Distinct🌟 or Extinct🦤? Make Your Brand Stand Out
The opportunity to make your brand distinct, marketers have gone bare knuckle fighting & more.
Hello Everyone,
Guess who's back with a bang? After last week’s short and sweet edition, I'm all revved to bring you the OG version of The Marketing Dojo again!
In today’s newsletter, we cover:
🌟 The spotlight is on distinctiveness
🤙 The only right answer to “wassup?”
🎬 YouTube is making it easy to become a creator
📉 The new new-normal for B2B marketers
And lots more.
Before we dive in, here’s a small request - If you haven’t already, consider subscribing to the Marketing Dojo. It’s a weekly dose of all things marketing written in a bite-sized format.
Distinctively Yours: Building a Memorable Brand!
In the glitzy world of brand building, distinctiveness has often played second fiddle to its flashier cousin, differentiation. But thanks to the effort of marketing gurus like Byron Sharp - brand distinctiveness is getting the spotlight it deserves.
Brand distinctiveness is a medley of unique traits and elements that make a brand stand out in the consumer's mind—think logos, taglines, colours, mascots, and more.
This year, we've seen brands flex their creative muscles, putting their distinctive assets to the test - Barbie's pink billboard, Heineken's participating in the Barbie trend with just a part of their name and McDonald's outdoors for its fast-delivery services.
But distinctive brand assets are less common than you think. Carefully crafting consistent brand assets can be a massive opportunity if you are a brand marketer.
"Be Distinctive, Everywhere"- research by JKR and Ipsos is based on the survey of 523 brands and over 26,000 respondents; the main findings are:
A whopping 85% of marketing bucks are spent on brand assets that are not 'distinctive.'
Logos are the most common brand assets. But only 19% of the logos were genuinely recognizable.
Investing in a brand mascot is a no-brainer. When done right, brand mascots are no-cost influencers, always available, exclusive and unlikely to get embroiled in potential scandals.
Colour is the weakest link for brand distinctiveness -only 4% of the brands surveyed could be recognized by looking at a colour.
Creating a space for your brand in the jam-packed minds of consumers is no walk in the park. Distinctive brand assets cut across geography, style and fleeting trends. The report contains examples of brands with strong brand assets - give it a read if you are a brand-builder.
When Life Gives Marketers Lemons: We Meme It
2023 Has thrown quite the curveball at us marketers!
Layoffs, budget cuts, tricky AI tools, shrinking organic reach, inflation, recession, and let’s not get started on zero-click search – it’s been a ride!
This brings me to this week’s meme – it perfectly sums up my answer to the question, “How’s work coming along?”
Better Late Than Never: Youtube’s CapCut Competitor.
Did you know 83% of TikTok users have posted a video on the platform? Yep, you read that right! Over 50% of TikTok's user base actively uploads their content. The secret sauce? TikTok has cracked the code of simplifying video editing from our smartphones.
CapCut is TikTok's helpful sidekick that is partially responsible for TikTok’s success. The all-in-one video editor by TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is a big hit with the creators!
It's so popular that global downloads (China included) crossed the 2 million mark earlier this week.
YouTube has played a different game. Most of their content is polished and professionally shot, contrasting starkly with a typical TikTok's everyday, relatable vibe.
But it's all set to change soon - Last week, YouTube launched YouTube Create – a mobile video editor app aimed directly at competing with CapCut.
While there are no official numbers, anecdotally, it does feel like YouTube cannot boast of the creator-user ratio that TikTok does. But, the video editing tool can be step 1 to convert its passive audience into active contributors. I am surprised it took YouTube this long!
The New New-Normal For the B2B Marketers.
The term new-normal might hold a different meaning for B2B marketers. This Insider Intelligence/ eMarketer visual paints a sombre picture of the B2B digital ad growth rate.
Pre-pandemic B2B firms' budgets on digital ad spending in the US grew at roughly 23%. Sadly, digital ads are expected to grow at less than half that rate post-pandemic.
It looks like some tight-fisted years ahead for B2B marketers!
Of Niche Audiences & Fragmented Landscapes
We are living in the age of fragmentation & niches. I recently attended an event organized by The Marketing Society, WARC and Media Monks, and this slide caught my attention.
A striking contrast was presented: 40 years ago, the finale of M.A.S.H set a viewership record. In comparison, the finale of HBO's acclaimed series Succession drew 2.5 million viewers—a mere 2.7% of M.A.S.H's audience.
Our audiences exist in niches. The diversification of the media landscape and the plethora of available content have resulted in a fragmented audience, each segment with its unique preferences and behaviours.
To remain relevant, brands must craft media plans that delve deeper than age and sex, addressing each audience segment's unique needs and behaviours.
Short Stuff:
Snap now has 5 Million subscribers, roughly half of its goal. (Snap is staging a comeback)
Elon Musk’s suggestion to put X behind a paywall led to record sign-ups on BlueSky. (X’s loss is BlueSky’s gain).
Amazon is gearing up for a blockbuster holiday season by hiring 250K temporary workers, up 100k from last year. (A holiday season that brings in the cheers).
That’s a wrap on this week’s newsletter. If you learned something new or interesting this week, give this newsletter a like - it helps drive the discoverability of the newsletter on the Substack platform.
Thank you for your time and attention. See you in your inbox next week.
Ciao
Garima
P.S:
Based on a nifty suggestion from our community (you folks are the best!), I've plunged into a fascinating course on AI prompts on Coursera. I am enjoying the course so far. Unlike many other Coursera courses, this one seems hands-on.
It was so practical that I managed to rope in ChatGPT to help prep my daughter for her upcoming Hindi exam – now, how cool is that?!
