Having said that, one dilemma that small business owners face is whether or not to stay consistent with advertising campaigns and branding. I would say reinvention of your strategies from time to time would definitely call for some changes in advertising and branding but in this blog post I’m making a case for consistency. Here’s how and why…
Learn from the Gurus of Advertising and Branding
By Gurus I mean companies that have excelled at advertising and branding by adopting a consistent approach to these two important elements of their business strategies. Take the case of Coca-Cola, what comes to mind when you say the brand name?
The distinctly shaped Coca-Cola bottle that even a child or an illiterate person can recall, identify and connect with. Over the years this brand image has become the mainstay of the advertising and branding strategies of the firm. Slogans and celebrities who endorse Coca-Cola may have come and gone but the bottle as an enduring brand image has remained.
What You Stand for Shouldn’t Change
By this I mean your core elements, values or offerings. These should remain the same. The reason is simple, you don’t trust people who keep changing their stand, they come across as unreliable and that is what will happen to your brand if you keep changing what you stand for.
The Lux, ad campaign has always been about beauty and celebrities like popular female film stars endorsing it. Over the years the female icons who endorse the brand may have changed (depending on who was in the limelight at that point of time) but the core offering remains…outstanding beauty for those who are stars in their own right.
Adds Credibility
To explain this, I would need to talk about the Amul butter advertising campaign that is one of the longest and most successful advertising campaigns in India. The Amul moppet, an endearing blue haired little girl in a polka dotted dress has captured and retained the interest of the Indian public for over five decades now.
The reason? Amul has used topical advertising to showcase its butter as the core element of every advertisement. One look at an Amul advertisement is enough to let you know what the biggest event in India right now is. Such is the magic of this campaign that people wait to see how Amul will depict India’s latest happenings in print.
Having said that, I would now like to draw your attention to the fact that all these instances relate to some very big businesses and there’s no talk about a small business here. The idea is to help small business owners to understand how big businesses have benefited from consistency. Hopefully I have been able to shed light on these aspects and provided small business owners with some food for thought on these lines!