Effective marketing thinking
We want to keep marketing effectiveness as clear as possible for everyone. But if you do want to see under the hood a bit, here’s an overview.
When we talk about marketing effectiveness, we’re really just talking about why people buy from you. It all starts with people, and how they think.
While society has changed, human noggins are the same as they were millions of years ago on the savannas of Africa. They make decisions fast - so they don’t get eaten by Sabre-toothed tigers. And they make them while burning as little energy as they can - because there’s no shops to get chocolate in yet. In short, brains evolved to focus on fast choices, not best choices. This means they choose things that they recognise and like, NOT what’s the most logical. Effective marketing works with the brains’ weird ways. And doing so makes it a bit more likely that your audiences’ brains choose your company (up to 12 times more).
At this point it’s easy to get caught up in the endless fields of neuroscience, and the overlaps with the ever-developing world of modern marketing jargon spirals (cue endless Linkedin discussions and enormous piles of literature on both). It’s honestly too much for most people to take in without vast teams and millions of pounds. That’s why, at Creative Commerce, we look at the really big points - and focus on the 3Fs. These three; Fame, Fluency and Feeling encompass, overarch and rule the rest (These three heuristics explain market share across categories and regions with an average correlation of +0.9.” - Andrew Tindall at System1 Group). Look after them and you win.
More on the three keys to marketing success
AKA the Availability Heuristic
(mental availability).
Coke = Cola. Cadbury’s = chocolate. Compare The Market = price comparisons. They all got deep in their audiences’ memory network for the category. The proven way to do this is to make famously creative showman-like, brand-advertising.
How Fame works:
We build an attention-grabbing creative idea / character (Compare the Meerkats, Snicker’s You’re Not You When You’re Hungry, Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot). This creative gets linked to your audience’s memory nodes around your company - so it comes to mind quicker when they’re in ‘buying mode’ - and you’re more likely to be chosen.
How Fame helps:
You can’t be chosen if people don’t know about you. Fame’s an essential, and its level reflects where you stand in the market, today.
Fame
AKA the Processing Fluency Heuristic
(brand distinctiveness)
84% of advertising is wrongly attributed to other brands because it’s not well branded. That means only 16% of budgets are working for the companies intended! What does well branded mean? It’s simple. It means it really, really, really looks and sounds like you… every time.
How Fluency works:
It’s easy, if you use the same distinctive brand look and feel consistently, your audiences’ brains recognise you quicker and like you for not making the grey cells work hard… and they choose you.
How Fluency helps:
Because brains like things that are familiar and trusted, they’re willing to pay more for them (price insensitivity); so, you can be more expensive and still get bought.
Fluency
AKA the Affect Heuristic
(feel-good factor)
90% of the brains decisions are made by System 1 thinking (Daniel Kahneman, won a Nobel Prize for unpicking this). And this system makes decisions based on what it likes and feels safe with. It’s emotion based!
How Feeling works:
Likeability is found in the right-hand side of the brain – this side likes creative lateral things like stories, characters, music and old fashioned feel-good. So, that’s what we use. We entertain… for commercial gain.
How Feeling helps:
This is a doozy. Feeling predicts your company’s future growth. That is; the more people feel good about you, the more successful you’ll be. It’s crazy but true.
Feeling
Below, are all the things you don’t have to worry about by using our approach…
because everything just fits under our simple three-part effectiveness framework.
It covers:
Mental availability
Brand awareness
Top-of-mind awareness / recall
Spontaneous recall
Unaided brand recall
Salience
Reach/ Impressions/ Broadbeam
Share of voice/ Talkability / Share of conversation
ESOV
Word of mouth
PR amplification
Buzz / Virality
Cultural imprint
Search Volume / SEO Visibility
Cultural Penetration
Fame
Get your brand famous
so it comes to mind fast.
It covers:
Distinctive brand assets (DBAs)
Physical availability
Brand codes (e.g. colours, logos, shapes)
Add attribution
Brand system
Executional fluency
Recognition fluency
Processing fluency
Logo/sound/jingle recognition
Brand consistency
Design coherence
Fluent devices (e.g. characters, mnemonics)
Asset / Brand linkage (ad-to-brand attribution)
Familiarity via repetition
Fluency
Get distinctive
so people recognise you easily.
It covers:
Emotional response
Brand sentiment
Brand affinity
Brand warmth / love
Emotional storytelling
Brand trust
Surplus Feeling
Right-brain broadbeam engagement
Authenticity and humanity
Happiness metric / Happiness Index
Creative effectiveness via emotional priming
Cultural resonance
Brand purpose
Social Proof / Belonging
Empathy/ humanity
Feeling
Get your audience to react emotionally, so the System 1 brain likes you.
When it’s simplified everyone in your company knows the goals and how they can help.
Who we stole from
Thanks to brain boxes at Ehrenberg Bass Institute (including Byron Sharp, and Jenni Romaniuk), System1 Group (including Orlando Woods, Jon Evans, Andrew Tindal), Peter Field and Les Binet, Mark Ritson, Kantar, IPA, WARC, Daniel Kahneman, and others whose research and genius we have learned from – unofficially.