Closing The Loop! - Brief Article

Connecting with today's digital kids: Digital marketing programs create "Cultural Legs" for your Brand.

"Luke is a Rugrats freak--he rarely misses an episode. Last summer I took him to Radio City Music Hall in New York City to see the live Rugrats show. We went through the turnstile and into the lobby and Luke exclaimed 'Look Daddy, the M&Ms!' There on the lobby floor, along with the giant inflatable Rugrats characters were humans inside oversize M&Ms costumes, shaking hands and having their pictures taken with the long lines of kids who stood waiting to touch and talk to them. The Rugrats character's lines were noticeably shorter!"

M&Ms had successfully gone head-to-head with the mighty Viacom media and licensing machine by creating a "brand world" with their brand mascots as the stars, developing personalities for the mascots on television and then allowing kids to interact with them and know them--in other words, giving their brand characters depth and soul and making them part of the kids' life experience.

Over the years, youth marketers have gone to great expense to use the fantasy power of images to create a world for their brand--but then what? Until now, they've been unable to extend and sustain this world into the daily lives of their consumers. And, there's never been a reliable way to turn media "impressions" into "one-to-one relationships," or to service those relationships with continuity and consistency.

Today, for the first time, new computer, communications and content media allow marketers to extend, layer and link "traditional" and digital communications throughout kids' daily lives so that The Brand, not just the brand message, becomes the net take away. The key is to use these media in ways that speak kids' language and are relevant to their lifestyle.

Today's young people are "hard wired" to participate in integrated digital marketing programs which extend the reach, power and relevance of your "traditional" advertising campaigns, "surrounding" them with your brand world and establishing sustainable relationships with them.

Things As They Are

Building your brand and reinforcing its position, consumer benefits and purchase triggers is the name of the game. But the quarter-by-quarter grind for many brand managers is the endless process of dreaming up "great promotion ideas" and identifying "messaging vehicles" for the brand.

This quarterly scramble keeps the brand team and its various creative agencies as busy as bees ("thank you very much, next 20 ideas please"). Unfortunately, with all the media, promotion and event options available to marketers, it is easy to get caught up devising messaging tactics--what I call "blinking lights"--without creating anything sustainable.

The danger for your brand, even if your messaging is consistent and your budget is fat, is that you become just one of many "blinking lights" on kids' brand control panel and find yourself chugging along out of breath in the quarterly "he who has the most blinking lights wins" race. Aside from the stress it places on your internal operations quarter after quarter, this strategy fails to create true "brand airspace" that kids can get inside for the long term.

Most "blinking light" strategies are planned using a media value-and-use system that was in place long before the emergence of today's digital technologies. But what happens if we take a consumer-driven approach to creating brand-value by looking at the way kids value and use media? An acquaintance of mine at General Motors likes to say, "give consumers what they want and maybe they'll return the favor by giving us their business." I would add, "communicate with them the way they want to be communicated with and maybe they will give us their attention--and their loyalty as well."

Let's back up a step and look at the planning process in light of this new generation of kids and the technology available to reach them and see if we can create a "brand air space" that is sustainable--for marketers, their agencies and the kids.

We'll begin with a look at the kids themselves. A year ago in this article we would have had to establish that computers are an integral part of kids' lives. Today, few would dispute that this generation is surrounded by computers and, in fact, will never know a world without them. The addition of home computers and the Internet to the "traditional" communications mix gives marketers a powerful new way to create truly integrated brand programs using all of the platforms that matter to this generation. It's a way of planning media that takes into consideration the way kids use and value media, and speaks to them in a language they can relate to.

Convergence Marketing--the New Way

Convergence Marketing for kids combines television (or print or radio)--branded videogames--the Internet--and your customer service call-center and fulfillment operations into an integrated "branding machine."

Create a Brand World

Despite flagging numbers, television still matters to kids. TV reigns as the great, shared entertainment experience. It is the place where marketers can build an exciting brand world for kids (different kinds of worlds, brand characters and themes for different demographics, of course)--inviting them to join in and be a part of it.

Bring The World To Life

Videogames are the dominant social phenomenon of this generation of kids. They encompass a wide spectrum of activities for the computer that include adventure games, sports games, trivia games, puzzle games, history games, pure twitch games and more. The media-rich, highly interactive environment they offer is an essential part of bringing the brand world you create on TV to life with depth and soul for the kids. Whether you create the game first and adapt the TV creative to it, or the other way around, make sure the animation and graphics in both are instantly recognizable and similar.

