Some people believe that spending big money on marketing will always produce brand awareness. Although this seems plausible it is absolutely false. In fact some poorly targeted marketing can even decrease awareness. One thing that can really make or break a campaign is getting noticed, which is why brand awareness is such a discussed topic. No matter how much money a company spends on advertising and marketing they won't see results unless the brand is successfully noticed and recognized by the target audience.
Getting noticed has always been a challenge, but it may even be harder today. This is a world where ads are constantly enticing you with low prices, dazzling imagery, convenience, beauty, simplicity, and even joy of life. While the number has not been estimated exactly, it is safe to say that the average American is exposed to hundreds of ads a day from many different media sources. Some research has even estimated over a thousand ad exposures a day. At first this seems hard to believe. Let's take a look at at an average American's morning. Julie has been asked to record all brand influence encountered in the first 5 minutes of a regular morning.
Mother, Wife, and Medical Assistant, Julie wakes up at 5:30 AM to her Bose Wave Clock/Radio. She turns on her Panasonic TV and immediately sees the Lifetime logo taking up almost a fourth of the bottom right hand corner of the TV screen. Julie then gets up from her Serta Mattress and walks to the bathroom while three commercials play in the background for McDonald's breakfast, Best Buy, and Nike. While in the bathroom she grabs a new roll of Charmin, and has a seat. Gazing at the floor she notices her husband's New York Times newspaper from the day before. At 5:32 AM she washes her face with her Olay Facial Cleanser and a Ralf Lauren wash cloth. When looking into the sink she encounters another brand influence when she notices the Kohler logo around the drain. At 5:34 AM three more commercials begin for Jimmy Dean, Build-a-Bear Workshop, and Dell. While this is going on she walks over to wake her husband up and, oh, there is a Reebok logo on his shirt and Jockey on his boxers. At 5:35 AM she walks to the kitchen and opens the pantry, you can only imagine the amount of influence behind that door.
This experiment definitely shows how easy it is for you to encounter a large volume of brand influence each day! In just the first 5 minutes of Julie's day she encountered more than 15 ads. At that rate she will encounter about 180 ads an hour. This is the clutter that marketing has to overcome in order to reach the people needed to create great numbers. With so much clutter in the marketing environment, how can a company ensure that their ads are seen, and seen again, and again?
This is a big question in advertising and marketing that companies pay a lot of money to have answered. While there are many possible answers to this question there is one tactic that has gained popularity and is still achieving brand recognition by the people who matter, the brand target. I am speaking of Guerrilla marketing. This is a non-traditional form of marketing that creates high visibility of your brand with little resources.
This kind of advertising is often done outdoors, like on streets, buildings, billboards, subway stations, and anywhere people wouldn't expect marketing in the public sphere. Guerrilla marketing is also very prevalent on the internet which allows companies to target very specific markets for little money and sometimes for free. Guerrilla marketing online can also lead to viral marketing. Marketing that goes viral can have high impact because this can often be done through W.O.M (word of mouth) which adds further credibility to the brand. The biggest benefit to Guerrilla Marketing is the "ahh" factor. The unconventional marketing gets people to pay attention, the brand to be noticed, and can even get national media coverage on some occasions.
Brand awareness can be challenging but the techniques to make it happen have increased with our new technology. Communication itself has not only changed, but grown to include the old ways of reaching consumers, plus, the exponentially growing new ways of reaching consumers. Just remember, the first step to creating brand awareness is getting the prospect's attention.
