The Part of Brand Protection You Might Not Be Thinking About

“It is no wonder that not ‘striking the right tone’ was one of the greatest fears for CMOs heading into 2021.”

(iSpot.tv)

Let’s say one of your primary brand values is trust. Or excitement. Or happiness. Do consumers hear it in your audio marketing?

The issue of brand safety in advertising is a relatively new one. It really emerged in the age of programmatic, where millions of “non-premium” ad placements were suddenly dictated by the electronic marketplace and, in many cases, putting brand messages alongside “objectionable” content. Verification technology ultimately stepped in to help solve the problem, and you could once again be confident that your ads were delivering in the way you intended, making people feel good about your brand.

But protecting your brand isn’t just about avoiding an association with content about a disaster; it’s equally about ensuring that the brand identity you work so hard to project is actually coming across to consumers. If it doesn’t, it breeds a different kind of risk: investing enormous amounts of time and money on cultivating a brand identity that consumers don’t get…and losing them over time as a result.

And while we all know by now that audio is arguably your most critical marketing channel, we also know that, without the aid of a visual to project your image, it’s even trickier to get that desired identity across. Audio has to work harder.

Once again, the difference between getting it right and getting it wrong comes down to data.

Letting Consumers Validate Your Effort

Take advertising during the pandemic, when the stakes of projecting the right brand image were even higher than normal. Grocery stores were particularly under the gun, working hard to assure consumers that they were a safe place to shop. We ran a study in conjunction with Mediatel to examine how effectively UK supermarkets were getting that point across.

Leading stores (Tesco, Morrisons, M&S and more), like thousands of other brands, developed new audio campaigns with messages ranging from simple “we’re here for you” sentiments to descriptions of programs built to provide aid — most with tones intended to placate and inspire. Ultimately, they needed to project trust more than ever.

Analysis on the Veritonic platform shows that they struck the right chord. Ads tested, on average, beat the benchmark across all categories:

The benefits of projecting the right values don’t end there. This set of ads got it so right that they also beat the benchmark for purchase intent — the measure of how much ads move people to buy — by over 18%.

Whether you’re a major grocery chain or an auto brand or a travel company — doing business as usual or navigating particularly tricky circumstances — the point is the same. The data to ensure that you’re always projecting a brand identity that consumers understand and appreciate exists — and it’s easily accessible. In that case, if you care about your brand, why wouldn’t you leverage that data?

Learn what’s worked for other brands like you with Veritonic Competitive Intelligence.
Ensure you’re projecting the right brand identity with Veritonic Creative Measurement.