Written by Ally Lang, Head of Maple Street Creative
Remember how five years ago, in a world of meeting up, hanging out, and being down with the in-crowd, you developed your moves like Jagger? Well, in this post, we’re going to tell you all about how you can now brand it like Bezos... and with a CPT as low as 60p…
During the second half of the 2003/04 football season, Manager, Iain Dowie took his Crystal Palace side from the brink of relegation to the play-off final and up into the Premiership, during which time, Dowie coined the phrase bouncebackability. If memory serves, the word was used, not to describe a return to the top tier, but the feeling of getting into a groove of doing well and regaining your mojo.
Retailers, restaurants and even tattoo parlours have been working their way back over the last couple of weeks, and next up are gyms, bowling alleys, and casinos. How can they ensure there’s a bounce to them being back?
Rule number one is don’t assume that because you’ve been closed, your customers will come flooding back.
They may have lost the habit for entering your premises, they may be put off from not knowing what to expect if they were to come back, or they may have gotten used to spending their hard earned cash elsewhere. Go back to basics with a good old fashioned brand campaign. Don’t feel you have to mention Covid in every ad…we have been in it with you too you know, and we get it. And if you’re going to incorporate a reference to lockdown, do it in a smart way:
Rule number two is don’t assume that just because they are queuing round the block that you’ve got it made.
Aside from the necessity to manage and reassure customer expectations on new ways of operating, you should take the opportunity to make a noise and be one of the early voices that gently leads the consumer back to spending:
Rule number three is a combination of one and two and it’s so important I’ll forgive you if you take away nothing but this: don't stop talking.
The lights have been off for long enough, the last thing you need now is for your consumers not to be able to hear you either. Sadly, they’ll never be a point when you don’t need to advertise, and if you think that’s baloney then you’re thinking too much about the sausage and not enough about the sizzle my friend. But don’t just take my word for it, check out what Mr Bezos thinks by looking at this graph of the biggest advertising spenders in the US in 2019.
Shifts in technology, environments and social change, have all played a part in the success of Amazon, but the one thing that was most important to them from the outset was communicating a brand presence.
What’s that you say? You don’t have their budget? Here’s the best bit.
As the preferred production partner of the UK’s largest independent radio advertising agency, Maple Street Creative can get your ad to-air for under £300. And if it’s the ROI you’re concerned about, then booking your campaign on our innovative auction site means you could find the CPT as low as 60p. Not the kind of budgets they talk about much in downtown Seattle, but everything’s relative.
So take a lead from the biggest kid in the playground and go and establish your brand in the hearts, minds and direct debits of consumers once more. Once the bounce is back, it won't just be the empty boxes that are all smiles.