With your brand as the star, a videogame will have kids interacting for hours, all the while sending them the message that you "get it" and that your brand is relevant to their lifestyle. A smash-hit videogame in the software industry sells a couple of hundred thousand copies. Mass marketers can afford to give away millions of them for less than it costs to give away many other premiums that have much less value to kids. Marketers in the U.S. have successfully offered games to their retail customers at a low cost for re-sale at a profit as part of a purchase-with-purchase program. For most mass marketers, limited Internet access in homes mean that CD-ROMs are still the optimal media for delivering games to the widest audience. And, a subscription module from an on-line service like AOL Europe on the CD-ROM can make you the company that introduces consumers to the Internet and your Web site. For marketers who cannot afford to manufacture discs or who want to focus solely on the Web aspect of their marketing pr ogram, games can be offered as a download via the Internet.

Make the Connection

Treating Web sites like television stations and Web-use like television viewing misses the great contribution the Internet makes to today's convergent marketing technology--an interactive connection with consumers. (At current bandwidth speeds, the Internet lacks the multimedia action kids crave. And even when bandwidth increases, treating it like television misses the connective value it has to offer.)

Content on the Web is growing but the reason most kids are interested in the Nickelodeon Web site is that they have watched episode after professionally produced episode on TV. Today's Internet is where, after creating a brand world on TV and bringing it to life with multimedia in a videogame, marketers can offer kids a connection to other like-minded kids and to the brand world itself (use good judgement here with regard to personal security and parental permissions). Again, broadband communications may change the visual profile of the Internet but the big value will remain in the connection to consumers.

Manage the Connection

Once you've asked kids to connect, make sure there's someone home! Marketing automation software now makes it possible to guarantee that consumer requests, inquiries and responses are routed to the right place and responded to. Why go to all the trouble of establishing relationships with consumers only to drop the ball when they finally get to the point where they want to interact with you?

Manage the Customer Relationship

The call-center is the battleground for the consumer's attention and loyalty. This is where "he who has the most blinking lights wins" gives way to "he who has and maintains the best customer relationships wins." The old way of valuing media often looked at the call center as a "complaint line" or as a customer service line with a permanent busy signal. In a Convergent Marketing program, the call-center becomes a vital and human connection between your customers and your brand world. When a consumer calls you on the phone--make the most of it! Brand it! Make it fun! Take the opportunity to learn more about them and how you can make long-terms customers out of them.

Deliver Value

The fulfillment house is the conduit for getting "stuff" to the consumer--the tangible goods from your brand world that can become part of their daily regimen. Get them exactly what they ask for while they're still interested and your brand will make a friend. Videogames, t-shirts, hats, CDs, magazines and coloring books are all tangible embodiments of the "brand world" you have created on TV and in your videogame.

Your Brand

Increased product parity, price pressure and the noise level in the marketplace being fueled by blinking light tactics make it almost impossible to contemplate defining "brand air space" without a convergent strategy.

How can you do this?

Begin by defining and sticking with a single, fun, kid focused strategy for your brand (remember M&Ms). If you have a brand character, now is the time to develop it and build some equity. Since the early 60's kids marketers have spent hundreds of millions building brand character equity on Saturday morning TV but have rarely leveraged that equity beyond their packaging. This is the age of intellectual property (the Volvo car company and the Geocities Web site are both valued at around $6 billion each!) Now is the time to take advantage of computers, CD-ROMs and the Internet to establish your brand as an entity in kids' lives. It's never been easier or cheaper to do this. The price of entry is low thanks to the convergence of these new digital media and kids' interest in them.

The interactive components of an integrated or Convergent Marketing program (including your brand character's personality--remember M&Ms!) demand content depth. It's not just 15 or 30 seconds on television any more--the kids want to interact--you've got to take your brand world and the characters in it to the next level or you'll be doing the equivalent of radio programs on TV.

Kids just want to have fun with a fun character and that character can be your brand mascot (M&Ms again). You should try to build your own equity for the long term. But if you already have a licensing agreement for someone else's equity character-look for long term relationships with a licensor who will be your partner in developing value for your brand.

The next step in planning your Convergent strategy is to communicate your commitment to it to your agencies. You can direct them to draw on their core competencies to deliver against their piece of your strategy instead of competing for your attention and allegiance by proposing ideas all over the map. By orchestrating your resources in this way you will have excellent television from the TV people, excellent multimedia and games from multimedia developers, a killer Web site from your interactive shop, great field executions and events from your promotion agency and accurate, on-time merchandise from your fulfillment house. In short, excellence from the top to the bottom of your Convergence Marketing program--the kids will love it and respond!

So...

Consolidate your strategy based on the way kids' value and use media. Orchestrate your agencies to do what they do best. Layer and link Convergent communications throughout the kids daily experience--and voila! The Brand, not the messaging, becomes the experience, and "brand airspace is defined!" Not merely consistent messaging across platforms, Convergence Marketing means the Brand becomes the net take-away.

COPYRIGHT 2000 BPI Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group