Do we know what makes a good brand communicator?

New technologies have opened up new ways of communicating with consumers.

“Just about every marketing strategy written over the last fifty years or so contains an introductory section entitled The New Challenges.

“In it, the author catalogues the astonishing range of obstacles that make the achievement of that year’s agreed targets uniquely difficult. The list will include: increasing competition, inflated media rates, attenuated lead-times, adverse exchange rates and – a particular favourite – the increasing sophistication of the consumer. Marketing has been getting more and more difficult for so many years now it’s a miracle that we can still function at all.”

Jeremy Bullmore wrote these words back in the 2004 summer issue of Journal of Marketing Society, in an article titled “The Steak and Kidney Pie that Isn’t. The End is in Sight for Sizzle Marketing”. The gist of it, as you can figure, is that the core and intrinsic job of marketing remains the same regardless of these changes: to create products that fit consumer needs and effectively communicate those to create a competitive advantage for the business.

The article also suggests that we tend to lose focus of this core job when presented with short-term fads and trends.

It must be said that since 2004 the world has changed a lot. Back then, Gmail, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and smartphone platforms like the iOs and Android did not even exist.  These developments may not have affected the very core of what marketing is all about, but have certainly redefined how we increasingly do the job of brand communication.

These technologies and services have also had a profound impact on consumer behaviour across the world. The iPhone has given birth to a $2.5 billion “App” economy. Facebook boasts around half a billion active users and Google processes over 5.5 billion searches every month.

These numbers defy almost every convention of “speed of consumer adoption” that existed in the past, and redefine how fast companies can reach “critical mass”.

These technologies have also opened new ways of communicating with consumers. Not just that, where consumers have access to these channels, they spend alarmingly decreasing amounts of time with traditional channels, and even lesser with our brand messages.

It is estimated that consumers who own a smartphone do not spend more than 20 minutes uninterrupted in front of the television at any time. They are either multi-tasking or have the TV on as background noise.

Most of the brand communication created for these new channels is characterised by two attributes. First, a consumer can chose not to see it. If it is not engaging, your message is not going anywhere.

Second, if they like it they will share it with their friends, if they don’t they still would. We have always known the effect of peer recommendations and word of mouth on consumers, but with social platforms like Facebook that effect now receives a frequent and regular dose of steroids.

How we create and execute brand communication for such channels requires not only new ways of thinking, but also a completely new skillset. If you are in a brand communication job today, you are living through what perhaps is the most exciting time in the history of this discipline.

What we are doing today could be compared with scenes from Mad Men where these guys are talking about “starting a TV department in the agency” and where they talk about how insignificant a development that is going to be.

Today, if we do not re-invent ourselves with the time, we will become obsolete as marketers in a shorter time than the time it takes a new release of iPod to become “old”.

Now digital is not crucially significant for Pakistan, right? We do not see penetration of such channels overtaking traditional media for quite some years. We also know that this phenomenon would be limited to urban areas and the Internet and digital world would also be limited to the “literate” population. Incorrect.

These new channels would in fact stand to fuel both further urbanisation and literacy.

The fact that countries like Pakistan would have relatively lower penetration of some of these new channels does not make our life easier. In fact, quite the contrary, it makes our life even more difficult.

Even if we take the short term argument of “digital not being significant for Pakistan” true for now, we still need to produce communication for these channels. Simply because no matter how small the proportion of population that is using these channels, for most businesses that proportion would represent majority of their most valuable consumers. If you are in the business of brand communication, you should be spending a lot of time thinking about what these new skillsets are that you are going to need to remain in business. If you are not, you are likely to end up in marketer’s hell in your afterlife.

The author is an advertising professional and can be contacted at [e-mail]

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.