We have been digging a bit deeper into the marketing model of the four Es, and also explored three marketing campaigns which embrace the four Es. But where does all of this lead us?
First of all, it’s important to state that the four Ps still have many years left. For some companies, the four Ps still do the job. But for most they have to be complemented with the four Es. This marketing model is a recipe for branding. The right mix of emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity depends on the business of your brand, the type of products or services you are providing and where your company is in its brand lifecycle. To establish a position in the mind (and hearts) of your customers, you have to find your own unique mix of the four Es.
However, brands are increasingly important for people in the expression of their identities and self-fulfilment. Therefore, brand building in the 21st Century also requires that brands ask themselves the question of their legacy.
The millennial decade has also been about defining brand truth, and this has raised the question as to whether brands stand for something more than solely profit. Today customers are demanding new standards from companies. In order to succeed today, companies may not only need to embrace the four Es. Companies need to be ‘good’ and stand for something more than ‘more’. There might be a need for a fifth E on the stage as well - ethics.
Now we would like to hear your thoughts on the four Es. Have you seen any more campaigns or marketing strategies than the ones highlighted, where emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity have been put into practice? Is there something we have left out, or something you would like us to elaborate on?
Pepsi, Dove and Intel, highlighted in the three previous posts, all embrace the four Es of emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity in their marketing strategies. But, of course, approach the model in different ways.
While Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty is more emotional in its approach, Pepsi’s Refresh Project has an engaging point of departure. Intel’s Creators Project is approaching the four Es first and foremost by offering the audience experiences through exhibitions and videos. But in general, the three very different but all very successful brands bring emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity in to play in their overall communication and marketing strategies. They are all doing ‘good’ as well, with regards to the campaigns highlighted.
A Nielsen study suggests that the majority of customers only recall two of the countless advertising messages we are exposed to daily. No wonder. By the age of 65, the average consumer will have seen more than 2 Million TV commercials (that equals eight hours advertising a day, seven days a week, six years in a row). Thus, an authentic and consistent brand identity is crucial for brands striving to stand out and reach through the media clutter.
To differentiate from competitors, brands need to create and care for their identities, also referred to as brand personalities. However, a brand can’t just tell their audience what it is and stands for, and make that the common truth. A brand personality is the outcome of what customers experience from the brand. Just as with human personalities, brand personalities are affected by everything that is associated with the brand. This makes it more important than ever for a brand to act the way it wants to be perceived. Only an authentic and consistent brand personality will make a sustainable point of differentiation, and stand out as genuine and unique, being the natural brand of choice. It’s about ‘owning’ an exclusive position in the consciousness of the customers.
Above you find one of McDonald’s many ‘i’m lovin’ it‘ commercials. The campaign was launched in Germany in 2003, under the title ‘ich liebe es‘, then spread globally. A consistent use of the slogan, the golden arches, as well as a uniform interior and menu, has successfully made many instinctively think of McDonald’s as the preferable hamburger brand.
In previous posts you can read about the philosophy of the four Es, emotions, experiences and engagement. In the posts to follow, we will provide you with case studies of brands working successfully with the four Es, as well as a rundown of the marketing model.
Conversations between people are accelerating. To a very large extent, discussions have moved online to platforms such as Facebook, twitter and YouTube. Many brands are eager to join the conversation but quickly realise that old marketing rules no longer apply. Traditional marketing and advertising just isn’t as effective anymore. To be successful today brands need to engage consumers.
Nowadays, a customer can pass messages from one source to many, through a myriad of social networking opportunities. These can then be passed to the masses through viral marketing activities. Therefore, brands need to start to think of ROI not solely as in ‘return on investment’, but as ‘return on involvement‘ or ‘interaction’. This will enable them to embrace engagement in their marketing strategies.
Brands must dare to say good-bye to the monologue, pushing out messages, and welcome the dialogue, through engaging their customers.
To do this successfully, brands need to bring something of value to the dialogue - something people can appreciate and connect with. In this way your customers will become advocates of your brand and share it with others in their network. This is now more important than ever. As many as 90% of us trust recommendations from people that we know, and 7 out of 10 trust consumer opinions posted online (Nielsen).
Above you can watch clips from Tipp-Ex, Old Spice and Pepsi. These are three brands that understand the power of interaction and how to engage customers in their marketing campaigns. The Pepsi Refresh Project will be presented in a case study later on in this series about the four Es of emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity.
Brands offering direct and authentic experiences are more likely to create deeper and more meaningful relationships with their customers than brands that don’t.
In order to feel important, understood and connected today, people need meaningful and memorable experiences. A recent consumer survey in UK showed that people’s brand recall of an experience is 60%, while for newspapers only 30% and for TV almost as low as 20%. As more companies start to understand the importance of producing cultural capital, authentic brand experiences are becoming increasingly important in order for brands to connect deeper with their customers and get the desired customer attention. To be effective, the experience of a brand has to be rooted in the story the company tells, and appeal to as many of the human senses – i.e. sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste – as possible, and the more meaningful the experience is, the more cultural capital will be associated with it.
