And we sort of forget or have less urgency on the long-term brand-building content. 

I get it. The long-term brand-building content is hard to measure; the ROI is very, very long-term, and you can't attribute it to a specific campaign or effort. Hence, there is less measurability and less focus. You can only spend your budget and time once.

However, according to Les Binet and with some common sense, we need brand building to be successful and stay in business. And if we add AI to the mix, this becomes even more important; the more AI we have, the more we value authenticity and personality. 

The 60-40 content rule for 2024

My kind advice is to get your brand storytelling with long-term brand-building content in place. Today.  Show who you are and why you do what you do. Claim your leadership. Then, follow up with short-term activation content. 

Long-term brand building and short-term activation content need each other.  You need the long term to show who you are and that you care; you need the short term to generate sales. 

According to Les Binet, there is about a 60-40 balance between brand building and brand activation. Brand building takes over as the primary driver of growth from sales activation after six months. 

For more information, I kindly refer you to Les Binet and his work for the IPA. Boldy, I am making the assumption that what goes for the overall communications from a brand, also goes for 'content'. Hence, I embrace their work and love their research. 

Universal rules for brand growth

Copy pasted from IPA as they explain this excellently. According to Binet and Field’s research, there are some universal rules for all brands in all contexts. 

• All brands need brand building – the Brand building is the main driver of long-term growth and involves the creation of memory structures that prime consumers to want to choose the brand. Without brand strengthening, growth will be weaker, activation will be weaker, pricing power will not improve, and profitability growth will be severely reduced
• All brands need sales activation – Sales activation dominates short-term sales uplifts and involves behavioral prompts to encourage consumers to ‘buy now’. It is strongly boosted by brand building and is essential for efficiency. Without it, the investment will be weaker, and growth will suffer
• The optimum balance between brand building and activation varies by context, depending on the relative ease/difficulty of the two tasks
• The key factors that drive the optimum balance are the relative levels of emotional and rational consideration in consumer choice – where emotional consideration is high; brand building is easier; where rational consideration is high, activation is easier; where both are high, the budget should be shifted towards the more difficult task.
• Penetration growth is always the main driver of growth for all brands. While penetration and loyalty go hand in hand, loyalty doesn’t increase without penetration

Contextual factors to consider

In addition, this latest research reveals that there are six contextual factors that brands must also consider and offset accordingly:

• Which sector your brand is in – e.g., Durables, FMCG, Financial Services, Other Services, Retail
• How consumers purchase your brand – e.g., offline, online, serial, subscription
• How your brand is priced – e.g., value/mainstream, premium
• The level of innovation applied to your brand – e.g., none, any, new variant, new sub-brand, entry into a new category
• The life stage of your category- e.g., new, established, declining, stagnant, or low growth; medium or high growth
• How big your brand is – e.g., launches in first 1-2 years, launches after the first year, small brand, medium brand, large brand.

Embrace long-term content strategies

The focus of my articles and content philosophy is all about the long-term content. Storytelling. Show who you are and why you do what you do. How you add value and that you care. 

Especially with the rise of AI, your authenticity and personality will become even more important. The more AI we have, the more we want to connect and know that the other is real. 

For short-term activation content tips, check out all the amazing tricks webinars and seminars on how to develop a kick-ass, effective activation campaign for social media.

Disclaimer

This page is a re-publish from January 2020, updated in the fall of 2023 and again in summer 2024. This page and the long-term brand building topic keep popping up in my statistics as very well-read. Great content deserves to be shared again and again, as it makes an impact again and again. 

Credits to Les Binet for his amazing work. 

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It's number four in the most asked questions about content; please, check the last paragraph for all five questions and the bonus on AI. 

Why it matters

All brands struggle, big and small. No matter your size, the lack of results is deadly. 

First and foremost, for your budget. 

Second, without results, is harder to get the content out of the organization. Vice versa, if you share the results with all employees and departments, you'll notice that content ideation will pop up like crazy. 

 First, let's define ‘results.’ 

These should be measured in business objectives

• Sales numbers and leads 
• A higher ranking on SEO for leadership and traffic

Second, the reasons, presuming you've got great content (are you sure?)

