Brand Wars: Consumer Brand Engagement as client-agency battlefield
Download as PPTX, PDF1 like549 views
The document discusses the challenges and dynamics of consumer-brand engagement (CBE) between clients and agencies, emphasizing the need for a more collaborative and interactive approach. It highlights the conflicting perspectives and priorities that arise from traditional client-agency dialogues, suggesting that a network-based relational framework can foster better understanding and cooperation. The study underscores the importance of adapting marketing strategies to reflect consumer-driven insights and building a mutual understanding to enhance brand relationships.
![CBE AS CLIENT-AGENCY BATTLE FIELD (INTERPRETIVE ANALYSIS)
ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD: THE SEDUCTIVE POWER OF “CREATIVE
COOLNESS”
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
● Clients blame agencies for their
professional inadequacy in their
lust for creative experimentation and
fame
● …treating them as executors of
briefs rather than. brand image
ambassadors
● …pushing to reconcile consistency
with the brand with the creative
philosophy
“You need to find professionals who know
how to listen to brand needs, where to go
and how to fill the gap […] but there are no
professionals, they seem to be all amateurs
thrown into the fray or creative stars
longing for Cannes awards”
“Ideally my agency should be my partner
because agency takes the brand around
with communication initiatives and acts as
the spokesperson of the brand. The brand
is the signature of agency ideas. But
agencies are seldom capable of acting like
partners”
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/gambettippt-150227110548-conversion-gate02/85/Brand-Wars-Consumer-Brand-Engagement-as-client-agency-battlefield-9-320.jpg)
Brand Wars: Consumer Brand Engagement as client-agency battlefield
- 1. III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna BRAND WARS: CONSUMER-BRAND ENGAGEMENT AS CLIENT-AGENCY BATTLE FIELD Rossella C. Gambetti ∙ Silvia Biraghi ∙ Don E. Schultz ∙ Guendalina Graffigna International Postgraduate Master in Corporate Communication Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
- 2. INTRODUCTION ●Building positive and long-lasting CBR engaging consumers (Cova 1997; Fournier 1998; Keller 2009; Fournier, Breazeale, and Fetscherin 2012) is currently a priority ●Consumers are more and more elusive and want to be the protagonists of the relationship with the brand ●Brands need to create an experiential and relational environment III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 3. CBE AS EN EMERGING FACET IN THE CBR DOMAIN Consumer-Brand Engagement a psychological state that occurs as a result of various interactive consumer brand experiences (Brodie et al, 2011) ●Recent advent in marketing literature (ARF 2006) ●Key driver of consumer behaviour and brand equity (Brodie et al, 2011; Gambetti and Graffigna, 2010; Hollebeek, 2011) ●Lack of a unitary definition, fragmented perspectives, theoretically controversial ●Implicit knowledge rooted in daily brand practices ● Misalignment and tensions between CBE actors III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 4. CBE AS A CRITICAL TERRITORY Consumer-Brand Engagement as a potential amplifier of traditional client-agency conflicts III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 5. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY getting an insight into the critical issues in the conflicting dialogues between marketing managers and agency professionals ●to explore how clients and agencies currently conceive and pursue their relationships to develop CBE activities ●to confront and contrast their sensitivities and priorities in managing consumer- brand relationships that generate CBE ●to depict a unifying and anchored in the field conceptual framework capable of bridging and organizing the different managerial concerns between the client and agency in achieving CBE. III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 6. METHOD ●Quali-quantitative study: systematically and interpretively explores and contrasts the views, sensitivities, and managerial logics of clients and agencies ●Data collection: open ended qualitative in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 8 brand/marketing managers and 11 agency professionals multiplicity of experiences ●Data analysis: semantic and lexicographic software-based content analysis of the integral transcripts (T-lab) combined with an iterative interpretive analysis of the research material III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 7. CBE AS CLIENT-AGENCY BATTLE FIELD (SEMANTIC AND LEXICOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS) VISUALIZING THE BATTLE FIELD III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 8. “Realism in branding could help engagement a great deal, because when a brand says “I have also problems, these are my weaknesses….I’m like you”, then the brand is the coolest guy because it’s more credible” “Your marketing plan should be alive. You can’t just check your efficacy after the campaign, this is just too late. You need to change things in the due course, to adjust everything according to the feedback gathered from dialogues with consumers” CBE as client-agency battle field (interpretive analysis) Deliberate or emergent strategy? The courage of truth to build credibility ●Agencies blame clients for their lack of courage in putting themselves into question toward equalitarian dialogue ●…humaninzing the brand and its weaknesses ●…dropping the tendency to fall in love with products and deliberate desk- defined strategies toward an emergent field-driven approach to CBR ●…accepting the risk of not being for everybody III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 9. CBE AS CLIENT-AGENCY BATTLE FIELD (INTERPRETIVE ANALYSIS) ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD: THE SEDUCTIVE POWER OF “CREATIVE COOLNESS” III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna ● Clients blame agencies for their professional inadequacy in their lust for creative experimentation and fame ● …treating them as executors of briefs rather than. brand image ambassadors ● …pushing to reconcile consistency with the brand with the creative philosophy “You need to find professionals who know how to listen to brand needs, where to go and how to fill the gap […] but there are no professionals, they seem to be all amateurs thrown into the fray or creative stars longing for Cannes awards” “Ideally my agency should be my partner because agency takes the brand around with communication initiatives and acts as the spokesperson of the brand. The brand is the signature of agency ideas. But agencies are seldom capable of acting like partners” III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 10. CBE as client-agency battle field (interpretive analysis) The organizational traps of brand decision-making Lack of integration and polygamy in C-AR translate into a dramatic loss of “time to action Living “in the time of pitches” implies missing the whole picture of the brand heritage at the expense of the design of a branding strategy deeply coherent with the brand values and relevant to consumers to engage them FAILING TO DEVELOP A GENUINE RELATIONSHIP CULTURE III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna Gaps in brand management process: ●Client self-referential brand attitude: inadequacy of organizational structures and business models, rigid and bureaucratic workflow hindering fast brand-related decision-making, outdated models focused on market control ●Agency hyper-fragmentation and specialization: exasperated parcelization of brand communication design and implementation processes, individual self-celebrating actors III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 11. DISCUSSION ● A SPIRAL OF TENSIONS ●Emergence of CBE as a driving priority in branding strategies has amplified and exacerbated C-A conflicts due to a dramatic lack of reciprocal understanding in how to manage CBR ●Misunderstandings do not underpin a different conception of CBE, rather, they stem from self-referential and opposing business logics which hinder the synergistic potential challenged by the existence of different frames of reference in defining the success of brand strategies ●Contrasts in C-AR nurture a dangerous spiral of misunderstandings and ambiguities regarding the requirements and expectations associated with each other’s role III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 12. DISCUSSION ● UNCOVERING A NETWORK-BASED RELATIONAL PATTERN ●To overcome the dichotomous business logics, clients and agencies should realize that CBE is not to be meant as a “party of two” relational territory, rather as a fuzzy interactive space where consumers have a leading role in activating a flow of relationships that continuously forces clients and agencies to reconfigure the structure and meaning of their relational exchanges ●The traditional linear relationship patterns of dyads of actors must be overcome evolving into a network-based relational pattern of a continuous multidirectional and fluid relational territory. ●In that territory, the “brand wars” tensions taking place in the CBE “battle field” may be resolved by applying an interactive relational logic which starts from a shared outside-in market perspective (Schultz, 1993; Kitchen et al, 2004; Kliatchko, 2008; Laurie and Mortimer, 2011) that is consumer-centric III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 13. DISCUSSION ● AN OUTSIDE-IN PERSPECTIVE TO CBR ●In that territory, brand is conceived as an overarching symbolic and value-based infrastructure as a network interconnector that allows a continuing cross- fertilization of clients’, agencies’, and consumers’ meaning-making perspectives ●Societal conception of CBE that is not merely a marketing objective to be achieved, rather a social project of communal building of brand value and meaning- making. ●That network perspective may potentially drive a shift from CBE meant as a “brand war battle field” amplifying conflicts in the attempt to “conquer” consumers, to a “co- constructed social territory” hosting consumers, clients, and agencies who are interconnected by the brand in a parenthetic dialogic relationship. III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 14. METHODOLOGICAL AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS ●This socially co-constructed view of CBE due to its novelty and its resistance to traditional deductive and hypothesis-driven research stances, calls for the adoption of a flexible and field-driven research approach ●Developing and implementing a mutually beneficial CBE focus for clients and agencies is a major undertaking ●The network-based view of the relationships activated in the CBE territory among the actors highlights that neither the client nor the agency should try to get control over the message exchange with consumers ●CBE can provide a common, external view of the purpose of the marketing communication activities. Viewing developed materials from the customer perspective, rather than that of the client or agency, provides a common platform for evaluation ●The use of CBE discussions must start at the time of the client-agency engagement. Frank and clear discussions about the goals of the marketer and that of the agency must be conducted ●Many of the challenges in developing effective CBE programs are based on the reward structures of both the marketing organization and the agency. Incentives and rewards for both the client and the agency should be established early through common agreement. III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
- 15. rossella.gambetti@unicatt.it silvia.biraghi@unicatt.it dschultz@northwestern.edu guendalina.graffigna@unicatt.it III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna International Postgraduate Master in Corporate Communication Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore