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With the right brand campaign, you have the potential to establish your organization’s brand in the mind of consumers for generations to come. By establishing a positive core image for your brand, you can actually increase the chance that your product or service will come to mind when it’s time for a consumer to make a purchasing decision.

Did you know that 56% of ad impressions are never seen by consumers? Find out how this can be affecting your brand campaigns in our latest whitepaper, The Waste in Advertising.

What is a Brand Campaign?

A brand campaign puts your company’s story and message in front of an audience, with the goal of increasing brand awareness and improving brand equity in the mind of the consumer. It is a way to control your brand’s narrative and public image, as well as differentiate your organization from the competition.

What is the Difference Between a Brand and a Campaign?

Your brand is made up of all of the things that form your organization’s or products’ identity. Effective brands are easily recognizable by consumers and rely on a cohesive message across marketing efforts. On the other hand, a campaign refers to a marketing initiative that aims to promote a service or product. Campaigns typically cater to a more targeted audience and are usually timely and short-term. Thus, a brand campaign is what happens when you combine the two.

How Do You Create a Brand Campaign?

There are a few key considerations to keep in mind when creating a brand campaign, and depending on the needs of your organization, these will vary from campaign to campaign. Here are seven tips for launching an effective brand campaign:

1. Money Can’t Replace Time!

When you set off on a large brand re-positioning campaign, you know it’s going to take a lot of weight to get your message across. One mistake to avoid is trying to accelerate that change by investing too much money at the very start of a campaign. Although frequency is critical in driving change, so is message duration. Instead of wasting money by building frequency too fast, use that money to build a consistent message over time, giving consumers time to absorb your new positioning.

2: Understand Your Target Audience

One of the easiest ways to waste your ad spend is by not taking the time to figure out your target audience. When you don’t know who you’re talking to, then you won’t know how to craft a message that people will actually resonate with. Create buyer personas that can be used to help guide decisions throughout the campaign. This will allow you to create more specific messages that can effectively be used for varying audiences.

3. Make It Easy for Consumers

Consumers cannot take away multiple messages from one ad. At best, they will walk away with the explicit primary message or call to action. But don’t expect consumers to pick up on a secondary message, or make the connection between an abstract concept and your brand. Successful brand campaigns make it easy for consumers to know something is new. Advertisers must connect the dots for consumers.

4. Plan for Multiple Touch-points!

In the case of advertising brand campaigns, synergy works. Consumers who are exposed to multiple touch-points and types of media (e.g. television, print, digital, social, out of home) are more likely to be positively influenced by your campaign. By ensuring that you spread your spend across a couple of different media vehicles, you not only drive the message home to consumers, but you also lessen the risk of hitting saturation with any single media type.

5. Think Efficiency Before Effectiveness!

It’s going to take a lot of exposure to your campaign for a consumer’s perception to change. Generating adequate frequency over time is a key reason that campaigns are successful. Before you buy those high-profile sports events or prime time premieres, make sure you have a steady foundation of frequency building media. Cable TV is a great vehicle to accumulate exposures at a lower cost across a broad audience. Adding sports or high-impact prime can help you reach a wider audience once that foundation is set.

6. Don’t just set it and forget it!

In order to have the confidence that your campaign is working, put in place a measurement mechanism that can give you real time feedback. You will be able to let key stakeholders know the campaign is making progress. You can also use those learnings to improve the campaign while it is still running. You have invested tens of millions of dollars to create and run the campaign. Real-time knowledge related to brand tracking can give you the conviction to see it through.

7. Set Clear Metrics for Success

The factors that determine whether or not a brand campaign was successful are going to vary across initiatives depending on the overarching goal of the organization. Additionally, considering that the goal of a brand campaign usually is to create awareness more than it is to generate sales, the typical marketing metrics and KPIs used by marketers may not be an accurate representation of a campaign’s efficacy. That said, it’s critical that you track the results of your efforts so that you can optimize your message and media channels in the future based on the results.

Final Thoughts

A brand campaign is your organization’s opportunity to build, or rebuild, its image in the mind of the consumer. Through these initiatives, your product or service can become not only a household name, but the go-to product whenever your audience is ready to make a purchase. By keeping these tips in mind, you’ll be able to create an effective brand campaign that can be used to guide your overall marketing efforts for years to come.