1. Too fast; keep your patience
2. Wrong metrics: vanity over business objectives
3. Lack of budgets: focus
4. You do have crappy content (told you!)

1. Too fast; keep your patience

This is the number one reason for not seeing the results of your content efforts. Content takes time. Much time. More than you think.

Content is not plug-and-play. It's not a ‘Start today; see results tomorrow.’ Or within a few months. 

It takes at least one year; two years is more realistic.

How to fix it

Well, duh, … be patient.

2. Wrong metrics: vanity over business objectives

The second most made mistake in why you’re not seeing results is that you're using the wrong metrics. Usually, the content reporting focuses on campaigns with vanity metrics. Not the overarching business results with the general sales numbers.

Below you find a recap of ‘Accountability of content.’ 

Report on what matters to management, don't bore them with death-by-powerpoint details on likes and engagement. Getting the buy-in from the board and senior management matters to lock in next year’s budget – or prevent loss of budget in the running year.

How to fix it

Choose the metrics for management that reflect the strategy. Your content strategy should be aligned with the business objectives; hence, so should the reporting.

Quarterly or half-yearly

• Content efforts plotted against overall sales 

• SEO performance 


Monthly, if desired by management

• 
High over content planning with campaigns and channels

• Budget reporting: production and media
• Team reporting: FTEs and external help

3. Lack of budgets

The final reason why you’re not seeing results is that you don’t invest enough. And double that budget for media buying to get reach. I know you want more content for less; I'll be the bearer of the bad news, that is not possible. Quality is really expensive. Penny pound foolish.

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. In your team and agency.

There’s no such thing as getting results while you’re not investing serious money. 

How to fix it

Please don't fall into the trap of wanting cheaper content, which equals more content for less budget. A better option is to focus and scale down in the amount of content you want to produce. And that what you produce, you're f*cking going to nail it top-notch, high quality, re-usable and long lifetime. 

I wish I could give you a ballpark number or percentage for your content. Unfortunately, I can’t. There are just too many variables that define how much you need to invest.

If you want to get a gut feeling, in a 15-minute call, you can chat about your brand and company; I can give you an indication of what you’ll need. Just drop me a DM for my number.

4. Crappy content

Honestly, this is the number one reason for the lack of results. Get your head out of your a** and be upfront. How is the quality of your content? 

Low-quality content is a real issue. The cause varies. It can be the management that's too focused on the brand and not on the customer. It can be the team with a lack of knowledge or focus. And I can think of many other reasons why your content is not what it should be.

If you have a firm belief in content and you invest serious budgets and, still, your content is crap – then you’ve got a whole other problem.

Final words

It s*cks if you’re not seeing the results of your efforts. Aside from annoying, it’s indispensable to get the buy-in from the board and senior management matters to lock in next year’s budget – or prevent loss of budget in the running year.

Need help with all this? I got your back. Drop me a DM, and we can jump on a quick call about how to get started and if I can help you or if you need something or someone else. 

The 5 most asked questions about content

You ask me the same questions over and over again. My clients. During workshops, keynotes, and calls. 

So, why not write them down? Here's my ‘They ask, you answer’ series on content and strategy.  The questions are in the most asked order. 

1. I want more content for less budget; what are the tips? 
2. What do I need to measure? I struggle with accountability.
3. It takes forever; how can I speed up the process and shorten the time to market?
4. I don’t see the results; what can I do? (this blog)
5. We struggle with ownership; where should content be?

• Bonus: How to prepare for AI; We have no idea what’s its true power; 33% cuts in teams are expected

Click on the links to read more (duh…)

Finding a publisher is damn difficult. Honestly, getting denied time over time again isn't that bad, feedback improved my writing and made the book to what it is today. Yet, what is content if it doesn't reach the audience. If the knowledge stays on my computer, nobody benefits. Hence, flipping the perspective and practicing what I preach, I decided to publish by myself, online, piece by piece. 

