Pop-up ads, TV commercials, ad-blocker-blockers, sponsored posts: How many of these messages have annoyed you in the past day alone?
Consumers are faced with interruptive marketing tactics at every turn, and the fierce resistance to this messaging bombardment is a common barrier for many brands—maybe even yours.
In his book "Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption," Jeff Rosenblum argues that it's imperative for brands to escape such “Mad Men”-era aggressive marketing and find a new way to stand out, build loyalty and win evangelists.
Rosenblum—founder of creative agency Questus and the filmmaker behind the documentary "The Naked Brand"—will be the keynote speaker at PR News’ Big 4 Social Media Conference in San Francisco Aug. 9-10. Here are three takeaways from his book that he'll explore in more depth at the show next week.
Good brands are transactional. Great brands are emotional.
The old model was reach and frequency. The new model is reach and empathy.
For decades, we’ve based our marketing on a model of interruptions—interruptions being the least powerful form of communication. If we were to interrupt each other constantly, we would not make friends or build relationships. Yet, the foundation of all relationships is empathy.
It doesn’t matter what category you are in; Uber is your competition.
Customers have no empathy for your brand. They only have heightened expectations.
Audience expectations have changed rapidly as a result of companies like Amazon and Uber. Every day, more startups attempt to follow in those footsteps and make the customer journey more seamless. But when a brand creates too much friction for consumers—whether in buying too many interruptive ads or creating a bad shopping experience—people have no patience for it. They just get ticked off and then use their own digital channels to vent.
Want to learn how to avoid using disruptive messages like this one to grab audiences' attention? Join us at PR News' Big 4 Social Media Conference and Boot Camp: Google for Communicators Aug. 9-10 in San Francisco.
Every new media technology has added more metrics to demonstrate success in the short-term—but the tail has begun to wag the dog.
Short-term engagement metrics won't necessarily improve your overall brand health.
What’s great about metrics like clicks and likes is they’re very short-term, so you’ll know if you’re headed in the right direction. But leading a brand is a long-term endeavor, and ultimately only one metric counts: your financial performance. Assessing brand health is about looking at upper funnel metrics and how many people are aware of your brand, but that’s easy. Smart brands use mid-funnel metrics, like how much people understand what the brand stands for, though it takes a longer time to move that metric.
Follow Jeff: @JRQuestus
Follow Sophie: @SophieMaerowitz