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Social Media Not The Answer For Weak Brands
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Social Media Not The Answer For Weak Brands
Weak Brand $?
That`s Twitter, Google, the internet and Facebook.
There`s no question these four revolutionary developments have forever changed the marketing function. Word-of-mouth has now become word of finger.
A key difference: Word-of-mouth leaves an invisible trail in the ether. Word-of-finger leaves an electronic trail on the internet.
In the past, nobody paid much attention to word of mouth, even though by some estimates it accounted for a majority of brand impressions. Today, however, the visibility of word of finger has mesmerized the marketing world.
But will the skillful use of TGIF make you a good marketing manager? I think not. TGIF is only half the story.
Linens `N Things didn`t go bankrupt because it didn`t make effective use of Twitter. It went bankrupt because it was a knockoff of Bed Bath & Beyond without a unique identity.
DHL didn`t pull out of the U.S. market because it didn`t buy enough AdWords from Google. It pulled out of the U.S. market because it violated a basic law of marketing, the law of duality. DHL was the No. 3 brand in a category dominated by UPS and FedEx.
Kmart didn`t go bankrupt because it couldn`t figure out how to use the internet to promote the brand. It went bankrupt because it was squeezed between Walmart at the low end of the mass merchandiser category and Target at the high end.
Coca-Cola didn`t fail to build a leading energy-drink brand in three tries (KMX, Full Throttle and Tab) because it forgot to use Facebook to ignite the brands. It failed to build a leading energy-drink brand because it waited too long after the launch of Red Bull.
Marketing can be divided into two parts: 1) marketing strategy; 2) marketing tactics. What`s more important? I don`t think there`s any question that strategy is by far the most important half of a marketing program. It`s like warfare, also a mixture of strategy and tactics. The weapons of war are equivalent to the media used in a marketing campaign. How often has an army won a war with better soldiers, better guns, better tanks, better aircraft?
Seldom.
What wins wars are better strategies. In World War II, the Germans had the advantage of the better weapons, the better discipline, the most experience. Yet their leader, Adolph Hitler, was a rank amateur when it came to military strategy.
Operation Barbarosssa, the code name for Germany`s invasion of the Soviet Union, was launched on June 22, 1941. Over 4.5 million troops invaded the USSR along a 1,800-mile front, the largest military operation in human history, in terms of manpower and casualties.
By January 1942, it was obvious that the Soviet Union had repelled the invaders. Although the war dragged on for another three years, the Germans were never able to achieve the expected victory.
The Germans` strategic error was trying to fight on two fronts. On the West with the English and the Americans. On the East with the Russians.
Ironically, 129 years previously, Napoleon made exactly the same mistake. He invaded Russia with 690,000 men, the largest army assembled up to that point in European history.
It was the same old story. Trying to fight on two fronts (the English to the West and the Russians to the East) ultimately cost Napoleon his crown and his empire.
Then there`s Japan which attacked the United States while still fighting a war in China.
You might think that no intelligent business person would make the same mistake. But they do all the time.
Take Lenovo, the Chinese company that bought IBM`s personal-computer operations. Now they`re trying to fight Hewlett-Packard and Dell at the high end of the PC market and Acer and Asustek at the low end. Not a good strategy.
Take Citigroup, one of our largest financial institutions with assets of $1,938.5 billion. Yet Citigroup managed to lose $27.7 billion last year and needed $45 billion in government bailout money to stay afloat.
What happened at Citigroup? Same old story. It started with Citibank, its consumer banking operation. Then it bought Travelers (insurance), Smith Barney (stock brokerage) and Salomon Brothers (investment banking.) In other words, Citigroup started as a bank in competition with the other major banks in America and then tried to fight on four fronts: banking, insurance, stock brokerage and investment banking. Not a good strategy.
Getting bigger is not a marketing strategy. Yet it`s the only strategy many companies seem to be using today. Line extensions, mergers, acquisitions, multiple price points and other techniques are obviously designed to bulk up a company`s sales. But how do these techniques affect the brand`s position in consumers` minds? In general, they weaken it.
Citigroup got bigger and weaker because the brand was stretched in so many directions. As a result, the brand lost its meaning.
Source:
http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2009/11/social-media-not-the-answer-for-w
