Few people believe they’re being seduced by advertising, yet the perfect promotion has been carefully considered by marketing execs to fix as many eyes on a product as possible. Read here strategies to make your brand stand out from the crowd.
The figures for how many ads a person sees in a day are hotly contested, with many sources estimating anywhere between 3,000 and 10,000. Amidst that barrage of top tips, recommendations, pithy phrases, pristine products and eye candy imagery, at least a few will stick in your noggin. They may even be engaging enough to make you part with your cash.
How do companies concoct this curious alchemy? Here are a few simple strategies.
1. Audience research
Whether you’re hawking the latest blockbuster or a can of Coke, understanding your perceived demographic is vital. What’s their age? What are their likes and dislikes? How do they spend their free time? How do they dress? These questions, burrowed down to their most granular elements, can help make a product irresistible.
Researching an audience can take many forms, including surveys or face-to-face discussions, but their ultimate objective remains the same; to collect useful quantitative data, all the better to modulate a product’s form and make it appeal to as many potential consumers as possible.
2. Alluring packaging
Some brands are defined by their bright, sunshine colours, while others are concerned with serious, sombre palettes.
Created by label suppliers like PID Labelling, these exercises in brand design are the most direct line from the product to the consumer, and so must be congruent with its brand values in every way, from its font size to its strapline.
3. Building a community
More than ever, the ideal strategy for advertising involves building an ever-expanding community of followers on social media who’ll happily consume your content. These communities rarely enjoy direct advertising, instead preferring a sustained connection to a brand that will entertain them or make them feel as though their cultural cachet has risen by association.
The job of the marketer in a social media space, then, is to not only make a product desirable, but to transform it into the central pillar of a wider movement. If they’re particularly skilled, a new post from their brand will make a consumer feel like they’ve arrived home.
4. Becoming distinctive
What differentiates Pepsi from Coke? Starbucks from Caffé Nero? Next from H&M? The reality (perhaps unhelpfully) is both nothing and absolutely everything.
By finding distinctions in what are ultimately similar consumer items, brands regularly divert attention away from the product itself and towards a more diffuse notion of lifestyle. In doing so, their USP becomes an idea rather than a solid object, creating lines that are easier to define in advertising.
5. Finding authenticity
Authenticity became a keyword in branding a few years ago when the short-lived social media app BeReal positioned itself as more ‘authentic’ than Instagram or Facebook because of the two-minute window it gave users to take photos of themselves. Combatting the idea of ‘fakeness’ proved to be a marketing boon, ballooning its user base – at least for a short while.
If a brand can stick to its core values and present a consistent and authentic self, then it’s significantly more likely to stand out from the crowd – particularly with a younger demographic.
Do you have any tips for making your brand stand out? Share your tips in the comments section below!
