Brand Positioning

MCAworks Opinion

Marketing in the future will involve programs that are highly targeted against “heavy” users. Integrated Marketing efforts—which balance mass media properties with new, emerging “addressable” media properties— will be required to deliver targeted services due to growing mass media inefficiencies.

Implications from the changing media landscape for positioning brands are profound. In many cases, the master brand will become a far more valuable and powerful approach to gain new users than product brands and names. As mass media becomes less effective in reaching users, it will become easier and more productive to reach users via simple brand cues. Think using the master brand on baseball billboards as part of the game, as opposed to 30 second commercials.

This means that large master brands should be leveraged more as media becomes increasingly fragmented. Interestingly, this trend is the opposite of what caused many to fragment/segment their brands in the first place when media first moved away from TV network dominance. Master brands are more valuable then ever in this new environment. We have moved away from a time when master brands were the most efficient way to market because they leveraged mass media, to a time when they are the most efficient because they can work in a wide variety of different media.

Contact John Hawkins for more information.