level thinking of Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action (yeah…the funnel is older than the modern internal combustion engine…thank you Elmo Lewis) and building multi-million dollar marketing funnels, the smartest, frontier brands are better served to think something along the lines of Respond-Prove-Engage-Delight. 

Brands need to start thinking ‘Audience-in’ to win the new marketplace. It’s time brands learn how to dance the new ‘values-first’ tango. 

The iOS 14.5 ATT effect

According to Flurry analytics, just 5% of US audiences have allowed App Tracking on their updated Apple iOS devices. The number doubles to around 11% globally.

It is patently clear that audiences are done with tracking and have put privacy over everything else. Not just in the US but globally. One must understand that the level of privacy-firstness is still a propagating phenomenon through other markets where the US and EU lead and the other markets lag behind.

While Facebook might argue that this is a very bad idea for small businesses (as they have done multiple times over), the fact is the opposite is true.

Especially when it comes to digital, there is a myth that personalized ads work.

But almost all personalization is done NOT by small businesses. In fact, most personalization is driven by large brands. Small businesses lack the budgets and the sophisticated talent and tech to actually drive truly customized and personalized ads.

While Google and Facebook have hitherto built hugely granular identity graphs of you and me, the level of usage of this other targeting audiences based on interests, geo and psychographics is very minimal for the vast majority of small business advertisers.

The new update is a welcome change for the very businesses that Facebook and Google purportedly advocate. For it levels the playing field between the Small business with minimal tech savvy and sophistication and the much larger ones that have all the sophistication and media monies to eclipse all local eyeballs and thumb scrolls.

The era of a level playing field has just started and those brands that can truly build resonance through better first-party data centric storytelling will now have an equal chance to connect with audiences as much as the ones that have huge war chests of data-driven media dollars to boot.

Hooray to iOS 14.5. Resonant welcomes it. Welcome to the era of privacy-first brand storytelling.

Vaccinate Your Brand from the TPC Pandemic

Appe is ending it’s IDFA by ‘Early 2021’. Google ends it #ThirdPartyCookie support on Chrome by the end of 2021. The

The Third Party Cookie is on its way out as we know it. While it will morph into some other form to help early-stage / growth-stage brands drive reach, it is something that is going to adversely affect smaller brands than the larger ones.

Add GDPR, CCPA and other regulations, we’ve got ourselves our work cut out.

In today's #Datashots, we share how growth stage brands can prep themselves to navigate the impending demise of the #thirdpartycookies as we know it.

We share tips on the need to build your media empire while rethinking media investments...especially the ones that heavily rely on Third Party Cookies..such as #retargeting.

Take a listen and show your support wit a sub if you like what you are hearing. Thanks a ton.

Ram

Stack Down + Structure Up

Welcome to our first ever #Datshots & a very Happy 2021!

A short, potent #datastorytelling power shot that helps brands and agencies optimize their data capabilities to tell more resonant stories.

In this first episode, @Bargava , (data scientist with awesome, global, growth marketing creds) and I share our top recommendation for growth-stage brands and the folks that drive marketing for them.

Our top reco for 2021: Stack Down + Structure UP

Yes, Focus less on Tools and More on build smart data insights structures in your org. so that you can discern the right insights that are most likely to drive your KPIs.

Take a listen and give us like and a sub to support our mission to bring smart data storytelling to growth stage brands.

Ram

From ‘Targeting’ To Traveling Together

Invite your conscious audiences so you can #TravelTogether

The most loved brands have cultures, systems and platforms that consistently allow their audiences to be an intimate part of the brand.

May be their leaderships are intuitively aware of this truth or it was a deliberate strategy in masterful tribe-building. But it is undeniable that these brands have assiduously cultivated audience love by making them part of the brand’s journey. 

This approach is imperative for purpose-led brands. For conscious audiences seek and reward brands that have actionable and tangible ways to be a part of the brand’s purpose journey.

Leadership teams must realize that pretty much all ‘causes’ are works in progress. We are at the ’baby steps’ stage of solving the world’s challenges.

From Climate change to fair trade to zero waste to body positivity and pretty much everything in between, we are just getting started. Some of these will take decades to be realized. Some sooner. 

So when a brand takes up a cause and seeks attention from conscious audiences, it is critical that it clearly demonstrates that it is in it for real and for the long-haul. To be taken seriously by it’s most valuable audiences.

This calls for an evolutionary shift in marketing think.

Several brands have already shown the way for the rest of us. Patagonia, Ben and Jerry’s are but a couple of examples of putting money where the brand’s voice is. 

This evolution in marketing think starts with moving away for running just ‘campaigns’ that ‘targets’ people to building audience journeys that are inviting and inclusive. 

Personally, I have always felt irked by the excessive use of term ‘targeting’ when it comes to marketing / media engagements. Every time I used that word, all I could visualize was a dart board against someone’s back. It has a very ‘going to war like’ energy to it.

Contrast that with a more audience-collaborative opportunities like the ones created by conscious fashion brand @prana or carbon-neutral @wind.mobility. 

Team @prana sharing it’s measurable impact

@wind.mobility involving their customers to be their experiential ambassadors

Each one weaves the customer experience of the brand-purpose as an integral part of the brand experience. Stories that invite the audiences to travel together towards a more conscious future is central to their growth story.

