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Most of today's advertising is still based on push marketing tactics, especially discounts, to encourage consumers to buy. Push marketing sometimes works to get products off the shelf at short notice, but push marketing is not a branding strategy. Product advertisements and messages that are not tied to a coherent brand history only carry out product positioning, but not brand positioning. As products come and go, in the long term it is the brand history, their values ​​and ideal experiences that make up the great ideas for positioning your company.

This makes a brand cheaper by spreading the message of excess inventory or desperation to sell, reducing the product to the status of a mere commodity, where price is the main differentiator. This may be motivating for some consumers, but it is a terrible strategy for meaningful brand differentiation.

Conversely, pull marketing is the strategy that creates a halo around your brand by increasing the identity value of your brand. This works particularly well in highly interesting categories with a high level of commitment, such as in the cultural sector, all forms of personal technology, entertainment, clothing, beauty, fashion, cars, food, sports and fitness, beverages, gastronomy, hospitality / tourism, health and wellness and education .

The desire for magical moments

People who deal with these highly interesting categories want to experience magical moments on their way through life. The challenge of the brand bridge is to find ways to express and convey the emotions and facets of identity that this audience wants to feel. But most of these emotional needs are latent and tacit, unspoken and largely unknown until they are carefully researched and artfully discovered.

When you discover them, you can show people how to live life better, which gives people a completely different feeling than advertising that is designed to manipulate behavior by feeling fearful or insecure. While playing with uncertainties has long been a common strategy in advertising, which of these approaches do you see as a better long-term branding strategy that addresses uncertainty or creates magical moments? Which approach is better to get people's short-term attention?

You can find these and other key ideas in my latest book, The Brand Bridge – How to Establish a Deep Connection between Your Company, Your Brand, and Your Customers.

At The Blake Project, we support clients from all over the world at all stages of development. Redefine and articulate what makes them competitive in critical moments of change through online strategy workshops. Please send us an email to learn more about our workshops on brand storytelling and brand positioning.

Brand Strategy Insider is a service from The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy that specializes in brand research, brand strategy, brand growth and brand building

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