July 4, 2016

The Marketing Chronicle #10

by KYC Marketing

Welcome to the 10^th edition of my Marketing Chronicle !

Brexit … a brand?

Just another article on Brexit you may think. You’re right, since the British vote, Brexit and its consequences have been analyzed all over the news. But, as the objective of this blog is to present interesting marketing news, I did not want to hide from you the most recent discussions linking Brexit to a brand strategy.

When you vote, you will vote for a candidate or a party and their ideas. When you participate in a referendum, you will answer to a generally binary yes or no question.

Similarly, when you buy a product, you tend to buy a brand, the image of which corresponds to a set of subjective values that your mind associates with it.

Transferring to the context of the British referendum however, the simple fact to reduce such a complex question to one single word, Brexit, is equivalent to the creation of brand representing the concept of Great Britain leaving the EU. This has happened quite naturally, without any deliberate intention from anybody. According to Wikipedia (a source which, as usual, has to be considered with great care), the word Brexit has been used since 2012 and results from Grexit, used at the time to decribe a possible Greek defection from the Euro zone.

When thinking about the brand Brexit, two comments come to my mind:

First, if someone had deliberately sought to create a brand for this referendum, he could not have come out with a better word. Brexit is an excellent brand as it works in all languages and is easy to remember. All the required conditions to create an effective brand from a marketing point of view are met.

Second, though, in the present case, the use of a brand, even involuntary, seems particularly dangerous. Summarizing a question with such enormous consequences for a country into a simple brand name risks biasing the citizens’ opinion and making the EU leave seem more abstract and trivial. Citizens will associate a set of values to Brexit (more savings for the country or increasing economic risks e.g.) just like they do for any product brand and their image about Brexit will hardly evolve over time. Brexit risks to be reduced to a sort of product that people can decide to purchase or not by voting yes or no. This is probably one of the reasons why the number of persons interviewed after Brexit, and, by then, regretting their vote seemed particularly high. These people had not realized the importance and the consequences of their vote. The word Brexit seems less risky than speaking about leaving the EU and closing the country’ borders.

Therefore, the use of a brand to summarize a political option seems to have been counter-productive in the Brexit case. It is important to render political ideas easier to understand for the population, but they should not be over-simplified.

These comments reflect my personal analysis, no scientific basis involved.

Against racism in sports

Several French institutions just launched a new advertising campaign against racism in sports. The intention is highly commendable and their timing perfect in these times of the football Euro cup, Tour de France, and Olympic Games. (Click here to see the campaign).

Despite its important objective, I am however afraid that this campaign will have no effect.

It consists in stating some typical racist statements (like: “there are no French in the French football team”), to cross them out and to use a slogan which translates as ‘stop racist prejudices’.

What will people think when seeing this campaign? Non-racists will see their opinion confirmed. No problem here because these people are convinced non-racists anyway and not targeted in the first place. However, people with racist or xenophobic tendencies, well used to the kind of statements shown in the ads, may laugh at the campaign. These people have strong beliefs, and it’s not the weak slogan used here that will make them change their mind.

I know, it is much easier to criticize than to try and do better. Nevertheless, it seems to me that communication agencies should test the impact created by their campaign before having their customers invest important sums. There are statistical tools and techniques that permit to effectively test a campaign before its launch.

Unfortunately, very often, campaigns broadcasted by public institutions are not very effective. In many countries, several campaigns in favour of road security have failed. These campaigns do not need to preach among the convinced, but they have to make people whose behaviour endangers other road users change their way of driving. To do so, a campaign must retain the target’s attention by being shocking or spectacular.

Facebook friends

Facebook just announced modified news thread algorithms. A higher priority will be given to the news of your friends, less priority to company news, which will appear much lower in your thread.

Short term, this may seem risky for Facebook, as firms could decide to invest less in Facebook communication. Long term, Facebook tries to stop a decrease in users irritated by the fact that they are not able to see all their friends’ news among a growing flow of company news. A decrease in Facebook users means a decrease of advertising spending by companies. So, in the long run, Facebook will benefit from this new algorithm.