Brand promise to consider before ideas

It was a story told by someone starting a new business while having a cup of coffee.

He wanted to create video advertising content that could appeal to the general public as well as his target audience, but he couldn’t decide even after thinking about it for a long time, so he laughed and asked for my opinion. I wanted to come up with ideas that would directly help him, but I couldn’t at the time because I didn’t have enough information. I shared a previous example that might be helpful. I’m writing this down in case anyone else is going through similar struggles.

In 2017, I met with a department store brand in Hong Kong that sold only luxury goods, like a kind of curated shop. The CMO who oversaw the Hong Kong branch at the time was struggling to completely revamp the content strategy for their Instagram channel and figure out how to further engage their potential customers (young affluent people in their 20s and 30s).

Here are the reasons why a change was needed.

• Even though they are a global brand, 40-60 likes per content isn’t enough, and they want to increase their engagement rate by 3 times.
• The identity of the channel became ambiguous. The result of introducing products from different brands because they are a curated shop.
• Boomers over 55 are their main customers, but they want to appeal to younger generations. However, they can’t alienate their core customers. Less than 4% of these people account for almost 50% of their total revenue.

I checked out the channel.

As I had heard, each content had its own unique charm. Not only Asian, but also Eastern European models, even a large chessboard. However, because they had to continue creating content with various concepts under limited budgets, the CMO at the time was spending 4 days a week meeting with 4 different content production companies, and they were also being asked for separate planning fees, so the production costs were too high for their efficiency.

What can we do?

To cut to the chase, what was needed at the time was a brand promise. This is a promise of value that the brand aims to provide at every touchpoint where it interacts with customers. And the brand promise this brand already had, but had forgotten about, which I found on their career page, was this.

‘Fearlessly Stylish’

There was a memorable scene I saw while visiting the 3 stores in Hong Kong at the time.

An elderly couple stood for a long time and chatted while gazing at an artist’s work that had been displayed in the display area next to the store entrance. The piece was a retro-inspired artwork with a vibrant color palette and shiny materials, depicting a young man and woman mannequin sitting on a motorcycle with sparks flying, looking aggressively forward.

I had always been curious about what stopped them in their tracks and caught their eyes, but while preparing my proposal, I was able to understand a little better.

When I looked at some of the statistics about the boomer generation vs. millennials that really stood out to me,

• They have significantly more experience with accumulating wealth. They earned an average of 43% more.
• They have a high cultural impact index. They have experienced more cultural innovation in their youth, like the globalization of fashion shows, the hippie movement, marijuana, and disco.
• The average number of sex partners before marriage is 1.5 times higher than that of millennials.

Inside their current, elderly appearances, there was actually a generational characteristic of actively enjoying life, sharing joys and sorrows with those around them, and expressing themselves more than the current younger generation. This was also linked to their desire for social connection even after retirement, which led them to actively spend money to groom and express themselves. The brand understood this well, but it seemed they had forgotten this direction due to the complexity of their work.

Ultimately, the existence of this brand promise allowed them to step away from the struggles and obsession over each content’s strong concept and to provide a clear direction in content creation, which in turn greatly reduced the planning cost involved in production and also helped the CMO manage his time more efficiently.

(If you take a moment to look back at the image above, you might have different opinions about what needed to change.)

Consumption is connected to personal stories.

And businesses have been focusing on ‘perception’ and ‘desire’ for a long time, which are two of the many factors involved in understanding humans. Because of that, there are many instances where they have a distorted imagination about customers who haven’t come to them yet. In these situations, I believe that a brand promise helps to keep the path to understanding customers clear and encourages them to find their way to you.

Now, going back to the initial story, I understand that we need a reference point from the social context to create ideas for creating a brand film. I believe that there must be a deep reflection and decision-making process about the ‘value’ that is at the core of the mutual relationship between businesses and customers when it comes to the act of ‘selling’ and ‘buying’. Of course, sufficient research and understanding of potential customers is needed to understand this value and define the brand promise.

I think ideas for brand films are additional results that are relatively easy to obtain after following the context outlined above. I also wanted to offer the CEO in front of me, who is starting a new business, many ideas to appeal directly to him, but the reason I didn’t do that is the same.

P.S. The depth of reflection on ‘value’ actually reduces unnecessary costs and increases the long-term efficiency of brand content. This is also why there is a need for a change in the way companies view advertising, which is often seen as a one-time cost.