Week by week I publish the individual chapters and paragraphs of my book. Each has its own release, indexed by tags. Use the tags or bounce from release to release. You can bounce from release to release by using the tags, you can search for topics or you can just go with the flow and read what resonates. 

At the end of each chapter, you can download the PDF with the collection of the releases that create the chapter. Below you find the first part of the first chapter. Available in low res (1,5MB) and high res (45MB).

Content of the first chapter

Foreword and outline, Basics and fundamentals for content, It starts with a belief, 3 Key takeaways for content excellence, 4 Elements of how to think like a publisher, How to set up a newsroom, How to find great visuals, To blog or not to blog, Share content from others, 'How to keep your CFO on board for brand-building' by Les Binet, Your why and leadership, The content basics and fundamentals, Cross-silo content, Long term brand building content, Content pledge: contribute to business objectives, Content painpoints, 'Epic content marketing tips' by Joe Pulizzi, Start up to scale up, Sense of content urgency, We hate ads, Be Distinctive, 'Character Gives Respect' by G-Star RAW, 'Content to stand out' by Flinders, 'Stick to Your Brand Voice' by WodBottom, Build a brand before products, Reputation management, Brand safety and content.

Soon to be published in this chapter

Content to contribute to business objectives, Set your KPIs, Reporting Tips, Measure progress with OKR, Fill the top of the funnel, Use a brand persona for content consistency, Sonic identity and content, Podcasts and how to make your own, Social first, The audience first for the best content, Learn them something new, Content follows media spend, Create a threesome: content, media, and production, Common content mistakes, Data and content

More to come within soon, stay tuned on LinkedIn or twitter​

You can use social media to build a brand. There are a few requirements and rules to follow to make it a success. Perfectly captured by Callum McCahon, Strategy Director at Born Social. Callum has done his research and homework on how you can use social to build your brand. A shameless copy-paste-editing of his work, enriched with an interview. Callum is not only an expert, he is also a pretty awesome dude.

Five rules of brand building

‘The tools for social might be different, yet in reality, it isn’t that new, shiny and different. The fundaments did not change. The ultimate job is to influence decision making. Take a long term view and set your strategy as the brand building doesn’t happen by accident.’

1. System 1 and system 2 - Daniel Kahneman in ‘Thinking fast and slow’

Our brains work in two different ways. 95% of the time we think fast, using system 1. Like being on autopilot, responding immediately and using instinct and intuition.

The other 5% we think slow, using system 2. when we have to stop and think to arrive at a rational decision. This is based on logic and takes effort. It is about rationality and reason. This is where the more rational campaigns work best: talking about a product, pricing, and reasons to believe. This is where the short term sales activation campaigns are the most effective.

Yet, if you want to build a brand, system 1 is the place to focus, where we spend the majority of our time. You want to influence this fast and automatic decision making.

2. The long and the short of it - Les Binet and Peter Field

Short term sales uplifts come from sales activation campaigns. These are rational and designed for immediate response. Short term sales uplifts don’t lead to long term growth. To build a brand for long term growth, you need to involve the creation of memory structures that prime consumers to want to choose your brand.

In short, long term brand building is to focus on the long term brand growth. This is done with brand-building campaigns. Designed to generate fame and prime us emotionally. Long term means long term, a matter of years, not months.

3. Cultural imprinting by Kevin Simler in ‘Ads don’t work that way’

In his article, Kevin makes the case that advertising doesn’t work through inception, by planting ideas in the subconscious. Advertising works through cultural imprinting. A shared understanding within a society, of what the brand means.

The mark of a strong brand is when everyone has the same understanding of what the brand means and what it stands for. In short, brand building has to work on building and reinforcing the collective understanding of the brand.

The catch is that this cannot be done on a one-to-one, personalized level, as everyone has to buy in on the same idea. Brand building is about building a collective understanding.

4 Growth through penetration by Byron Sharp in ‘How brands grow’

His book explains how advertising really works, by building a set of 7 rules about how brands can achieve growth. Two are important for social.

First, brand growth comes when you gain more buyers. Most of them are light buyers, who buy occasionally. Growth is not about getting your existing and loyal heavy buyers to buy more. Combine this with ‘growth comes through penetration’.

