“We’re too small to worry about brand, our budgets aren’t big enough” is one of the common responses we often we get when we talk to a new prospect and no matter how illogical the statement, we have to guide them over the threshold to opportunity.
When it comes to making an impression the smaller something is, the harder it has to work and when in marketing terms the smaller your marketing budget is the less activity you can afford. It’s only logical that the less activity you can afford the more you need to ensure that everyone of those opportunities count, so getting the most out of these things requires a dedicated focus on 'brand integration' so that every customer touch point builds on the last, i.e.
the smaller you are the harder you brand has to work, the smaller your budget the more important your brand is.
So what about the other end of the scale?
“We have corporate guidelines, we have marketing managers with their own targets and objectives.” So, the budgets get bigger, you have more activities and a larger team to implement them: should be all good news, however, bigger companies can often end up like a collection of smaller companies - keen to be different, to do there own thing. And even if this isn’t necessarily a political thing, it can often be a natural reaction to being set your own goals.
The challenge for a Marketing Director in a larger company is making that market spend bigger than the sum of its parts, and the only way this is possible is by having a story – a consistent narrative that underlines every single activity. Yes, your marketing will be full of rich and diverse campaigns but they should dovetail with that underlying narrative, consistent framework and theme – at every single touch point the customer needs to know who its from, have your brand values refreshed with an added new sizzle to spice things up, i.e.
The larger you are - the harder you have to work to deliver a consistent and dynamic brand entity