‘Campaign thinking' by nature is time-boxed and ‘Targeting’ by virtue is ‘one-sided’.

Collaborative narratives across touch points that allow for audiences to be a part of the brand experience is where the magic of building a truly sustainable ‘sustainable’ brand lies.

You don’t have to take my word for it.

Just listen to this truth telling by Kimberly Paige, the CMO of BET during a recent AdAge virtual town hall. Sharing her views around ‘Multicultural Marketing’, she emphasized her truths…

“You will never hear me as a marketer talk about ‘Targeting’. I never say..’who are we targeting?’. That is a term that I think is predatory in nature and if you think about it, when you are being ‘targeted’ by someone, you are really in someone’s crosshairs. Right? Who want’s to be in that situation?”  

It is better you listen to this and other gems of wisdom from her own voice. 20 minutes of truth telling to set your marketing team in motion. 

As you start your week and close out the year, the question to ask really is:

How can we invite our audiences into our brand story?

And one last thing.

After listening to her voice out what was my ‘secret’ truth about ‘targeting’, I truly felt seen + right + aligned with what I am doing here through resonant.

Have a wonderful ‘week before Christmas week’!. Till next time.

Ram

Stories Sell

Thanksgiving & Cyber Monday is now behind us. 

We are now officially in the #Holiday2020 shopping season.

Despite the challenging circumstances, the pandemic has only accelerated the collective quantum jump into Social+Ecommerce-First brand experiences that drive brand experiences and sales. 

Which only means only that those brands with a good story game are going to come out as winners. Especially if you are one with a conscious story to tell. 

And then there are brands that still rely on Email to drive awareness and engagement. As a medium of driving brand engagement and excitement during the holidays, Email is simply not exciting and engaging enough.

No one really ‘loves’ emails from brands. No one opens up their inboxes with the expectant feeling of ‘How is my favorite brand going to enrich, empower and entertain me through my inbox’. No one is looking for stories on an email.

If there is one tweet that shows how old school emails have become, one only has to notice the tweet from @MKBHD.

I rest my case. 

Conscious Audiences are much more @MKBHD than our aunts on Facebook. 

I am sure we all love to connect with our aunts. But that’s just holiday hygiene. 

For those brands that are looking to build a powerful tribes, it is imperative to build a mean story telling machine.

By ‘mean’, I mean ‘efficient’ and ‘effective’ and ‘aligned’.

When everyone has sales and discounts. The ones that have a better, more resonant stories to tell wins not just the sales game but more importantly the attention of the audiences that we work so hard to earn.

It’s better to get your story game on.

Conscious Audiences are waiting.

#GreenFriday

Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to Resonant.

Lots to be grateful for indeed. Being healthy and safe in a good start. But what is even more gratifying today is the earnest opportunity to bring deeper alignment into the work I am passionate about. Resonance-centric, Conscious Marketing.

Cultivating resonance with audiences as a key impetus for brand growth has always been a central part of brands; marketing objectives.

While a few brands are masterful at this, most struggle with it and are stuck in the never ending reach-reaction loop. This, despite having both intentions and credentials that hold water.

I believe 2020 is a threshold altering year for brands and marketing in general. The tsunami of conscious consumption is finally here to stay. 

From Fashion to Travel to Automotive to Payment Platforms, the entire gamut of what is the modern commerce is now firmly in the #Conscious commerce universe. 

A recent Accenture study confirmed this increasingly rapid and forceful shift towards purpose-centeredness. Over 66% of consumers care about a brand’s ethics and supply chain.

Mondelez announced that it is actively pivoting globally towards a human-centric brand engagement it calls ‘humaning’.

While there has been some scathing rebukes and callings out to such overt moves by brands, the shift by and large is a good thing for audiences. It is them, the values-first audiences that are driving this shift.

Ultimately, audiences now get to enjoy the benefits of brand efficacy while being pandered with all things relatively good for them and the world.

As I write this on Thanksgiving day, tomorrow’s Black Friday will be the very beginning of many more Green Fridays to come. 

Sustainable is the new black. Frankly everything is and will be. 

Which means only one thing. When everyone is #Sustainable, Sustainability as a marketing differentiator becomes a moot point to spend your money on very soon.

Audiences are now empowered with the not just informal information such as influencer-led reviews but also formal apps like Good on you that rate fashion brands on sustainability.

Where does your fashion brand stand?

Such filters will soon cover all verticals. Whether through the court of instagram opinion or through formalized filters such as ‘Good on you’, the brand + marketing mantra of the 2020s is ‘Conscious or bust’.

Conscious audiences are not monoliths.

They may vary from staunch conscious warriors to incidental ‘conscious-choice’ makers across the entire value pyramid. What unites them all is their values-centricity.

This calls for brands to shift from a primarily reach-centric model of audience experiences towards a primarily resonance-centric model.

Bringing together the power of data and tech to discern the right signals so that experiences and stories can be crafted that iteratively lift this values-resonance is the road that we are embarking on.

By being fully focused on this evolving audience and helping brands build deeper, more resonant connections with them, resonant intends to be the conscious medium through which magic happens.

Welcome aboard and have a wonderful holiday season.