Brand advertising can and often should be about the product
The brand-versus-activation split is not a brand-versus-product split. Some of the best brand advertising is firmly linked to the product, and a product can be shown emotionally or rationally. The worst brand advertising floats into abstract values and could be for any brand in any category.
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StatSpend drives far more of effectiveness than CMOs thinkPrincipleYou control the budget, not the ROIPrincipleAds mostly don't wear out; wear-out is usually a frequency problemCaseAmazon re-ran a two-year-old Christmas ad and it tested exactly as wellCaseA Knorr ad seen about 120 times in Scotland stayed one of the country's best-loved adsPrincipleDisguised repetition is one of the highest orders of creativityWarningCalling one ad a 'campaign' loses what a campaign isWarningBig brands that market like small brands become small brandsWarning'Do more with less' usually means doing less with lessPrincipleSet the size of the marketing budget with finance, not just its allocationPrincipleTriangulate econometrics, experiments and attribution over long time framesCaseOptrex went dark for ten years in one region and the brand nearly died there