So, if you want to build a brand, you focus on reaching all the potential buyers in your category, continuously and in the most efficient way possible.

5. Be distinctive also by Byron Sharp in ‘How brands grow’

Second, be distinctive and to stay on top of mind. Distinctive brand assets are crucial to brand building and need to be reinforced time over time. Get noticed and do this consistently. In this way, you increase the mental availability of a brand, that the buyer actually thinks of your brand in buying situations. It takes years to build this recognition by being distinctive.

Being distinctive is more than your logo. It is your brand cues like color, the tagline of the specific style of advertising. Unique to your brand and famous to be linked to your brand.

Impact on current beliefs for social

Keeping these 5 rules for brand building in mind, the impact is huge on the current beliefs for social as a channel. From audience or follower metrics to engagement KPIs and micro-targeting beliefs. If you want to use social to grow your brand, a few pointers by Callum.

1. Audience growth doesn’t build brands

Applying the ‘brand growth by increasing penetration’ by Byron Sharp means to focus on reaching all the potential buyers in your category, not only the heavy ones. Yet, by nature of the characteristics of social, it is mainly the heavy buyers, or fans, that follow a brand. Meaning, if you want to grow your brand, you need to think beyond growing your followers. Focus on all your potential buyers in your category. Think broad and use the media budget for reach.

2. Engagement doesn’t build brands

The engagement rate is a common key metric on social. If you zoom out, think about who are the people who are most likely to engage. Your heavy buyers, your fans. And to actually engage, you can presume these are probably the heaviest of the heavy buyers.

Even Facebook doesn’t see the value of engagement as a key metric, based on research:

- less than 1% of people engage on Facebook. Most communication happens in the dark social

- engagement and clicks bear no correlation to brand metrics as recall, awareness or purchase intent. Just because something is engaging, it doesn’t mean it is effective.

3. Micro-targeting doesn’t build brands

Think about ‘cultural imprinting’, for a brand to grow, it needs to exist in the collective consciousness. All of the potential buyers need to have a shared understanding of what a brand means and stands for. Micro-targeting with personalized messages conflicts with building this shared understanding. Point made.

How to build a brand on social

Creative

The creative is not about the creativity and execution itself. It is about the right types of content. You need a threesome: fame builders a few times a year, short stories a couple of times a month and distinctive cues a couple of times a week.

Fame builder content. To build brand fame. By making work that creates an emotional reaction and touches your heart and soul. This is the ‘hero’ piece of creative. With your most effort, time and budget allocated. You need like once or twice a year. Make it outstanding. Relative long-form for social, optimized for full screen. This builds a collective understanding and reaching all your potential buyers.

Short stories.  Pretty self-explanatory. The objective is to tell a story. These work to reinforce brand fame, and integrate the distinctive brand assets. Short means short, like 10 to 15 seconds. Best produced in an integrated production with the fame builders. For alignment and for optimization on the production budget.

Distinctive brand cues. The goal is to keep your brand top of mind and foresting the mental shortcuts (in system 1). It takes creativity to balance the recognizable distinctive brand assets and be creative for social platforms. Notice these brand cues only work as a reminder and cues, if you have built the brand fame and short stories.

Media

Pay to play. Organic is dead. Quoting Born Social 'media means first to make sure to reach most of the potential buyers in your category, at the right frequency at the right costs. Second, you need media to ensure that you are reaching these people in the right places in order to achieve maximum effectiveness.' For more media details, see Callums great deck, slide 27 and onwards. 

Measurement

A no-brainer this is super important. Though, when it comes to social, most key metrics are very short term and campaign-only focussed. As a brand, you need to break out and keep the long term brand building metrics in your view. Track your metrics over a longer period of time and over several campaigns. This goes for your creative and for your media.

Resume

You can build a brand on social, if you understand the game, keep a long term view, and have a strategy and planning in place.

Amazing work on 'Brand building on social' by Callum of Born Social to bring the work of Kahneman, Les Binet, Peter Field, and Byron Sharp together and apply this to how brands are built on social. Please reach out to them for more information and how they maybe can help you. shout@bornsocial.co.uk or +44 (0)2033933290.

