It would work exactly the same way. Except those types of purchases are usually (but not always) more rational. Those are the kinds of decisions that it’s worth to take a great deal of time to study and people are less likely to take shortcuts.

Brands are still important, reputation for quality, service, etc. However, a lot more effort goes into verification than it does for a consumer product.

- Greg

Good to see you back. Thanks for your comments.

- Greg

If a brand is new and there is information that a consumer needs to understand and learn about it to establish whether it is relevant to them, then awareness may well be the priority at that point in time.For mature brands where consumers are familiar with them and know what they do and what they stand for, the job of communication is simply to remind at point of replenishment (as, certainly in FMCG most categories are dominated by reportoire buyers , it is important to ensure that messages are exposed when the buyer is most vulnerable to switching.

Of course, we are all keen on talking about engagement because effectiveness of mere exposure cannot be assumed any more and there is a need, as described above, which possibly wasnt so neccessary before, to offer a consumer value in return for his willingness to engage with a brand.This is all true.However that engagement and the value exchange doesnt end with purchase.Most companies dont want a consumer to buy just once.In order to ensure re-purchase, the brand needs to overdeliver to its purchaser so that it doesnt merely do what it said on the tin but give more (e.g. offer advice on how to get the most out of a brand/alternative ways to use it, etc.The most enthusiastic and engaged brand consumers can also eventually act as your brand advocates and almost act as unpaid salesmen for the brand.The job here is to feed, in a subtle way, the information to these people that you would like them to say and give them materials and stuff that makes it easier for them to say how good the brand is to a larger number of people than possible previously.

Nope. Not either:-)

- Greg

That’s undeniably true, but you still have brand internals to look at.

The main point is that people get lazy and take objectives as given. Setting objectives is a crucial strategic activity. For a brand that has a problem with awareness, general brand awareness is a perfectly sensible goal. For a famous brand, then it’s a copout.

The pertinent question is: Awareness of what and for what purpose?

I did some work with a fast food brand that did tracking and overall awareness wasn’t as important as internals: i.e. taste, quality, value, cleanliness, etc.

When brand internals fell, sales would follow. So awareness only makes sense if it addresses a specific problem and an open ended goal such as “we want to raise brand awareness” is completely useless (any campaign would fit that brief).

- Greg

Cheers
Dick

Thanks. I agree that brand awareness is overused. However, just to be clear, I think it’s fine as a unit of measure. It’s just worthless in a brief. It’s kind of like saying that a business wants to make money. – true but obviously useless.

The one exception I would have for putting awareness in a brief is if an econometric model has been built and specific awareness goals are given to help determine media weights.

- Greg