Marketers must find a more refined balance between building their brands and meeting short-term objectives, according to Eric Reynolds, the CMO of Clorox. He discussed some of the challenges facing the industry during a session at the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) 2017 Masters of Marketing Conference.
“In a time when we have all this data and technology … why is our brand effectiveness falling? We would argue it’s because we forgot about brands,” he said. “People are no less interested in brands and loyalty.
He noted that there has been “in the last few years a dramatic change in the effect from long- to short-term brand activation.” In supporting that claim, he cited studies that found that long-term brand building not long ago accounted for 69% of brand relevancy, but that impact has fallen to 47%, even as short-term activation had risen from 31% to a majority share of 53%.
That would be fine, the Clorox CMO asserted, if effectiveness had improved. But, in fact, global self-reported effectiveness has declined. “This should be a remarkable wake-up call to us all,” he said.
Source: WARC