I am not affiliated with Born Social or Callum. Sharing this because this is too good not to share.

WARC: One of the things that we've heard out of the WARC Toolkit survey is that (marketers) have a challenge making the case for long-term brand investment to convince the CFO, who is dubious of giving that money for something that they can't see is working straight away. How do they make that case?

Binet: “The first thing is to start talking the language of finance. We don’t help our case when we talk about brand-building in terms of awareness, image and ‘touchy-feely’ terms. Brand building is about selling. It’s about revenues and cash flow, but it’s about durable revenues and cash flow, over longer time periods. We have to help CFOs to understand that some marketing activity gives you an immediate short-term delivery of sales,”

Over-reliant on performance marketing

WARC: We’ve recently seen Adidas and eBay acknowledging that they had become addicted to performance marketing and were looking to make a change. How do you think some of these enormous brands have become over-reliant on performance marketing?

Binet: “The addiction to the short-term is not a new phenomenon, but it has got a lot worse. One of the problems is that (for) short-term activities, you get immediate feedback: responses, clicks, or short-term sales. If you are a marketer who's spending money and nervous about what you're getting for your money, you can immediately see that this stuff pays back. It's become easier and easier to see these short-term effects because we have more granular short-term data that comes through faster and faster. With the arrival of e-commerce in particular and digital metrics in general, all of the business is now afflicted by the same problem. All businesses now have short-term metrics, which can distract them from long-term growth. I think that's the real reason why business is becoming a short-termist. It's not quarterly reporting. It's not the short tenure of marketers. It's the data.”

Key metrics

WARC: Is there any specific metric that a brand should be looking for as an indicator that they should make a change? And if they do make that change, what type of metrics seem to see the most improvement?

Binet: “The most important metrics to look at first are financial and business metrics… If you got a strong brand, you will see it in the financials. If you've got a weak one, you'll see it in the financials. The most important brand metrics are to do with sales, profit, price sensitivity, and hard financial spend.

WARC.com

These and more great insights in the interview by WARC

For those who are unfamiliar with WARC, it is an amazing research platform with the best insights and publications on everything that's happing in the marketing world. As they say themselves 'Let’s save the world from ineffective marketing. At the heart of all great marketing is an insight. At WARC, we have the most trusted insights based on evidence enabling your work to be effective.'

From own experience, not cheap to get a subscription, worth every penny.

This is a non-sponsored nor an affiliated post. Sharing this because these insights and this platform are too significant not to know.

Sounds a bit like a no brainer. Yet in reality, as soon as the content assets are delivered to the media agency, most marketers wrap up and move on to the next campaign. Speaking from experience, even the evaluation afterward is quite superficial and scuffled away in a folder on the company drive. A missed opportunity to learn and improve your content efforts based on insights and data. 

How to and what you need

How to use data and set up an iterative learning campaign after campaign. Create, test, measure, and repeat. Continue the learning cycle. 

What you need:

• KPIs: what do you want to reach producing and distributing content. By preference, you align your KPIs with your business objectives. Content should always contribute to the business and you need to step away from vanity metrics such as followers and engagement. 
• Testing plan: know what hypothesis, audience behavior, you want to test within and between campaigns.
• Threesome between brand - media buying - content creation. These three must work seamlessly together to get insights. Just shifting the procuration and assets list back and forward will not do the job. 
• Real-time data: keep track of success.
• Content assets: a lot, and even a bit more. Variation is key. And use the social algorithm to your advantage and let it decide what content assets are best for your campaign KPI.
• Focus: make the testing and reporting a dedicated task to ensure it gets done.

'Focus on long term learning instead of short term ROI optimization'. Joseph Harper, E-commerce Marketing Manager - Western Europe at Kellogg Company, is a firm believer and shares his three tips for long-term testing of content assets. 

Frequency kills

Yes, you build a brand and imprint your message by repeating your message. Yet, 'most of the time the adds are 1:1 repeated without any variation, let alone testing. For me personally, as for many others, seeing the same ads over and over again, cause irritation. Make sure you have different variations and assets to test. Learn what works, and take from there.'

