Real brand awareness

How much money do large corporates spend on brand awareness advertising? I’m not sure what the figure is, but it is sure to be a big number. And to what end? Would we really forget who NAB, Commonwealth Bank or Telstra were if they didn’t run ads for 12 months?

And it isn’t just ads. Brand awareness is a common marketing budget line item in most organisations and doesn’t just cover ads (although that is the bulk of it). In general though the term is used to mean push who we are out to the marketplace so people will know about us. Important – yes, but so often it is wasted effort (especially in big corporates).

Here’s a suggestion (with thanks to a friend for the idea): stop awareness advertising and put that budget to work inside the organisation, making sure that operations are aligned with intent. I imagine the positive word-of-mouth alone would make up for any drop in customer acquisition that resulted from the ad moratorium.

I know this might sound like heresy. But the focus on pushing the brand outwards just doesn’t get the job done any more.

Instead of trying to buy awareness, the practice of a little true brand awareness wouldn’t go astray. Look inside the business and use what is really going on, what actions are really being carried out to shine a light on what I like to call “what is”.

Think about it as yoga for your brand. Just as in asana (poses), where the poses create awareness and alignment between all the layers of the body (physical, mental, spiritual), the same awareness in business creates alignment between the actions, decisions and beliefs.

To quote BKS Iyengar – one of the fathers of modern yoga: “We must create a marriage between awareness of the body and that of the mind. When the two parties do not cooperate, there is unhappiness on both sides. This leads to fragmentataion…”

Sounds like a fairly accurate description of many businesses I see.

And like yoga the results are only delivered through ongoing practice. One of my yoga teachers used to say, “better to do a little yoga a lot than a lot of yoga a little.” Too often brand awareness is framed as an event as on big push. Much better to develop an ongoing practice of brand awarness that takes place across the business.

Brand awareness is much more than a series of ads to tell customers about who you are. It should be total alignment of the business today. Make brand awareness part of your culture and build a daily practice of looking at whether “the two parties are cooperating” at the detail level.

Get that right, spend money on that and you will have awareness that delivers truely long-term results for all your stakeholders.

See you next week.

Michel Hogan is a Brand Advocate. Through her work with Brandology here in Australia and in the United States, she helps organisations recognise who they are and align that with what they do and say, to build more authentic and sustainable brands. She also publishes the Brand thought leadership blog – Brand Alignment.