Branding & Direct Response
In the digital advertising world there are two real form of marketing: Branding and Direct Response. A digital branding example would be Ford's newest full page takeover on Yahoo. It is a rich media ad, focusing on their new Hybrid car lines and performance. Now I am sure that next to no one has seen a Ford ad online and then decided to run out and buy the latest Mustang, (although that might be cool). The goal of the campaign is not to essentially sell the car but to make consumers aware of the car or trucks release. It also presents prospective customers the chance to engage and interact with the brand (again, in this case, Ford). There is no direct sale that happens. The new ad drives the Ford brand online and buys media where they believe their customers are "hanging out online."
The second form of digital marketing is DR, or Direct Response. This type of advertising is based on the completion of an action. That action can be a purchase, reservation, collecting a user’s information as well as several other "action" based results. An example of a direct response campaign would be a pay per click search campaign being ran by Sears for tires on Google. Typing in "purchase new tires" as keywords in Google the top site is Sears. When you click on the ad in the top section of Googles SERP (Search Engine Result Page) it takes you directly to Sears E-commerce site with the option to select the right tires for your vehicle for purchase. Sears internal marketing team or the agency that runs this account will be judged based on the amount of money the campaign spends vs. how many tires are sold.
So these are two completely different entities and until recently the line has started to blur. The world’s most renowned agencies like JWT, Taxi, Grey, and RG/A to name a few are known for their creative ideas which is now only one piece of the puzzle in today’s economic world. Top brands are not spending the same marketing dollars on creative ideas without a specific result or accountability attached to it. These agencies are now being held accountable for several different KPI's (key performance indicators) as I believe they should be, and why not. As an advocate of using both forms (branding and DR) together I believe the days of "spending" brand advertising dollars without being held to a certain standard or KPI is being phased out.
What are your thoughts here? Do you believe that the days of branding are dying?