Brands with the ‘fingerspitzgefühl’ of navigating between culture and commerce and direct authentic experiences, will be able to create a deeper and more meaningful relationship to their customers, and more easily succeed in building brand advocacy. Most good experiences tell stories, and a good brand experience makes customers feel closer to the brand. Greater customer loyalty is developed due to the emotional bond, established through the experience. Customers are also willing to pay more for products from brands providing them with meaningful brand experiences.
Today, we can also see more brands that have started to approach experiences in a more strategic way. Above you can watch intros for T-Mobile’s Electronic Beats Festival, and Intel’s Creators Project, a project that will be presented in a case study later on in this series about the four Es of emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity.
As much as we’d like to think of ourselves as objective decision-making machines, our actions often say otherwise. When we ‘shop’ for something, we typically generate rational reasons to justify our actions. But the decision at the exact time of purchase is quite impulsive and largely emotional.
Emotional advertising content makes more impact on customers than any rational information. This has been strengthened by neuroscience research during the last few years. In short, our emotions ‘decide’, and do the ‘shopping’, for us. In the end, our actions are formed on the associations and feelings we have for a brand, together with our subjective history of it. Hence, it is essential for brands to establish positive, or ‘right’, brand associations and connect emotionally with customers.
Establishing ‘right’ brand associations helps to shape positive customer perceptions around the brand, and build strong affinity that leads to a much-increased brand preference amongst the customers, generating engagement and increasing customer loyalty.
Emotional substance in marketing and communication increases the likelihood of being remembered as well. Customers pay more attention to emotionally-stimulating brand activities than brand activities lacking emotional content. Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, coined the expression ‘lovemarks’ in 2002, in his book with the same name, where he stated the need for emotional brand connectivity with customers. Eight years later we find this need stronger than ever.
Brands that establish emotional bonds with their customers will effectively place themselves apart from their competitors, enabling the growth of customer loyalty. Today it is no longer a question of struggling for recognition alone. Today it is a question of being relevant, and connecting with customers. Because only then customers will forward your brand to their peers, writing testimonials and recommending your brand to others they are connected to. Successful brands are thus the ones that offer their customers emotional content which make the customers associate with the brand in a positive manner.
Worth noting is that rational strengths shouldn’t be utterly replaced by emotional ones: for smaller brands, or new businesses, rational marketing may well do better than exclusively emotional marketing, but for most of the already established brands, or bigger businesses, emotional marketing will definitely outperform solely rational ones.
Above you can watch film clips from Levi’s and Dove, two brands successfully working with emotions in their marketing campaigns. Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty will be presented as a case study later in this series about the four Es of emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity.
To compete successfully on the market, brands must add the four Es to their marketing strategies - emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity. We have highlighted this model before, but only in connection to music, until now. With an immense interest from our readers to learn more about the four Es marketing model, we have explored it deeper. This is the first post in a series that takes a look at this marketing model outside the context of music.
Anyone who has ever stepped foot in a business class knows about the ‘Four Ps of Marketing’, developed by Professor E. Jerome McCarthy in the 60s, further spread by Philip Kotler. This model suggests that successful marketing campaigns must have the right mix of product, price, placement and promotion to position a product on the market. The four Ps was however developed for the marketplace as it looked in the 60s, and not for today’s cluttered marketspace (yes, the market is a space, and not a place anymore). Don’t get us wrong though. The four Ps is still a very useful model, but it does have a few inherent flaws in a world where it is increasingly harder for companies to differentiate themselves based on specific product features alone (that are easily copied over night).
Nowadays, when the brand is the most important asset for a company, not the product, brands have to engage individuals in a deeper, more humane and multidimensional way. As a complement to the four Ps, brands must add the four Es of emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity, to compete successfully on the market.
Music is perhaps the communication tool that most powerfully embraces all of the four Es. Music is emotions put into communication, it builds memorable experiences that engage people into two-way conversations, it may easily service brands as a distinguisher from competitors, thus helping brands to position themselves in the consciousness of their customers, owning an exclusive position in their minds. But the four Es does not end at music, this marketing model goes much further…
In the following series, we’ll go over each E in more depth, showing just how emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity work - helping turn ordinary customers into loyal fans of your brand. We’ll also present case studies illustrating how the four Es can be put into practice.
Sounds like Branding (How to use the power of music to turn customers into fans) is the forthcoming book by Jakob Lusensky, CEO at Heartbeats. The book takes you on an ear-opening journey through the history of music and marketing, from the humble jingle and Muzak to today’s music which is blurring the line between brands and bands; making brands in to the record labels of tomorrow.
