Think Outside The Bulb
• Creativity Informs: Marketing’s responsibility to inform is greatly enhanced by creativity. Creativity makes marketing more vivid, and many researchers believe vividness attracts attention, maintains interest, and stimulates consumers’ thinking.
• Creativity Persuades: The ancients Greeks created legends and myths about gods and heroes -symbols for humankind’s instinctive longings and fears – to influence human behavior and thought. Today’s marketers are doing the same thing; they are creating new myths, heroes and symbols like Ronald McDonald, the “Can You Hear Me Now” guy from Verizon, and more recently the Gecko from Geico Insurance.
• Creativity Reminds: Imagine using the same invitation, without any creativity, to remind people to try a particular product everyday for a month. The invitation would become stale very quickly. Only creativity can transform boring reminders into interesting, entertaining marketing communications. Nike is proof. Several commercials in a Nike campaign never mention the company name or even spelled it out on the screen. Each communication told a story. And, the only on-screen cue identifying the sponsor was a single “swoosh” logo inscribed on the final scene.
Okay, so we have all learned about the 4P’s of marketing in undergrad: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. If not, you can open up one of your old marketing text books, blow off the dust and read about it there. The 6 C’s, however, is a not a concept that replaces the 4’Ps; rather, it just expands on the promotion element and provides a more granular approach to consumer marketing.
Brand equity must be carefully constructed. A firm foundation for brand equity requires that consumers have the proper depth and breadth of awareness and strong, favorable, and unique associations with the brand in their memory.
Managers of strong brands appreciate the totality of their brand’s image–that is, all the different perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors customers associate with their brand, whether created intentionally by the company or not. As a result, managers are able to make decisions regarding the brand with confidence.
At its most basic level, a brand is made up of all the marketing elements that can be trademarked– logos, symbols, slogans, packaging, signage, and so on. Strong brands mix and match these elements to perform a number of brand-related functions, such as enhancing or reinforcing consumer awareness of the brand or its image and helping to protect the brand both competitively and legally.