Brand Awareness

Natural disasters seem to happen more often these days.
In the past year we had the tsunami, hurricane sisters Katrina and Rita, the
earthquake in Pakistan and probably a few more that didn’t get front-page
attention.

The scale of these disasters is huge and all of us are opening our hearts
and our wallets. Governments are putting millions of dollars toward the cause this - of course - is still “our money”. It seems like everyone is pitching in.

Everyone? Where do brands stand when it comes to this?
Yes, some of them are contributing large sums of money to worthy causes but this amount is still tiny compared with the company’s advertising and PR
budget. And remember, this is still our money we are talking about.

Now, are brands really sure that spending on TV and magazine ads is what we want them to do with our money? Wouldn’t it be nice if some brands would ask us where we think the advertising dollars should go?

Let’s examine what benefits the brand can get from a “making a difference”
campaign to rebuild lives and communities that have been decimated:

1. Free worldwide media coverage on national news
2. Low production costs
3. A viral/word of mouth opportunity – no PR costs
5. Creating a communicative brand that cares about its customers, listen to
them and puts their money back into the community

Isn’t that worth a thought? Compare the amount of money it takes to
create a campaign, pay production costs and buy the media, not to mention
the inflated fees for celebrities and talent. The numbers don’t lie.
Sponsoring a village or a country that suffered from a disaster would be
much cheaper then traditional advertising and I’ll bet it would prove to be
even more effective.

So instead of another TV campaign, more models in bikinis or the same old
music festival sponsorship lets make a campaign to rebuild houses, roads, water pipes and even a village cinema.

The brand is helping people survive and consequently is helping its customers feel good.

That’s what I call brand awareness.

Kathy Sierra is writing more about this subject in “How to spend your marketing and ad budget” – a great read!