Branding campaigns are as old as marketing itself.
This simple concept of introducing the meaning behind your brand, your logo, and message to a large number of people for an extended period of time is easy to execute and relatively straightforward to manage.
The whole idea behind it is simple. It increases the brand’s credibility by making it visible and easily accessible. If someone sees your brand in a positive context enough times, they will, hopefully, think of you when they need to purchase a product or service they associate it with.
In the past, successful branding campaigns relied heavily on billboards, magazines, and TV advertising. Now, with all the technological advances in place, those channels are not nearly as effective as they used to be. The younger generations, mainly millennials and gen Z, are not interested in ads at all. They even go out of their way to avoid them whenever possible with adblockers.
So how can you possibly promote your brand effectively in this new environment?
The answer is easy. You just need to define what kind of audience you’d like to reach out to, find what kind of media they are interested in, and inject your branding directly in there – without it looking too much like a blatant advertisement. There are quite a few ways of doing it successfully and not making it feel unusual or strange.
But how would you go about finding out what kind of content is your target audience really into? Every generation is vastly different in their media consumption preferences.
In this challenging time where most countries are affected by some kind of quarantine or restrictions, Visual Capitalist did an excellent study into that very topic. It highlights the steep growth in consumption of a specific type of media that is increasingly popular throughout the last few years: influencer/curated content that provides real human interaction within large groups online. Think about it as socializing without the need to leave your house.
Since brand marketing is all about communication, recognition, and creating strong relationships, one of the easiest and at the same time most powerful ways of launching a branding campaign is to start by connecting with influencers and employing brand ambassadors. Because of the very nature of what they do, while working with them, you can expect their content to be always fresh, original, engaging, and tailor-made for the target audience.
By taking advantage of those already established, close-knit communities around them you can discreetly raise your image and make people comfortable with your brand in a very natural, almost organic way.
So what is the best way to go about a branding campaign?
Depending on your goals and the results that you want to achieve with your campaign, you can choose to try a few different approaches.
If you want to raise the general awareness of your brand and at the same time score some points for supporting a content creator, try placing a banner or overlay on live-streamed content. It will naturally inject you into the influencer’s channel and give off a positive vibe of a forward-thinking brand that wants to support up-and-coming creators.
You can also link it with some extra activities (like promo codes) to get a bit more engagement from the community and leave a lasting impression.
If you have a product that naturally works well with the streaming or video content, try looking at some long-term partnerships. Having a brand ambassador that will recommend your brand and promote you daily to a live crowd, for example by showcasing your goods as a part of their gaming setup or stream background, is worth much more than any traditional ad.
This is especially true if your products are exciting to look at, useful or they represent something new on the market.
However, if you are preparing for a major product launch, there is nothing better than a quick one-stream/video collaboration with multiple content creators within a short period of time. It creates an instant buzz and effectively gets people’s attention. Repeated exposition to something new and different makes people curious, especially if it happens through content that they enjoy.
If you don’t yet have a clear idea of how to brand yourself with the help of content creators effectively, you can always get some help and talk it over with us at adshot. We want to make sure that you get the most of your marketing efforts and we offer free 30 minute consultations to give you a chance to ask questions and get some help before you start investing in a campaign. This way, you will be confident that whatever you decide to do works out for your brand.