Channel shapes the content

By lack of budget or time, or maybe even knowledge, you see a lot of ads in the wrong format for the (social) channel. 'The most obvious example is an (edited) TVC shown in social. Allow the channel to shape your content, and not your content to shape the channel'. The social channel has a different heartbeat and asks for a different storyboard, adjusted script, and vertical or square.

Sounds like a no-brainer, in reality, more often than not the same assets are used for different (social) channels. To get the most out of your content production budget, media buying budget, you need to invest in content assets that actually work and do contribute to your objectives. The only way to discover what works is to test and adjust based on data. 

No best practice

'There is no kind of best practice for content.' 'Look at your consumer and your brand what fits and whatnot.' Joseph continues 'It is bespoke. There is not wright of wrong. Just know your audience and use data for long term learning what works for your brand.'

'Things change continuously. Nobody knows what the future will look like. So stay true to what you believe in, who you are, and stay authentic.'

Joseph Harper 

Read the interview with Joseph Harper by the Drum, including photocredits. Copy-paste 'Joseph Harper has developed and executed social and digital strategy, brand side, for the past six years. He spent almost three of these as Bet365’s social media editor, where projects included launching new digital channels and initiatives. At Kellogg's, he works on the digital transformation as social media manager for UK & Ireland across brands like Pringles, Crunchy Nut and Special K.' 

3 Layers of content

Dick explains ‘Good content is based on three layers:

• First, the long term big idea. Authentic, in line with your brand story and origin.
• Second, the content to build the brand. Show and tell who you are and what makes you tick - from a customer's perspective, the 'what's in it for them' in the core of your content.
• Last the sales activation content’. Nothing wrong with a strong call to action or an offer they cannot refuse. In the end, it is about sales to continue your brands' existence.

‘You cannot skip the first or the second layer and expect to create an impact.’

Advice: show and tell your brand story

His advice for briefing an agency is for the brand to ‘show and tell their extended brand story, include the heritage, the origin, the journey and the vision for the future.’ ‘If you get your agency to truly understand your brand story, they can incorporate it as the leading element in the heart of all campaigns’. ‘Only then the business will follow the brand, instead of the brand following the business.’

The proof is in ACHTUNG!s award-winning work for Volkswagen. After the diesel gate, the brand trust in the Netherlands restored significantly faster than in other countries. How did they do this? With ‘Volkswagen Memory Lane’ they go back to the roots of the brand, embracing the heritage. Bringing to life those extraordinary and special memories people have with their first Volkswagen. In a pure and authentic approach of the ATL, branded content, social and direct 1-on-1 communications, Volkswagen sticks to who they are and connect to their fans. The result is not only the restored trust, it even resulted in an increase in the market leader in the aggressive automotive industry. Effie case description 

Source ACHTUNG!

'Focus on the long term to produce effective content'. ‘Look at the long term in line with who you are and the domains you want to claim. Stop with those short term shiny nice to have one-off ad hoc campaigns without having the bigger picture. These do not contribute to your long term goals and business objectives.’

Frustration: lack of insights

‘One of his biggest frustrations is the lack of real insights provided by the brand. They should help the agency to really understand their business challenges. Define and describe the problems and issues the brand is facing. Do research on social circumstances and conditions. Discover the trends in the industry. And clearly state your business objectives’.

He continues ‘if a brand can define their problem and doesn’t just provide their solution in the brief, the better the creative agency can do their job and help them to solve it. A problem well defined is a problem half solved’.

Long term content advice

Kees suggests ‘to have the creative agency work on the long term big idea to guard the consistency between campaigns. This improves both the effectiveness of individual campaigns and the long term results.’

He adds 'to get your content execution power in-house. Build an agile and nimble team for fast production and very short timings to publish. Or if that’s not an option, find a dedicated partner for the long term which acts like an in-house team that fully embraces and understands your brand.’

Read more on how to set up your (in-house) Content Team.

Source DDB Unlimited